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We noticed it first in Tarakan, the border town in which we entered the country. We had come from Malaysia, where you don’t have to look very hard to find someone who speaks very functional English. Here, things are different.

We are happy that we invested in an English/Indonesian dictionary and Berlitz language CD when we were in Singapore. It seemed a bit frivolous at the time, but now it seems necessary! We are, out of necessity, picking up Bahasa Indonesia.

Once we got to Tarakan, we were both frustrated with the lack of options we had for how to proceed to Pulau Derawan, our next destination. Finally, independently, we realized that we just needed to adopt a different mental attitude - apparently getting around Indonesia really is hard. Luckily we can afford the time to do the research on our own.

Our Lonely Planet (LP) Indonesia book has only been marginally helpful so far. I will use this town, Berau, for example. The LP book gives a map and shows where 2 airline ticket offices are. The first one we go to doesn’t exist. The second exists, but is 4 blocks away from where it was supposed to be. A bit disconcerting when you don’t speak the language and so far the other office didn’t exist - you begin to think that neither of the office exists. So we pose the question: “Well, did the office move since the map was drawn, or was the map wrong from the start?” Hmmm… well, the book is a 2007 edition, so that means the office would have had to move within the last year - possible, but unlikely since it was on the same street, just further down. Also, we noticed that the name of another street on the map is wrong. This is not the first evidence we have of their spotty cartography.

We have had a similar time finding a connection to the internet. We went into 2 cybercafes today and in both of them, we sat down at machines and after 5 minutes of trying websites, realized that nothing was working, let the employee know this and they checked a few things and indicated, “yeah, oops, you’re right, it’s not working”. So, we wondered, what is the point of an internet cafe being open if their connection to the internet is currently down? I guess there are enough people who just need the use of a computer for word processing, gaming, etc. to keep it open in these situations.

In other news, I am reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and I love it. Fantastic book.