The next day I wasn't feeling well. Joan felt bad for walking me all over town when I had wanted to do absolutely nothing. I was tired and burned out and I knew it. I just wanted time. So on March 2, she let me have my way. In the morning we made short "photo safari" that didn't amount to much. You know you're burned out when you can't find a photo-op in Yogyakarta. I made a few other runs outside for meals but otherwise stayed in our hotel room and read "Liar's Poker" and tried to catch up this journal.

The book "Liar's Poker," by the way, is a great account of the workings of Wall Street in the 1980's. It will make you mad. I especially despise the traders with their huge bank accounts, bigger egos, and even bigger mean streaks. I mention this because I kept thinking the becak drivers in Yogyakarta could probably bargain them out of their BMWs.

Joan went on her own photo safari in the afternoon. She decided to go to the University, hoping maybe for a demonstration against the government or something. (A few months later there was one, and people got seriously hurt). But school was out and hardly anyone was around. She said it was great though because no one paid any attention to her. She was just another person while on campus.

She stopped to watch a chess game on the street and ended up making friends with one of the players. They let her play a couple games, both of which led to a draw, and she took some photos of them.

(Joan: They played fast and sloppily, but they were pretty good, or at least I thought they were since we seemed evenly matched. And they'd never play the endgame. Whenever it got down to that, my partner, a really nice guy named Jari, would just look at me and shrug his shoulders and say "Draw?" I think he just didn't want to make me feel bad by winning a game.)

She returned in a good mood. Yogya had redeemed itself. She met people who weren't interested in her money. We went to the hotel restaurant for a beer to celebrate. Somehow we started a conversation, mostly in Indonesian, with the waiter, named Pujo. We talked to him for about an hour. Our hotel had few guests (we feel like the only customers at almost every hotel). The restaurant seems to serve only a handful of people every day so the waiters have a lot of time. Not a single customer came in during the hour we talked to Pujo.

Pujo told us about his family and showed us pictures of his wife and son. He told us he lives with his parents-in-law but is going to but a house this year. He gave us the whole economics of his life. Both he and his wife work and they run a small warung for extra money. Our hotel was two-star rating. He had worked at a three-star, but he said it was too much pressure. He mimed himself snapping to attention. He said the two-star hotels are much more relaxed. I like his attitude.

Before we left, he invited us to visit his house the next morning. He even drew a map. We agreed to meet him around 10 a.m.

The next morning started out a little rough. We slept in too much. We were going to take a taxi. Joan showed a taxi driver the map and the driver asked for 5000rp. For one thing, all the cabs have meters, and for another, the ride would probably cost under 2000rp. It irked Joan so much that she refused to ride that cab or any other. We stormed off and the driver yelled after us, "okay meter! meter!" but we ignored him. I was ready to go. He was trying to overcharge us by 150% but that's only 30 cents more. But Joan wouldn't budge, so we walked.

Of course we made a wrong turn and made a hot walk even hotter. Eventually we reached the overhead sign the Pujo had directed us to. It turned out just to be the entrance to his community. Inside was a maze of narrow alleys. Some of the alleys angled off strangely, making it very difficult to navigate. We liked the community. The alleys were cleanly swept and plants grew in pots and on windows everywhere. (Joan: it reminded me of U.C. Santa Cruz dorms). You could look right into the living room windows at whole families just living. Most houses had a TV on.

We just started asking people for Pujo and his son Chandra. Someone instantly acted as our guide and went ahead of us asking everyone we passed if they knew of Pujo and Chandra. These communities are much bigger than I thought.

Finally we zeroed in on Pujo's house. He greeted us enthusiastically. We sat down in the neat livingroom in front of the TV, which was on to some Indonesian channel. Immediately a young woman brought us a huge plate of mangis (mangosteen in English, if that helps) and rambutan and a tupperware container of some sort of crispy spiral-shaped cracker. Then they brought some iced tea.

Members of Pujo's extended family came and went constantly. I don't remember just how many people we met. We took a lot of pictures. His three-year old son Chandra was in a bad mood much of the time but was cute anyway.

Pujo took us up on the roof where they have a nice deck and we met some more people. Looking at the house, it's hard to imagine where all those people sleep. I was only aware of four rooms but we didn't get a tour of the whole place.

We stayed about an hour. Pujo had to guide us out of the maze when we left. We walked all the way back to the hotel.

From a wartel (a shop with several phones in little booths where you can call anywhere. A machine connected to the phone shows you the cost while you talk) I called mom and dad's house. It was the night before Grandma's funeral so I figured everyone would be assembled and still awake even at midnight. They were, except my brother Bob and my Dad were still out. It felt great to talk to everyone. The connection was not great though and I could hardly hear the other side. I would really like to have talked to each person for a few hours. Nonetheless, I felt quite rejuvenated after the call. That was the beginning of the end of the grip I had suffered since we arrived in Yogya.

That afternoon we busied ourselves. Among other things, we developed photos and found one really good one of Pujo and Chandra. It was so good, we had it blown up to 8x10 and bought a frame for it to give to Pujo. All that cost us about $2.50.

While we walked around, we ran into a couple of Joan's chess buddies. It turns out one is a French student and drives a becak on the side. Joan and he spoke French for a while. Jari, the other chess player, invited us to his house. Actually he didn't take us to his house, he took us to his mother's house because it was more presentable than his bachelor pad.

No one spoke much English at all. We worked our way through simple conversations very slowly as a soap opera played on the TV. Jari looks about 20 years old, but it turns out he's 27 and separated from his wife. This took about 10 minutes to decipher. I don't think he was anxious to tell us, but we kept pressing the question of where his wife was (we didn't realize he was trying to avoid the question). Finally we got it. He laughed about it. Then he said that his sister's husband had died in a motorcycle accident a few years before. He laughed about that too even though his sister was sitting right there. We worked on the word "widow" for some time. His sister also looked about 20 years old.

We felt bad that we had no gift for our hosts but we did give him some photos that Joan took the day before.

That night we went to the hotel restaurant for a beer and set the framed picture on the table. Pujo came by to take our order and got a big smile on his face. He was very very appreciative. He thanked us over and over again. I felt a little like maybe our gift was out of proportion. Perhaps it was but the picture was so good and the price, in dollars, so cheap, it seemed the right thing to do.

The next morning before we left, Pujo gave us a bag of about 50 packages of instant powered soft drink of some sort. It was pretty heavy but we gave the packets out as gifts later.

After breakfast we rode our bikes to the airport, to get a plane to Padang, Sumatra (we decided to skip the west end of Java because the riots were increasing, and to skip the southern part of Sumatra because we were running out of time on our visa. Padang is in about the middle of Sumatra, as measured from north to south).

I was very worried about getting the bikes on the plane without a box or any kind of container but it was not a problem. The airport has only about five gates. We rode to the front door, unloaded the bikes, walked through a security Xray and metal-detector (they let us walk the bikes through with us), and rolled the bikes another 30 feet to the check-in counter. 20 minutes later, we were on the plane and so were the bikes. It was so easy I was sure something would go wrong.

Next: Sumatra, where children really do play on the highway. 

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