Surabaya has a few huge, spacious, glitzy malls as attractive and slick as the ritziest malls in America. (It also has a few lower-class malls that are still pretty good.) And despite the "Krisis Moneter" that grips the country like the great depression gripped America, the malls are crowded with people--some Indonesians, but mostly young Chinese, dressed in prep-school fashion.

Outside the malls, there aren't many people on the gritty streets. When there are sidewalks, they are often impassable because tehy're blocked by parked vehicles, construction signs, street vendors, gaping holes into the sewer. People sit and beg in shady spots. But many places there are no sidewalks at all and you just walk on the edge of the street and let the motorbikes, becaks, and cars avoid you.

We found out quickly that the people in the malls don't walk on the street. They take air-conditioned taxis. It takes no time at all to hail a taxi and it costs less than a dollar to get just about anywhere. Taxis are cheaper here than the NYC subway by a half.

After a few days in Surabaya, the place reminded me of a city in Bladerunner: high-tech opulence and comfort above dirty streets full of poverty. And the main characters get from place to place without even seeing the streets. It's not quite like Bladerunner yet. We didn't feel that the streets were really that full of poverty. We probably saw no more beggars than we would see in San Francisco. The school kids wore bright, clean, neat uniforms here just as they did in the towns we passed since Bali. The streets may have lots of grit and dirt, but we didn't see people living in shanty towns and amidst the kind of decrepit squalor you see on TV documentaries (or in Manila). This may exist somewhere in Surabaya, but we never saw it.

After we showered and cleaned up the morning we arrived (it's amazing how fast you can go from sweaty, grit covered cyclist to clean tourist), we walked to the Tunjungan Mall - a Surabaya show piece. The mall has excellent air-conditioning and once inside, it's hard to tell you're not in Indianapolis, except for the lack of white people. You do past other white tourists now and then, but most customers seem to be Indonesian.

We heard it had a good food court but Tunjungan is so huge, we couldn't find it. We found a directory of the mall but it had no "you are here" and we couldn't orient ourselves. We were really hungry and getting frustrated. We passed KFC about five times then decided to quit fighting it and feed ourselves. I had high expectations but frankly, it wasn't very good. The pieces were incredibly small and I could hardly take a bite without getting bone or gristle. Joan got a chicken sandwich about the size of a White Castle burger (aren't they about 25 cents too?) but the temperature of lava. She burned her tongue. This kind of KFC would never make it in America, even if two people could get a small lunch for under $1. I don't know why but it is so popular here, there are two copycat chains - "California Fried Chicken" and "Texas Fried Chicken." I also tried Wendy's and McDonald's to determine if all fast food here was even worse than in America. Answer: Yes. The one exception is Pizza Hut which is fine except we ordered the largest pizza that said on the menu "for 5-6 people" and it was just about enough for the two of us. Hint: don't get meat toppings.

We found out somewhere that we could get internet access at the Galaxy Mall. So just like Bladerunner citizens, we got an AC taxi across town for 50 cents.

Unlike Tunjungan Mall which is the middle of town, Galaxy sits in the very wealthy suburbs. We passed enormous houses inside high walls. The houses were pretty close together and all of them were white. They were all tasteful to some degree but they all looked about alike. Without exception they had satellite dishes, some of which looked NASA-sized.

We have visited many internet cafes throughout the world and Laser Quest at Galaxy Mall is one of the best. It looks very hip, painted in wild colors and the kind of stainless steel and black furniture you find at coffee places in Seattle. Loud music plays and a large TV in one corner shows the video. They have coffee with fancy names and baked goods for you and most importantly, a reasonably fast and reliable internet connection. The cost converts to about $1.50 for the first hour, about $1 for every hour after.

Joan and I worked together on the same computer reading/writing email. An employee sat next to me and wanted to start a conversation. His English was a bit choppy and I didn't want to be distracted and let Joan have all the fun so we switched seats and Joan talked to this guy whose name it turns out is Pinocio (he spelled it that way).

Joan talked to Pinocio for a while and got an idea. She thought it would be great to get a translator for a day to go around Surabaya with us and help us communicate with the people we meet. Pinocio's English was not good enough but he said he had a friend that could help. We gave him the number of the hotel and he said he would call in the morning.

We took another AC cab back to our hotel and slept well.

In the morning we had a post office adventure. We had three packages of photos to send to the U.S. and one to New Zealand. Tens of stalls selling envelopes, cards, and other postal stationary lined the street in front of the post office. Inside they have internet access but otherwise the post office seems a pretty old-fashioned place. It has about 30 desks along the walls. Above each desk a sign indicates what you do there. We couldn't translate very many of them. Some desks had lots of people around them. We eyed a desk that seemed to sell large envelopes so we bought four, addressed them, and put the photos in. We had read that you shouldn't seal the envelopes until everything is done. This was good advice.

Then we went to a desk that said, "Outside Country" as best I could tell. A guy thoughtfully went through all four packages, gave them back and then told us that we were in the wrong place. We had to go to customs in a little building outside the main building.

We found customs and another guy there went through the packages. We had to buy a set of forms for each package; then fill in the forms in triplicate. Joan thought they had built-in carbons but they didn't. She filled one out almost completely before she realized this. Fortunately, someone was looking out for her and gave her a basket of carbons.

We showed the customs clerk our four packages again, this time with the forms. He looked inside them again then signed and stamped each copy of each form. Then he sent us back to the main post office. The guy at "outside countries" said that we were at the wrong place again. We had to go to another desk to weigh each package and get the prices then another desk to get the stamps (so many stamps, we hardly had room on the packages) then finally back to the "outside countries" desk for final inspection. He stapled the forms to each packages, sealed them, stamped a receipt for each one, ran a rolling cancellation stamp all over the stamps, and hopefully sent them on there way. We don't have a lot of confidence. We decided to wait until we get to another country before mailing anything else.

Next: We walk around Surabaya with a translator

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