90 Spontaneous Days Around The World : It all started with a taxi ride…

On what would have been my twenty-eighth anniversary, February 14, 2014, Kelud erupted, a volcano 175 miles to the east of Yogyakarta. I learned of the deadly details of the eruption on my return to Jakarta, where I prayed for the victims and hoped for the best with my travels. Borobudur and Prambanan temples closed because of the disaster. I believe it was at this point in my journey that I composed my own traveler’s prayer––“Lord, please bestow good health, good weather and good connections.” I would pray this every day. The timing of the eruption spoke to me personally and to the power of my journey. Not only my world, but the world around me was erupting too, seemingly in my wake.

February 22, 2014

I had a steamy Sunday to myself to explore Jakarta. One of the sights I wanted to tour was Monas––the Indonesian national monument commemorating their independence built by President Sukarno. I had yet to try speaking Basha Indonesian on my own. Google Translate and I hit the streets of Jakarta.

“It all started with a taxi ride. I’d just arrived in Jakarta after a few days in Bandung with my friends. I was thrilled but terrified heading into the city without a native speaker with me. I wasn’t sure how I would see all I wanted to see. I took a picture of the map of the Kota out of my guidebook and figured I’d use my App to help me communicate where I needed to go and headed out into the world. But the second I stepped into the sunshine of the Jakarta Sunday morning I got this “I-want-to-curl-up-in-ball” feeling. I was about to leave the cozy confines of the Dreamtel Hotel for

the unknown. And this fact unsettled me. To my core. But wasn’t that what this trip was all about? Venturing into a city where I didn’t know the language, in a country where I’d just had the experience of meeting people who hadn’t seen or met a western woman ever before? When I took my seat in Saipoel’s cab I was at peace. We discussed where I wanted to go and rates. I hired him to be my driver for the day. I was a curiosity to him––a western woman traveling alone in Jakarta. We became friends. He had a very easy way about him, a caring way. We asked each other big questions about life in the way that you can when you know you will only know each other for a day. We did our best at speaking each other’s language and found we were so similar in our differences.”

That night I joined a tour with Intrepid Travel. We journeyed east across the island of Java to Bali in about two weeks. This was the easiest, most cost-effective way for me to absorb as much of the culture as I needed to in the period of time that I had to research the settings for my screenplay. The tour began in Jakarta and headed to Bandung. As we traveled on, we learned more about the eruption and it’s effect on our travels and the people of Indonesia.

February 24-26, 2014

In Pandagaran, after a tour of the Green Canyon, the local Wayang puppet maker demonstrated his craft and tells tales of the Hindu saga of The Ramayana, about Rama and Sinta, their Romeo and Juliet.

The next day our guide, Sukio invited us to his home for a delicious lunch prepared by his wife. When we arrived, a championship volleyball game was being played right outside his front door.

“On a hike through the jungle at twilight, we saw spiders and scorpions and crawled into a creepy, old Japanese bunker where we hung out with bats and kimono dragons then we watched the famous flying foxes at sunset. As night fell, fishing boat lights twinkled over the Java Sea. Bamboo fishing platforms alit at night looked otherworldly.”

At nightfall it was hard to imagine the devastation that occurred when the tsumani hit, completely destroying Pandangaran. Sukio told us the tale of how he had been on a tour on the river in the Green Canyon when it hit in 2006, and his frantic search to find out if his wife and children were alive. It was equally hard to imagine The Battle of The Java Sea nearly seventy years ago when The Repulse and The Prince of Wales would be sunk by the Japanese, who would go on to occupy a sixth of the world’s surface in the six months after Pearl Harbor. Java fell in March of 1942. Dad would be taken prisoner that September.

“Eruptions, tsunamis, war. Broken hearts.” 

“It’s evening prayer now. The call to worship epic and as I drink a Guiness. Prayerful echoes fill the night. I‘ve been warned by Saipoel and my friends in Bandung to be careful in this part of Java. While I paid attention to the warnings, especially coming from different Indonesians who nothing of each other, it somehow didn’t impact me until now. I remember earlier today when Sukio showed us a guard tower and explained how the men take turns watching over the village each night.”

To be continued…