Days 9 & 10: Beginning the week of living dangerously

On Saturday, we spent the day getting our things together for our early flight the next day.  That evening Amy organized a birthday dinner for me at a Vietnamese restaurant (because we couldn’t wait until Vietnam to eat Vietnamese food).  Our dinner was delicious and we wandered out the door and down the street to the raffles hotel area.  We then meandered into the raffles hotel bar, the birthplace of the Singapore sling.  It has a wonderful ambience—all dark wood with old fashioned fans waving from the tall cielings and peanut shells on the floor.  If you walk up to the second floor on a circular staircase, you can hear a band playing everything from big band to more modern music.  We obviously had to dance on the empty dance floor and give some life to the bar.  Our dancing was so popular with all the rest of the patrons that we were rewarded with a resounding round of applause. 

On Sunday morning, we got up at 6am to drive in the pouring rain to Changi airport.  Getting through the airport was a breeze but we soon experienced our first test of patience.  We have quite a few tall boys on our trip who didn’t quite fit into the seats that were designed with shorter people in mind.  Unluckily, three of the tallest boys on our trip got seated all next to each other in the back row of the plane where they couldn’t recline their seats.  We got some good laughs in as we sat on the tarmac for several hours delayed.  The plane ride over was a little dicey but our landing in Jakarta was perfect!  We were greeted by Ritz Carlton representatives and friends of McIntire who ushered us onto a bus for a full day of cultural experiences.  As we drove through Jakarta, the second largest city in the world with 22 million people, the juxtaposition of Singapore Inc. with Jakarta’s bustling chaos couldn’t be more apparent.  We slathered on sunscreen and sucked down some water in anticipation of a full day in the sweltering sun. Our ride to our first destination looked something like this:

Our first day was an exercise in the great disparity and contrast of Jakarta:

We stepped off our bus at Sunda Kelapa.  From the 13th to 16th centuries, Sunda Kelapa was the main port of Jakarta.  It was a main trading post for both the Portuguese and the Dutch.  Today, Sunda Kelapa is no longer the cradle of Jakarta but still quite busy nonetheless.  It is now filled with completely wooden sailboats that transport goods like cement.  

We walked up and down the harbor and even ventured onto one of the schooners to see what it looked like inside.  Here is Julia walking up the plank and trying not to fall into the river: 

 The men who work on these boats also live on these boats.  There is no GPS and all of the navigating is done with hand-drawn maps (at least on the boat we ventured onto).  We mainly saw men unloading cement like this man below.  They often were carrying cement on their back with cigarettes in their mouths as they bounded up and down the planks in the hot sun.

After taking all of Sunda Kelapa in, we hopped in some rickety canoes to go across the river.  The river was full of trash and human waste.  There is hardly any drinkable water in Indonesia and really no sewage system for the poor.  Needless to say, the boat ride across was interesting.  You do not want to fall in. Here are some pictures from that part of the day:

 We hopped off our boat to go through a slum called Kota.  We stepped onto a rickety and dangerous dock and then into a labyrinth of shanty and cement houses.

 Seeing how these people live and how happy they are with what little they have was humbling. We were celebrities there.  Everyone poured into the alleyways to greet us with big smiles and cheerful hellos.  We gave high fives to little kids as we took in the sobering experience.  Below is a picture of the trash pile they live around and the adorable kids who were so happy to see us:

The amazing part of the slum was that it was a fully-functioning self-contained community.  These people do have sources of income, albeit small, and many of them are entrepreneurs.  There is a leader of the slum who keeps order and collects taxes for this service.  It really is astounding to see.  From a business perspective, this was important to experience because we had been talking in theory about the many people who live on 2 dollars a day and how they consume and contribute to the economy.  Then, we got to see this in action.  How does a P&G design their laundry detergent to accommodate the fact that these people don't have very much income or clean water?

After seeing this, we ended in Batavia Square, where we watched some street performers and enjoyed a meal in Batavia cafe:

I will write more as I get more time...
Hope everyone is enjoying!
Love you all,
Maddy