Hopefully you are getting a little sense of what we are experiencing here, and if this post is successful then you will come away with a few more senses.
Being in Indo for a couple months now means I can speak from experience right? Well then, speaking from experience I can say that it is HOT, or WET, or HOT and WET. Allow me to elaborate on this. The sun relentlessly beats down on this island of Java, so a day in the 90's is actually most days of the week. Not only is the temperature in the 90's but the humidity averages about 70%. So in a word it is "sticky". Just flat out miserable stick to the leather couch, sweat through your shirt just sitting there, sticky. It is the days like this that have made me come to cherish the rains. Now I have always loved rain and storms, but these HOT sticky days have pushed that affinity to a whole new level. Something magical happens when it rains here. The HOT sticky still air is replaced with a nice cool breeze that effectively cools things off for the duration of the rain. The rain itself gives the air a fresh clean feeling that makes you want to take a deep rejuvenating breath. Other than cooling, cleaning, and refreshing, the rain also soaks everything. So when I say WET I mean that in some places it can look like this. Some days you get a mixture of both and it will rain for a while then the sun will beat down again for a while. Depending on how equally the sun and the clouds share the airspace overhead these could make for the most comfortable or uncomfortable of days.
Indonesia can also cause a person to go into auditory overload. The sound begins to bombard you even before you are fully aware of it. 4:30 in the AM the calls to prayer are broadcast from every Mosque in Indo, these calls are aired over PA systems in the Mosque. How loud this can be depends on where you live. We have friends who's house is located in the middle of a neighborhood with five different Mosque surrounding it. Remember this is only 4:30am, all Indonesia seems to wake up with these calls to prayer. The next signs of life are the random sounds of roosters crowing to let you know morning has arrived, just in case you weren't roused by the calls to prayer. Now that all of Indo is awake you begin to notice the noise level begin a steady rise toward above normal decibel levels. It begins with street vendors pushing their carts up and down the streets with little jingles (imagine your neighborhood ice cream truck jingle.) Add the noise of the hundreds of motorcycles, scooters, cars, trucks and vans that use the tiny roads and you have some idea of the street traffic. I didn't mention the bicycles because they don't make much noise, but every now and then you may hear the "DING-DING" of a bicycle bell. If I didn't mention this bit of culture I would be doing you an injustice on this description of the sounds of Indonesia, so... horns are used quite differently here than they are in the states. You only use your car horn in the states if someone cuts you off or someone is about to come into your lane unaware that you are there or maybe if a dog runs out in front of the car. Here you use your horn for everything, if you stop at a four way crossing you honk before you go through, if you are changing lanes, if you need to get over, if you want the person in front of you to go faster or get out of the way, and the list goes on but I will spare you. Basically most of those hundreds of vehicles that pass by on the road are honking their horns as well. For the sake of time I will rush through the rest of the daily Indonesian orchestra of : the sounds of constant construction, the bells at school, the songs of exotic birds, the cicaks and tokehs (lizards) are pretty talkative in the evening and at night, and the sound of rain is so loud here that it drowns everything else out (no pun intended). There are also four more calls to prayer and other broadcasts made from the Mosque. Needless to say, one would be hard pressed to find some peace and quiet here.
Most people like food, so lets get to something most of you are a little more interested in, the tastes of Indonesia. The menu of Indonesian food is very extensive and diversified because of the regions and islands that compose this country. Basically though, your tasted buds would be thrilled with the foods here. I won't even mention the cornucopia of delicious and different fruits here because that belongs to a whole post in itself. The prepared dishes here can cause an explosion of tastes and textures in your mouth. The mixture of the spicy with the sweet is amazing, especially when a little salty or sour is thrown in. Indonesians are also very good at mixing textures in their meals. In one sitting you could easily experience a subtly spicy chicken soup with crunch fried pieces of onion and finish it up with one of a million different fruits that may have a slimy or jelly like texture.
The smells are fairly simple to describe. On any given day you may experience one or all of the following smells: trash, burning trash, cigarette smoke that smells like clove, maybe a whiff of sweet flowers, satay cooking (a most glorious aroma if I may say so), the pungent scent of sewage, maybe a draft or two of durian here or there, or if it has recently rained you may have the opportunity for a moment to breathe in simi-clean air.
As for the sights of Indonesia, the best way to describe it is with pictures and video. This means that to get a feel for how Indonesia looks you will either have to come visit us in Indonesia or periodically visit our blog because new pictures and videos will be popping up in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment