Culture shock

Trip Start Nov 01, 2006
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Trip End Oct 31, 2007


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Flag of Indonesia  ,
Monday, May 14, 2007

Our first two days in Indonesia have been, for me at least, quite a culture shock.  Tim talked in a blog a couple of weeks ago about how, at the half-way point, our moods, and especially mine, were up and down.  Well the last two days have definitely been more down than up.  I know you're probably all thinking that I don't deserve any sympathy, and what could I possibly have to be down about, and you're right of course.  But I think this blog's more interesting for all you loyal readers if we're actually candid about our feelings, so that's just what I'm trying to be, even though it makes me sound like a moaning minnie who doesn't know when she's got it good.  So why have I been down anyway?  Well, lately I've been feeling a general homesickness, not for England specifically, but just for home comforts really - the ability to make myself a cup of tea when I want one, for example.  But the last week and a half in KL and Singapore have been great and I've been very much 'up'.  I've realised on this trip that I'm unashamedly a westerner and I like all the trappings of the western world - pavements that one can actually walk on, roads that have lights and crossings to allow pedestrians across, clean public toilets, coffee shops, toast for breakfast, you get the picture - and KL and especially Singapore had all those things in abundance, so I loved them both 01 "Please Sir, can I have some more?"
01 "Please Sir, can I have some more?"
 .  Then yesterday we took a boat for a short while and left all that behind, arriving a couple of hours later in Batam, Indonesia, a place that felt like another world, not just a different island.  And then today we came to Jakarta and it's a chaotic, noisy, poor, hopelessly congested (both with people and traffic), dirty, huge city.  It couldn't be more different from the places we've just left behind and so a bit of mental adjustment is needed.  At the moment I'm feeling a little bit like I did at the very beginning of the trip in Delhi, although obviously only a fraction as bad, but culture shock is nevertheless what I'm experiencing.  I find it interesting that even six months into this trip it's still possible to experience that kind of shock to the system.  So, as you can probably gather, we don't like Jakarta very much and have decided to leave tomorrow, instead of staying the two nights we originally planned.  We're heading for Bogor, which apparently has a lovely botanical garden, and we'll give Java another chance to impress me.  (R)
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