This is kind of a cop out, but Krycia already summarized our weekend well and she has pictures.

On our way to lunch, our tuk tuk got rear-ended by a bus and spun out. Krycia and I are fine. It was a little jarring, but we just hopped out of the tuk tuk and walked the rest of the way.

This little accident just reinforces everything I’ve learned about road traffic safety in my public health classes. You can’t have a million cars, tuk tuks, motorcycles and buses on the road swerving in and out of lanes and expect to get away with it. Secure your roads Indonesia!

Yesterday was Indonesia’s independence day. We woke up early to attend a ceremony at BPS. Everyone looked good in their custom, civil service batiks (colorful, patterned shirts). Aris, Hari, Krycia and I then spent the day touring all of Indonesia, or at least a miniature version of it at Taman Mini, a park with traditional houses and museums from all of Indonesia’s provinces. We actually didn’t even tour all of miniature Indonesia. It was a big park! They need a Taman Mini Mini. We also went to a zoo that was surprisingly open to letting people into the cages with the animals. Here’s me with a Komodo dragon. That picture goes out to Tom Achoki, who highly recommended seeing the Komodo dragons of Indonesia.

After that, Krycia and I went looking for some independence day festivities. We found a lot of people milling around the Monas park, so we walked around there for a while, but couldn’t find anything. Finally, we asked some tourists if they knew of anything and they pointed us towards the Indonesian White House where they said we could watch some music and marching from a distance or on a few television screens. We went there at the perfect time. They opened the event up and started ushering people into an area with a few sets of bleachers facing the White House backyard. We watched the flag lowering, marching and dancing. By the end of the day, I felt like we had done a good job of honoring Indonesian independence.

We had to go check out hotels in Bali last weekend for a conference being organized for later this year. My brother Joe had just spent a month in Bali so I got some tips from him (it was an amazing coincidence that we both ended up in Indonesia this summer, but bad timing because he left Bali within a week of when I got to Jakarta). One of his suggestions was to go to Nusa Lembongon, an island about half hour boat ride from Bali. That was our first stop off the plane. The island was beautiful. I met this chef there that had one of those archetypal stories about the high flying professional who gives it all up to discover himself in far off lands. He had worked in a five star restaurant in Paris. He tired of the pressure and decided to start a restaurant with a friend in Nusa Lembongon. Now his days consisted of cooking and surfing.

In Bali, we were put up at the Melia Bali, but our original booking was full, so we got upgraded to the villa suites. We checked out the conference spaces there and at a few other hotels in the area. We also spent a lot of time hanging out at the beach and a night out in Kuta, the super-touristy part of Bali, not that the rest of Bali isn’t touristy. It was tough to go back.

I got my first comment! It’s from my mom on my post about natural disasters in Indonesia.

Yesterday was my first day back in the gym since my first week in Jakarta. I hadn’t exercised a whole lot before my trip, so I thought I’d try to get back to it here. Unfortunately, on my second day in the gym I left so sore that I couldn’t move my arms.  They were sealed at 90 degree angles. To my surprise, they stayed that way for the next several days. Krycia, Will, Jess and I all went to a club to experience what Lonely Planet calls the “best clubbing scene in Southeast Asia,” but I could only dance the robot.

You know that game Would you rather…? where you pit two horrible scenarios against each other and force people to choose. Now you can play that game for a social purpose. Take the Global Burden of Disease survey.

Indonesia is a volatile place. Originally, we had planned to go to Kota Ternate instead of Manado. While we were in Manado, an earthquake hit Kota Ternate. The day we were in Banakan, a volcano erupted in Siau, an island a little North of Banakan. 65 people were evacuated, 5 were injured and 4 went missing. The day after we left Banakan, a boat returning from there back to Manado, just like the one we had just taken, hit rough waters and crashed into a rock. Several passengers were killed. The scariest thing for me though is still crossing the street on my way to work in Jakarta.

• Seeing census processing live. From the forms filled in with pencils, to the guillotine used to cut them into sheets, to the scanner to read those sheets, to the staff manning a bank of computers correcting any errors from the scanner, to the finished tables!
• Sitting in on two interviews for Susanas, the National Economic Survey. Both Krycia and I worked with the Susanas data a little in Seattle and now we’re here observing the first step in getting that data! A large group from BPS went with us. I thought that the respondents would be overwhelmed to see 8 people show up at their house to ask a battery of questions that would take around an hour to complete, but everyone immediately invited us right into their homes. It’s hard to imagine the same thing happening in the US.
• Snorkeling in Banakan, an island an hour’s boat ride from Manado.
• Hanging out with the BPS staffers!

• Meet up again with Will and Jess for dinner. I always think we will have to part ways, but then our schedules match perfectly and I get to see them again!
• Ascending the stages of Nirvana at Borobudur temple at sunrise
• Indonesian schoolchildren assault us with English questions at the temple for a school project. Not clear that they understand what they are saying as I try to answer the questions and strike up a conversation, but they are well-intentioned.
• Bus from Solo to Tewangmangu with Julia’s storytelling periodically interrupted by  traveling musicians belting out Indonesian folk songs and strumming on their ukuleles
• First attempt to hike to the waterfall scuttled by a group of angry monkeys blocking the trail. We hid with an Indonesian woman by the side of the road while two competing factions of the monkeys screeched and attacked each other. At least one monkey was deeply wounded with his bloody arm limp by his side. We escaped unscathed.
• Exhausted by the failed attempt at the end of the day, we order room service, drink Bintangs and play cards.
• Second attempt to hike to the waterfall a success. Everyone wants to take a picture with us, because we’re foreign I guess.
• Hike through beautiful farmlands on our way to Candi Sukuh. Julia has to ask every person we see how to get there, because there are so many potentially wrong turns to make on our way. A man on a motorcycle mysteriously appears at every crucial fork in the road to point us towards the temple.