Why is that, we ask our guide, when in our country the caballero only flowers magnificently in May and June. Must be the volcanic soil, he says. But our islands bob and weave right on the Ring of Fire, too. No, it must be your latitudinal placement, the way your 13,000-strong archipelago straddles the equator. You sure they bloom that way the whole year ’round? He nods, smiling.
Already green with envy, we notice Golden Showers similarly jubilant with cascading clusters of yellow flowers, here and there on a road island or on some street corner, despite the unwavering presence of not exactly whiz-by traffic. In fact, if there’s one thing we have in common with Jakarta’s urban sprawl, it’s the rush-hour tedium of getting from one place to another.
Tollways provide some respite from bumper-to-bumper conditions, but once our tour bus rejoined common ground for city routes, we had to crawl along with the rest of the madding vehicular horde. Thankfully, Jakarta has public monuments on a grand scale, thanks to Bung Sukarno, whose efforts to raise national consciousness by way of prideful symbols resulted in such landmarks as what the guide called the "Monas" or Monument Nasional, a golden-tipped tower that everyone jokingly refers to as the great leader’s… uh-oh.
Another, more spectacular than stark monument stands on a grand rotunda across the modernist building of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Charioteers and horses are mounted on a high pedestal, and command attention for their ornate grandeur of flowing lines and shapes.
Walking into the building from the parking lot, we espy another tree, this time unfamiliar, with blood-red flower clusters. Afrikanus, or African tulip tree, the knowledgeable guide informs us. We are thrilled to be told as well that we might be able to pick up seeds or seedlings when we get to Bali. Just find your way to the Botanical Garden there, he says, since it’s not on your tour agenda.
Yes, we’ll do that for sure, we say, although in our heart we’re concerned that the six-day media fam tour promises to be rather hectic, with only two days scheduled for each of the three legs: Jakarta, Mataram in the island of Lombok, and fabled Bali.
The newly installed minister himself welcomes us at a briefing room, hospitably hands out souvenir gifts of silk cloth and a Borobodur-in-glass-pyramid weight. He fields questions on Indonesian tourism, from tour operators’ association heads Leo Picaso, Chiqui Teotico and Angel Ramos Bognot, as well as journalists Em Guevara and Kune Villareal.
Minister Jero Wacik says they’re targeting potential tourism revenue of $5 billion, and that for the year they’ve already hit $4.8 billion. While Thailand has a budget of $110 million for tourism promotion, Malaysia $100 million, and Singapore $60 million, Indonesia’s is pegged at $10 million. Comparatively, the Philippine tourism budget is $6 million.
"My job," Minister Wacik stresses, "is to first ensure security, especially in the wake of the Bali bombing. But we have recovered from that, and tourists are coming back, so that we’re aiming for 10 million arrivals by 2009. The second priority is to improve our levels of hospitality and procedures for entry."
He cites culture, nature, food and entertainment, convention venues, special interest programs as for golf and shopping, and special destinations as strong points in attracting visitors. Bali alone sees seven Boeing aircraft landings daily.
We take our leave and continue our bus tour of the city, stopping for an hour at the National Museum where the culture that the minister had cited as prime attraction greets us with a capital C. Eyeing all the stone statuary, whether of Hindu deities or Buddhas or lingams and yonis, plus the long boats, replicas of wood-and-thatch houses, and what look like Southeast Asia’s version of totem poles tells us that these islanders were and are still impressive carvers and/or impassioned artists.
Lunch is at an unpretentious restaurant where "locals go to eat, heartily at that." The feature is that waiters just keep laying platefuls of viands, mostly spicy meat and innards, on the table, and whatever is touched goes into the bill. This explanation assures us that the single diners facing heaps of stuff aren’t exactly gluttons.
A shopping spree at the Mangga Dua shopping complex ensues for the next two hours. It’s like a cross between Greenhills and Divisoria, with extreme haggling practiced like a sport. Every vendor starts with a price that can be cut to lower than half, except for those who have their goods like clothing items marked. Even then, one could always get a hefty discount. And so we all turn Imeldific in blitz fashion.
Unlike Makati, Jakarta allows its residents to smoke in restaurants and bars. Unlike Mandaluyong, Jakarta allows shoppers to smoke in malls and commercial plazas. In fact, Jakarta and all of Indonesia retain a live-and-let-live policy when it comes to the nicotine habit.
Not because the clove production in the former Spice Islands needs a boost, we suppose, to meet the demand for that celebrated, aromatic kretek, but because Indonesians are still so fiercely free-spirited that they rightfully scoff at all those anal Western notions of a healthy lifestyle.
Promptly did our guide respond, with a wide smile, when asked about the reputed dangers of passive smoking, that it was certainly less of a risk than an instant revolution, should stringent laws be passed against public smoking.
Oh, in hotels and classy restaurants the zones are well-defined, but that’s in deference to foreign, mostly Western, tourists. Some Americans and Canadians may well be in that welcomed horde, after all, expecting their wimpish lifestyles to be respected. But a good number of the predominant Aussie tourists, and of course the Japanese, French and German, plus the die-hard Pinoy smokers in our group, are more than happy to realize that one can shop in narrow alleyways without having to trash that lighted stick.
And so we enjoy the disco at Le Meridien on our second night, and the hotel bars, including Jakarta Hilton’s, where nearly every table has a reassuring ashtray. It’s like reliving the carefree joys of yesteryears, before a Juan Flavier and a Jojo Binay rushed us into Western-style awareness of endangered species.
On our third day we fly across the length of Java and land in Lombok Island, where Mataram and environs are being touted as an alternative to Bali. It’s quaint alright, with a distinct provincial air highlighted by the cidomo or horse rig competing with motorcycles as public transport. CI is from cikar which means horse, DO from docar which is cart, and MO from montor which is tire, a large rubber one at that. Thus, cidomo, which resembles our Southern tartanilla, except for the bulky tires.
Flame trees in bloom line rustic roads. Our stops include a pottery factory-shop with its profusion of lizard motifs, a weaving house and display room run by the government, thus with rather exorbitant quotes for cloth, clothing, masks and sundry other souvenirs from a legion of minders, and a traditional Sasak village of thatch-roof huts and granaries, where trinkets and ikat-type runners are displayed as sale items. Sa-sak, we are told, comes from the clackety-clack sound of backstrap weaving.
The Senggigi Beach Hotel has a large pool and inviting beach, especially at sunset, but our agenda is as full as it was in Jakarta, so that there is hardly time even for a foray to nearby Internet cafes after dinner. In fact a delay in our flight from the capital had also robbed us of a planned snorkeling jaunt off the nearby islet called Gili Air.
The next day we are taken to a lovely stretch of coast, of powdery white sand, but even as it looks abandoned, before we can even think of testing the waters, a drove of cloth and t-shirt hawkers appears from nowhere and swarms all over us.
By the time we land at Denpasar on our fifth day, this beachcomber is dying for sand upon which to sink his soles, and an hour of frolic in the sea. But we are taken straightaway to a mountain temple, all of a 2.5-hour drive, and by the time we skirt the highland lake a downpour renders the clime even colder. The temple complex is impressive, but we can hardly flit from one structure to another in the driving rain.
Finally we settle for a buffet lunch nearby, and a brief stop at a spice market, where gratifyingly, Bali coffee seedlings and Afrikanus seeds are available. Now everything turns into a fast blur: escaping our hosts for a quick dip in the pool at Hotel Sanur Beach; Balinese dancers performing during dinner; taking in the night life at Kuta, where Hard Rock Café is still surprisingly big, and the surf crashing on the wide and long beach seems more inviting, even in the moonlight; thence capping the long evening with a photo-op at the newly erected memorial at the site of the infamous terrorist bombing.
We are taken to the Barong & Kris dance performance at Batubulan in the morning. To our chagrin, the stopover at the artists’ village of Ubud has been struck off the new sked. As a sop, the lunch date at Discovery Kartika Plaza Hotel becomes another window of opportunity for this lover of brine. At long last, a dip in the sea right on Kuta beach, with body surfers for company.
An Australian couple will be wed in sunset rites, so that the hotel hires are busy weaving palm fronds to decorate the stone portals that frame the sea from poolside. Hawkers come with kites, traditional bow and arrow sets, wood replicas of Harley-Davidsons. Haggling ensues, all throughout lunch at a Japanese pavilion by the beach.
Our farewell dinner is held on the sands of another wave-lapped long beach off Jimbaran Bay, where a row of al fresco seafood restos extends as far as the eye can see. A local trio serenades diners with La Bamba, which segues into Anak when they reach our long table.
Evenings in Bali are as enchanting as this. If only we had more time to compare Bahasa and Filipino with our hosts, and pinpointed more common terms other than mata, puteh, bulan, masuk for pasok, ujan for ulan, puno for busog, bunting for buntis, hita for paa…
A lovely if hectic time we had with our archipelagic brothers, caballeros in bloom the whole year ’round – of islands and languages more diverse than ours, of an older, grander culture. But only just as entrancing when we go tripping.