I made it to Borneo. You can all breath out now.
I made it, and bugger me if it isn't what I expected at all, the little of it I've seen from the ground: I've been here, what, 4 days now? About that, yeah - and I haven't seen the sun shine more than 3 minutes altogether; and this IS the dry season.
And I'm kind of miffed at being stuck here in the city of Boring (actual name Pontianak) with overcast skies and an overall general increase in unwellness, which does incline me to stay indoors so the weather doesn't matter so much, but still.
I can't really hash anything decent out of this today and I'm working on getting something worthy knocked together, but right now I'm just going to gently complain and hope the bad things all go away and let me get, say, a bit of sleep.
The idea is quite novel around here.
-
Y'know, it's really not that bad? I mean, of course it's not that bad, things very rarely are, but I haven't spoken English to anyone who understands it for well over a week now, closing on two of them in fact, and I'm sleep deprived to the point of nausea and mild daylight hallucinations.
Not that bad becase hallucinations are only frightening for half the time at worst, and I'm really very used to nausea, but it is getting a little tiring, you know? The whole sleep/rest/seeing-things-that-aren't-really-there thing.
And because I feel semi-tied to my hotel room I feel like I'm wasting time even more than I should simply for not going out and wasting time in the fresh air instead 
I don't know quite what to make of this city yet.
I'm feeling strangely ambivalent about Indonesia as a whole so far - I really want to love it, it has some seriously cool places and things, and lovely people for the most part, by far, but that is kind-of hard to do anyway when things are overpriced in the wrong places (shouldn't have spent any time in S.E.Asia I suppose ) and the place isn't as pretty, facilities aren't as good or frequent, and features are less breathtaking than advertise or believed. So far anyway 
It is an easy place compared to much of India, but much less easy-going than Laos or Vietnam, and distinctly less so than Thailand.
Strange - it is such a friendly nation, but the feel of it all is very obtuse as well. You're not sure - I'm not at any rate - what people are really thinking, as if there is some avst distance between you and them tha's never going to be crossed. Being the only white person in a city of millions might explain this somewhat - as would the fact I'm venturing into everything on my own in a country where I can't speak to anyone beyond "hello", "thank you" and "no" even though I know afair bit of Bahasa Indonesia (see the next post for all that).
Plus there is a difficulty knowing where to go for things, what to ask for, and how to get any particular kind of food that's properly edible (next post for that too, folks).
Indonesia. Odd. Hard to decipher, divine and therefore divulge. Inscrutable, you might even say. Well, I would. Inscrutable. Say it fifteen times and tell me it either makes no sense anymore or that you just wasted some of your own time on a somewhat silly request from me. Go on.
See this is how it gets you - I have started talking to myself (more) now, and so I think my old mate Jason's suggestion of putting this on a podast as well for busy folks like him is probably a very healthy idea for me.
Odd place, hoping to get more out of it tomorrow. And they don't seem to know how to a) obtain nor b) cook meat properly in the city. See the next article for all that fiasco.
-
And there is one internet cafe here in the city: one.
Pontianak: Population, 5 million.
Internet facilities outside the poshest hotels.: 1
You, as my American friends would say, do the math.
-
I'm going for a posh hotel and less self-pitying bullshit as of tomorrow around 8am Stuck here until Saturday (Saturday!) thanks to flight availabilities.
I'm feeling fine, honest *grimace*
