Our stay with Jacksonhad been wonderful, luxurious, and action packed. Jakarta had left a most delightful spicy sweet taste in our mouths, and introduced a light and airy quality to our wallets.  And I would be lying to you, dear reader, if I did not mention a quite tangible bitter-sweetness upon our departure. Silence reigned at the breakfast table, as Scott, Jackson, and I munched cornflakes and glutinous rice balls enveloped in banana leaves.

We had slept few hours the night before and were badly in need of coffee, but with our 9:10 train to Bandung leaving in less than half an hour, our goodbyes to Jackson’s family were brief and punctuated with warnings against missing the train. Our best bet was to purchase that all important beverage as we rode the rails, and devote this time to folding the bikes, and attempting not to leave any vital belongings in Jakarta.

Though Jackson had warned against it, we found ourselves swept up in the armies of baggage handlers, all asking “Where are you going mister?!” and struggling against us to help us with our bags. One of them offered to show us to our platform, which was helpful, and when our train came, then hastily loaded our cycles into a place that later turned out to be an illegal stowing spot. For this great service, he successfully extracted a princely and unheard of tip of 50 cents (due to our lack of bills in smaller denominations). While this was by all measures an occurrence of highway robbery, we had managed to get aboard and were off towards the unknown once again. No worse for the wear and, between the two of us, short less than the cost of a diet cola in the United States.  We were again at the edge of the rift, peering over into the great abyss.  What would the rest of Indonesia have in store for us without the gentle tutelage of our so honored bureau chief?

The train ride proved quite comfortable, with plentiful coffee, which we gladly indulged in, and many exotic and interesting smelling dishes for sale, which we declined, fearing for our gastronomic safety.

Outside, the urban sprawl of Jakarta transitioned to cobbled-together slums, which blended quite smoothly into jungle villages and rice paddies. Our train climbed slowly up into the mountains, and soon we were looking out over handsome vistas of complex rice farming operations, which nestled themselves amidst steep volcanic mountains.

Our train wove through this lush green landscape, its wheels grating against the rusty track and sending vibrations up through the body of the train, through our seats, and up into our tray tables, which disturbed the sediment in our cups of coffee and washed tiny deposits of silt up onto the higher portions of the drink.

Rain poured from the sky in Jakarta as Scott, Jackson, and I diligently worked on correspondence. As the sky began to clear, we loaded the cycles into the back of the Kijiang and headed toward south Jakarta.

We were scheduled to have lunch with a Dr. Sharon Eng, a musician and globetrotter, who had developed a relationship with Jackson during his time touring Asia playing the viola. The morning’s rain had caused the city to descend into madness and gridlock. As we drove, we saw large parts of the road had been completely submerged. And as we made our way into south Jakarta, the flooding grew worse, and the traffic ground to a stand still.

In desperation, we exited the Kijiang and began on foot across mud and crumbling pavement toward the restaurant.

We entered a building and were suddenly transported to somewhere outside of Salt Lake City. Inside was a jumble of very high-end home goods merchants, with fancy bamboo flooring, and many signs in English advertising the fact that all the products were made with organic materials and a portion of all sales went toward protecting Indonesian rain forest wood.  It was a diamond in the rough of Jakarta’s soaked streets.  Walking into the restaurant, we chose a table toward the back.

The clientele of this restaurant, Koi, were a curious and varied breed, but all clearly well moneyed.  To our left, two Dutch women, one of about 34 and one of about 59 had recently been been seated across the table from each other, sandwiching a young boy with curly blond hair.  After we were presented with the chalkboard menu, the younger of the two women with her hair pulled smartly back came over to inspect it.

At our adjacent table, sat two ethnic Indonesians in their mid-twenties sporting British accents and refined, considered clothing.  The man wore facial hair and had his new MacBook on the table, complete with a Supreme sticker featuring Kermit the Frog.  The woman, strikingly beautiful, wore hair down to her shoulders and a blue blouse with white lace trim and black slacks, which buttoned well above her waist.  At the corner near the door, five women in ornate Muslim headscarves and silk, cassock-like dresses picked at duck-confit salad served in a crispy, edible bowl.

The restaurant itself proved to be, while expensive by Jakartian standards, quite delicious. Dr. Eng arrived shortly after she had completed her own battle with the traffic. We found her to be a fascinating, intelligent, and quite friendly woman.  Conversation ranged from a recent orchestral trip across China she had participated in, specifically the rabble-rousing caused by the Polish members of the tour.

While shocked that Jackson, her cerebral and talented music student, had gone into banking, she excitedly discussed potential joint-ventures.  If you can’t beat em, join ’em.  Sharon, any time you decide you are interested in a position on the AsiaWheeling board of advisers, just let us know.

With full stomachs and minds freshly opened by quite a few cups of coffee and pleasant conversation, we unloaded the bikes from Jackson’s Kijiang and hit the road. South Jakarta certainly had a different feel to it. Smaller structures, and 1 1/2 lane roads. We snaked our way through the city, following Jackson’s bishop. As we rode, the sky began to once again darken and a strong wind began to shake the overhanging jungle trees. Jackson suggested a revision to the waypoint roster, but it was already too late. The skies opened, and we were quite suddenly wheeling through a torrential downpour. We called a waypoint at the most proximate small store, and hove to in order to wait out the rain.

Our shop turned out to be across the street from the Ministry of Education, and we had the pleasure of sharing the overhanging awning with a number of employees who had ducked out for clove cigarrettes. At their current rate of consumption, it seemed to us that the bureaucrats would need to duck out again for more kreteks before the rain had even ceased.  We took a gander at the modern little market’s inner workings and pondered its many offerings, wondering how many isles of rhino-branded flu cures, lethal insect “bombs,” and muscle-enhancing powders we would walk through before the deluge halted.

This turned out, however, to merely demonstrate our ignorance of Indonesian weather, for no sooner had Jackson purchased us a few startlingly sweet Indonesian yoghurt drinks, than the rain had stopped and we were once again tempted to wheel.

The next waypoint was a haircut joint. Both Scott and I were in need of a little tidy-up. Jackson recommended a place by the name of Pax. This was an old school Indonesian barber, and the fellows there were all about professionalism. For about four US dollars, Scott and I received top notch AsiaWheeling haircuts on the spot.

These easily eclipsed the Agra cuts from the pilot study in terms of style and precision.  Points were also scored for cleanliness, and avoiding the “Desert of Flesh” which can often be found extending behind the ears after an AsiaWheeling haircut.

Newly shorn, we commenced meandering our way back to the city center where Jackson’s parents waited to take us out to a farewell dinner.

The dinner took place, not surprisingly, at a local mall. The food was incredible, and Jackson’s parents, who have been so generous and warm to us, proved to be quite pleasant dinner companions as well.

We feasted on delicious Italian fare and drank from specially requested ebullient burgundy glasses with a wine brought from household’s private collection.  Below, a ravioli topped with crispy ham is served.

As the clock ticked closer and closer to the departure of our 9:10 AM train to Bandung, Jackson switched into overdrive. Having dropped his parents off back at the house, we piled into the micro-SUV and began a whirlwind tour of Jakartian nightlife, visiting no less than nine establishments in five few hours.  Considering the driving required in between each waypoint, and the traffic which ground the city to a halt, this was no small feat.  After a final nightcap, we lay down for a final brief yet fitful night of sleep at the household.

After another fitful night of sleep at the compound, we indulged in our now standard breakfast of Paraherbs, corn flakes topped with nuts and berries, and extra-crispy toast.

Our first stop for the day was to be the Istiqlal Mosque, the largest mosque in Asia and the headquarters for the entire Indonesian mosque system. The building loomed in a most majestic and brutal way.

At the door we were scanned by a metal detector and asked to remove our shoes. We were met soon after entering by a woman of ambiguous age dressed in a flowing and completely unrevealing outfit of matching brown silk garments, including an elaborate head scarf. She showed us to a room  with a large wooden desk where I signed the guest book. “You are students of Islam,” Jackson explained, and so we were.

After signing the guest book, the four of us left together, strolling barefoot on the cool marble floors. The entire mosque was well ventilated and ornate. With both gentle breeze and plenty of natural light pouring though the perforated walls of the building, it was cool and pleasant inside. As we strolled, the muezzin was warming up to sing the call to prayer. As we strolled, our guide kept a running narrative and invited questions. “This is one of the hardest passages of the Quran to sing,” Jackson translated. “Today the mosque will get about 10,000 visitors. On Indonesian Independence day, that number rises to 200,000.

The building was huge, but with 200,000 people it must be a madhouse. We strolled past a giant cart full of welded steel donation boxes, toward the ancillary praying areas. These were tiled with hundreds and hundreds of little plots cordoned off and facing Mecca, for the use of people during prayer times. We also visited a great wooden drum, a gift from the president of Indonesia, and used for certain, more conspicuous calls to prayer.  The drum is carved out of a single tree and stretched on both sides with cow hide.  Javanese script adorns its side, and it hangs in a frame covered in intricate woodworking.

On our way out of the Mosque, we were ushered into the office once again, to retrieve the shoes and to make a donation. After some inner calculus, Jackson determined the appropriate donation to be 5,000 rupiah (about 50 cents each). It seemed she was expecting more, since she had been for much of the tour explaining to us how hip her daughter was, bragging about the number of facebook and twitter relationships she held, and explaining how her daughter would enjoy socially networking with us. But upon receipt of the donation, she became silent, and merely motioned us toward the door.

On our way back to the car, we took a detour across the street to a large Catholic church which stood dwarfed by the mosque. Our time in the church was short, and much less pleasant. The large stone building full of smokey candles seemed to amplify the sticky Jakarta heat and the dimly lit place felt somehow simultaneously claustrophobic and deserted. The courtyard outside was quite nice though with a number of fountains and plenty of the lush tropical vegetation which Jakarta seems unable to pave over, try as it may.

We hopped back in Jackson’s car and proceeded to a nearby hotel and spa for a 10-dollar massage. This is likely one of the most expensive massages in the city, but well worth the investment. An hour later we walked away from the building feeling supremely relaxed and rather starving. To deal with the starving situation, we piled once again into Jackson’s car. By now it was threatening to rain, and in the time it took us to exit the lot, the threat was mad good. A hammering torrent and large raindrops drummed on the roof of our Kijang, drowning out the Indonesian pop music on the radio.

For lunch, we visited a Padang restaurant. Padang is an interesting style of food service. In lieu of the normal menu and ordering process, the entire menu is simply served to you right then and there in a delightful steaming tower of dishes. The customer is invited to eat what he or she will of those dishes and is charged only for the plates that were sampled. We sampled quite a few, and were rather surprised at the bill, which by Indonesian standards was gargantuan, and by western standards was, well, standard.

Below, a special piece of fried beef lung.

Refueled and refreshed, we headed back to the residence after a cup of coffee in a small cafe tucked away in the Benhil neighborhood.  The rain was just letting up.

In Jakarta it is a common phenomenon to find it raining in one part of the city and merely just humid in another. “It is very likely,” explained Jackson, “that it is still raining at the Padang restaurant.”

Cool, we thought, and mounted the cycles.

The wheel was short but fantastic. We went in search of the terrible traffic jam that had been promised the first day, and find it we did.

By now we were all getting very good at wheeling in Jakarta. We wove confidently through the streams of vehicles and found it very easy to communicate with fellow travelers to gain access to streams of traffic we were interested in.

As we approached the financial district the sun began to set and the sky blazed with a tremendous orange and red sunset, which reflected off the many skyscrapers which pierced the skyline. As the sunset blossomed into full effect, we found ourselves in very lightly trafficed set of roads encircling a large central stadium. We executed long slaloms through the warm air, enjoying the freedom of the open road and the glorious colors which were slowing fading into the many palms that lined the stadium road.

Feeling like men who had discovered a deck filled only with aces, we wheeled around and through the stadium, by children playing soccer, and athletes who were executing a peculiar training technique, involving climbing up the ticket booths and hanging from the walls in bizarrely splayed positions.

Jackson took bishop and brought us to a golf course which somehow had found its way into the city center. He called a waypoint, and we strolled into the clubhouse and purchased some water. We strolled the course and drank our water as the last bits of sunlight left the sky, replaced by silhouettes and the faint clapping sound of hundreds of bats in flight.

That evening we feasted with Jackson’s extended family at a fantastic Chinese seafood restaurant in a  local shopping mall. The journey to the mall would have been a 15-minute wheel, but we chose to take the car and driver, since Jackson’s sister was accompanying us. This turned out to be the wrong move, as the recent rain had induced a horrific traffic jam or simply “jam” as they refer to it in Jakarta. The journey of only a few miles took us nearly an hour, and by the time we arrived the entire family appeared to be preparing to gnaw on their own arms.

I must take a break here to comment on shopping malls in Jakarta. They play a huge role, as gathering places for the more affluent citizens, and are to be found in great abundance all over the city. Jakartian malls dwarf all but the more gargantuan American malls, and sport many floors with luxury goods, expensive restaurants, and playgrounds for children.  As air-conditioned panopticons, they provide refuge from the sweltering humidity of the city in a see-and-be-seen world of look-alike strangers.

This one we were dining in was no exception, and after dinner we took a stroll. It seemed almost incomprehensible that this level of luxury and consumerism could coexist with the boiling overcrowded streets, 10-cent meals, and poverty-stricken slums which were to be found right outside.

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