Indonesia

“One line please! Single file! No carts here ma’am!” The airport officials barked at the passengers lining up for the flight, a scene that Isa astutely noted was reminiscent of TSA examiners in a U.S. airport ordering around unruly Caribbean travelers on their way home. These were in fact Cantonese security types in Hong Kong ordering the Indonesians to get it together. Women in batik dresses and traditional Muslim head covering chatted and chuckled as they scurried their way along to prepare for boarding.

After two meals, six movies and sixteen hours, we had made it to Hong Kong.




I had kicked myself for not planning a stop there for a few days on our way back to Caracas, but the airport really made me feel like un-kicking myself. Spotless wall-to-wall carpeting, moving walkways, high ceilings with huge bay windows to let in natural light, ample seating. The airport was sparkling and modern, but had an antiseptic quality that reminded me of Hong Kong’s reputation for having the stiffness of a former British colony and the stiffness of a bunch of Chinese bankers. I also suddenly thought of a rule of thumb, perhaps of my own creation, that went something like “Don’t buy anything in Hong Kong, ever.” I stopped to buy a Coke and quickly confirmed this. From the window we could see a line of monolithic residential towers. It wasn’t going to work out this trip, though I’m still eager to do the Anthony Bourdain culinary tour of the place on my next layover.

Arrival in Jakarta made it starkly evident that Indonesia had neither the stiffness of British rule nor the stiffness of bankers. After a long immigration line, we piled into a chaotic line customs line to run our bags through an X-ray machine. When a man trying to move 100 push-carts across the floor cut broke the line in two, passengers started rushing forward. Isa was no longer standing next to me. I turned to see her further up, waving her hands and gesticulating to a woman who was pushing two carts filled to the brim with suitcases. She waved for me to come forward before another rush of travelers tried to take our spot. I scurried around a maintenance man trying to push a set of tables through the maze of suitcases. Isa grabbed my arm and elbowed our way through the line that by that point was snaking in five different directions. Our bags went through the x-ray machines, nobody checked them to see if we were carrying more than the mandated one liter of alcohol permitted per passenger.

“This is just like Caracas!” Isa shouted.

We went out into a lobby filled with taxi drivers offering us a lift and families waiting for their loved ones. Behind a fence was a row of signs with names and companies written on them. I scanned them one by one in search of mine. My cousin Liz, who I had come to visit, had sent her driver Joni. I had almost gotten the end of the fence and was reaching into my pocket to begin whacking my recalcitrant Blackberry to see if I could get it to do something crazy like make a phone call when I saw the sign “Brian and Isa.” Joni reached out and shook my hand.

“Welcome to Jakarta.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.