Welcome to Indonesia
June 23rd, 2009
Quilt of green rice field patches below us. The stewardess speaks English, but I cannot understand a word she is saying. The airport bathroom has an adjacent prayer room. My mother made us leave our wedding rings behind – they have Hebrew writing on them. We are in Indonesia. This is as far as you can go before you start going back. Twelve-hour time difference and the worst jetlag I’ve ever felt (I never get jetlagged!)
I’m on my guard in a new country, belonging to a brand-new continent for us, but it looks more and more like there is no reason – people are genuinely nice, curious, and generous. Bikers stop and take pictures with us on their cellphones. Hitchhiking is easy enough even though we are now four. On Sumatra we had a scheduled rendezvous with Maria Oleneva () – the princess of the Russian hitchhiking scene. Having been traveling for the past year, on and off, with – a knight and all but pioneer of independent travel, and hitchhiking in particular, in the former Soviet Union, I wasn’t surprised how well they fit in with us.
The Russian hitchhiking community is, in a way, what I want. If there is anything I miss when traveling, it’s friends. Friends I can call up and meet up with because they live nearby. But how can one have that when one lives in the world? Well, the sense of “nearby” changes for sure – being in the same country should be nearby enough to meet up for a beer. This is what Masha has – she travels, and so do her friends. For them being on the same continent, let alone the same country, is enough reason to cross borders and thousands of kilometers to see each other.
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