First Impressions

The landscape at first reminded me of Florida – flat and bepalmed. But en route to the Arcadia Hotel, we passed men under makeshift muslin tents fishing in the brown-green canals. I wonder about the mutations that might lurk below. We passed scores of skinny miniature goats gamboling uncomfortably close to the road. Medians covered in fountain grasses and white alien flowers rocked from the traffic’s constant tumult. Light posts are covered to the hilt in a sheath of tangled ivies. Collecting toll tickets, paying the cab driver in unrecognizable currency. The grey-brown air already burned my throat. And then the highway rose up out of the jungle plain, offering a view of the sprawling city ahead. Corrugated rusted tin and blue plastic roofed shacks flanked the huge pink Hotel Ciputra as we careened off the highway and onto Jakarta’s chaotic streets. Short, white onion-domed towers sprout out of the landscape like capped lactaria mushrooms.

This is no Florida, no Bloomington, not even Shanghai. We look at each other as the car pulls up to the hotel.

“Whoa,” I say, “we live here.”