It's not all paradise

Disclaimer: this is not a "happy, the-world-is-glorious" blog. It's not really meant to be negative, either, but sometimes it's so easy to just see how great and wonderful it all is, and that's not the whole picture. Also, take this with a grain of salt, as I'm sure some of my commentary is influenced by a lack of cultural understanding...

Any of the big cities out here are unbelievably polluted - some guy threw his empty beer bottle out the window of the bus and no one batted an eye; littering is commonplace. Trash lines the streets, sometimes several feet deep. There also don't seem to be any laws regarding emissions, and a painfully high percentage of the vehicles on the road are spitting out black smoke, sometimes so bad you can hardly see through it. Trash is burned and so are crops, so the smoke from that can be pretty rough, too.  Apparently during the burning season, the air pollution in Chiang Mai is so bad that you couldn't see a huge red building from a few blocks away, yet during more clear times, you could see the entire city (and then some!) from the top of a nearby mountain.  Also, in Jakarta, it seems that EVERYONE smokes, and I'm convinced that Indonesian cigarettes are more dangerous than the ones available in the States; just one person smoking anywhere near me is enough to send me running outside to the exhaust fumes.

I know this probably sounds terribly ironic, but it's hard not to get frustrated with the people who make a living off of the money of tourists. It seems like every few seconds, someone is yelling, "where you go?" (which means "do you need a taxi?"), or "you need moto?", or advertisements for whatever else is being sold. I don't even mind this so much when people only ask once, but there are many (MANY!) people who will actually follow you down the street or block your path. People "give" you things and then tell you that you owe them money: one woman dumped corn kernels (for the pigeons) into my hands and onto the ground after I said "no, thank you" and then told me I owed her money for them; another woman started to peel a banana that I said I didn't want - she kept grabbing my arm and trying to shove the banana into my hands; and little kids came up behind me as I was leaving the beach and dumped bottled water on my feet to clean off the sand, then wanted money - they even got into my taxi when they felt like I hadn't given them enough. I can't help being sympathetic, though... the poverty I've seen is astounding. People sleeping on piles of trash on the sidewalk, run-down iron shacks, women - barefoot, in tattered clothing, holding sooty babies on their hips - asking for change... I'm sad to say that I've seen it so much I've almost stopped noticing.

Most of the places I've been feel fairly safe, but Jakarta has seemed a bit less so. I've heard that there are more muggings and pickpockets here than in many other cities (not that that's uncommon for a huge city), and several locals (including a police officer who later asked to take my picture and for my phone number) have asked me if I feel afraid to be here (which doesn't really make me any more comfortable).  I was nervous when I tried to go to the Freedom Plaza; hundreds of people were demonstrating - with one person yelling orders/instructions into a megaphone - and there were probably 300-400 police officers in riot gear waiting to react if anything got out of hand. I was told later that they're just extra cautious because of the plaza's proximity to the President's home and the American Embassy, but I'm not sure how much safer that made me feel.  I left without doing any of what I had come to do.  It was also here in Jakarta that a guy who was giving me a massage started licking/kissing my feet. I realize that probably sounds funny, but it was creepy - blatantly sexual (and unwanted!), and realizing that reporting him would do no good (probably even if something worse had happened) was a reminder that as a tourist and as a woman, my rights here are minimal.  It's an awkward and uncomfortable feeling.  Which leads to the worst of what I've seen, which is the sex trade. Argue what you will about a woman's right to sell her body if she chooses; I'm not even going to address that here. I'm talking about the women who have pimps, the ones who have been drugged or beaten into submission... and the kids. The little girls (and boys, though I haven't witnessed that) who are sold to slimy old men for a few dollars a night.  It's common and is mostly ignored by the locals (and tourists, frankly).  When I was in Bali, a woman was coming around with a petition to try to get the court to look into accusations that a German ex-pat was paying for oral sex from 10-year-old girls.  The man employs a lot of locals, so many people's incomes are dependent upon his business and no one is willing to do anything to stop him. Apparently, the Balinese system isn't going to do anything, so the petitioners are trying to get the German courts involved.  And this is certainly not a unique story.

As much as this trip has been amazing and wonderful, and certain places seem like paradise, it has also been eye-opening.  There are a lot of things here that work beautifully, and things that seem to be much better than the way stuff happens at home, but this region is certainly not without its issues (some of them monumental).

I will return home more aware of the inequities in the world, and will grapple with the awareness that so many people - many of whom are far more intelligent and ambitious than I am - would kill for the opportunities granted to me simply because I was born and raised in America.  I will return less myopic, more curious, and far more appreciative.