Jakarta: 50 Cents Saved My Life

After we finally reached land, our Romanian friend Alex made it his personal mission to find a taxi that would charge us a fair price. Easier said than done at midnight in Jakarta. He used his Eastern European strong-arming skills to get us a taxi for only double the normal price (usually it’s about 4 x local price for tourists). This was fine for Alex and Lauren who had a handy map to track where the taxi was taking us, and less fine for Marco and me who were stuck with a mad taxi driver after they got dropped off.

Jakarta is not a friendly city late at night, and prostitutes lines the streets as our taxi drove us through questionable and scary neighborhoods. Our hearts stopped as our driver started speeding down a road in the wrong direction after what seemed like at least ten minutes longer than the ride was supposed to take. My phone was completely out of money, but that didn’t stop me from making an angry and assertive fake phone call, rattling off the taxis ID number and whatever street signs I could make out. I prayed to Allah, Buddha and all the Hindu gods I could remember from the Asian cultural museum since I wasn’t exactly sure whose district we were in. The driver ignored our pleas to stop the car or call our couchsurfing host and we’re still not sure if he was hard of hearing or was planning on turning us in for tourist prize money. Marco finally violently tapped him on the arm and he stopped the car and begrudgingly called our host to get better directions. I held my breath for the next ten minutes and grabbed Marco’s hand tightly—especially when he stopped in a dark alley and left the car for what seemed like eternity without any explanation. It turns out he was calling our host Ira, who appeared in her nightgown and white headscarf like a goddess sent to save us. We gave the driver his fare and then gave him an extra 5000 rupiah (50 cents). We said thank you, but our faces said “this tip is for not killing us or giving up when we got lost and dropping us in a dark alley”.

Even though we only stayed at Ira’s for one night, she was the most warm and kind host you can imagine. Even though it was 1 am, she stayed up and fed us Indonesian layer cake and hot ginger milk. We went to bed exhausted but happy to have survived the ferry and the taxi. We would have liked to spend more time with Ira in her quaint traditional Muslim neighborhood, but the next morning we were on the go again, this time to Java’s popular city of Yogyakarta.

Ira's Neighborhood (Scary at night, lovely in the daytime)