We are in Indonesia now with Ryan and Gill! We arrived 2 days ago and we are at our first project at the organization CIVAS in Bogor, which is about an hour and 15 minutes away from Jakarta.
On first impressions, Indonesia is much more modern than Vietnam. We went into a mall today and had you not been told you were in Indonesia you would think you were in North America. Same thing with driving down the highways...if you ingore the signs in Bahasa Indonesia...
It has been a bit of an adjustment though. It is tough getting used to Indonesian showers that consist of a bucket of ice water and a scoop used to splash the water on you. The toilets are really different too. They are the squat ones that you have to flush by pouring water from your shower bucket with your shower scoop. Pretty much just a hole in the ground! Also, the mosque nearby also likes to play I guess what you would call 'songs' at full blast at 4:30am to remind everyone to pray...and they do this about 3 times a day. Very different!
CIVAS has been really great so far. All of the people that work at CIVAS are so accommodating and friendly. They have breakfast set out for us every morning and drive us everywhere.
Yesterday they took us to a distribution and slaughter facility in Jakarta. It was out of this world! There are all of these facilities in this one district of the city. Some of the places we visited are actually in people's homes. They receive chickens and sometimes hold them in an area until slaughter or redistribution to other producers and/or slaughter them in the same place they live! Often the families live above the chicken areas. We watched some slaughtering and processing occuring in the traditional Indonesian (Muslim - Halal) way. There were even young children running around the facility. No biosecurity at all, which is understandable seeing the conditions. It would virtually be impossible. Anyways, for those of you that don't know what Halal means - it is a method of slaughter where the animals are not stunned before their throats are slit and is a religious requirement. We then watched them clean the animals, removing the feathers which are discarded and then the organs weresorted for sale. They eat every part of the animal here. From chicken ovaries to tongues on a stick. Even the head, feet and intestines are eaten and are considered delicacies. Walking from facility to facility all of the gutters in the street were red with blood from the slaughter houses. The gutters drain into the river that also runs through the district. No real plumbing! As we walked from facility to facility we were almost like celebrities! All of the children and even some adults were following us around wanting pictures of us or to have us take their picture with them. Our CIVAS escort explained to us that it's because white people don't ever come around that area...
The food here has been very interesting so far! It is far more spicy than Vietnamese food, which is good because I like a little bit of spice! Yesterday we had the most fantastic lunch. It came in newspaper and wax paper packages (from the restaurant CIVAS got it from). It was a mix of cold boiled vegetables in a peanut sauce that was eaten with a type of bubbly looking chip. Last night we went to have a type of Sumatran food called Padang. You go to the restaurant and they bring out about 40 different plates of food and big bowls of rice. You pick the foods you want to eat from all of the plates on the table and mix it with the rice....and you eat it with your hands! It was really interesting. All of the food that is not eaten gets put back into their respective pots and warmed up for the next people...oh, and you only pay for the dishes you eat which is kind of neat too. Just to give you an idea of costs here, for about 12 people last night the bill was only $24USD. Things are very cheap here, just like Vietnam. We also got donuts today in the mall...they had so many flavours! The most interesting was cheese with tomato and chicken on top. I decided to go for the chocolate glazed one with coffee filling. It was delicious! I am unsure if the chicken one would have been as good....maybe next time?
So today we went to 2 broiler farm operations (farms where they raise chickens for meat, not eggs). The one place was really interesting because it had the chickens house above ponds where they raise carp. The chicken feces falls from the housing above through slatted floors into the ponds where the fish eat it. Very ingenious! They had 15,000 birds at the first place and 80,000 fish in the ponds. The second place we went to was even larger having 65,000 birds. This may seem a lot, but in comparison to the DAILY consumption of 400,000 chickens of Jarkarta....this really isn't a lot! The second place we visited had both raised and ground floor housing for the chickens...no fish though. Overall it has been really interesting seeing the way Indonesia produces poultry and some of the challenges they face.
On the way back to Bogor today our car hit a motorbike...it scared me so much. The people were fine...they just drove off and our car only had a scratch. The traffic here is crazy! Not as many motorbikes as Vietnam...but lots of cars. They also have this funny public transport system that is like the public bus system at home, but instead of big buses there are little mini vans painted blue or green, depending on the route. They will stop to pick you up or drop you off anywhere along their routes...you just let the driver know when/where you want off. It is absolutely INSANE how many people they can ram into one bus too! Oh - and on the topic of transport, on the way home last night we saw a train leaving Jakarta heading to Bogor just brimming with people. There were even people riding on the roof of the train!!!! Madness!
Anyways, tomorrow we are going to see some layer farms (eggs). We are looking forward to it! It will probably only take about half the day, so we are thinking of going to see a movie, probably Angels and Demons at the mall. It is only 10,000 Rupiah which is the equivalent of $1USD!
Until next time!
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