Welcome to Indonesia... where drug trafiking is punishable by Death.

The title of this blog is the welcome message that greets International arrivals at the Jakarta airport. Friendly. I arrived just past midnight late Sunday/early Monday morning. I quickly realized that I better expect a lot of unwanted attention from the locals when I began the process to obtain my 30 day Visa on Arrival. 4 Men stood behind the glass in official uniforms for the purpose of description in this blog I will refer to Man #1 as Indonesian Quagmier and Man #2 as Indonesian Borat.

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Quagmire..........................................Borat

Indonesian Quagmire: Hello Miiiisssss.... You have place to stay here?

Me: Yes, I am staying at the Airport Hotel tonight

Quagmire: You stay at Airport hotel... no friends here?

Me: No, I'm meeting with friends later

Quagmier: OOOOOOOOHHHH.... ha ha ha... Perhaps - uh- you like-a-some company in your room tonight? *winks* and high-5's his friend.

Me: No thank-you.

Indonesian Borat: Hello Miiisss Chrees-Tee JAN-hine... Miss Beautiful Christy Janine. Sssvery nisssse name, YAH? hahahahahahaha

Me: Thank you.

Borat: I see you 26 uhhhh...

Me: Yes, 26

Borat: *wink* (stamps visa) ME TOO!

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After the Visa interaction and an awkward experience at Immigration where the Officer told me to skip travelling through Indonesia and fly straight to Bali, I began to feel slightly uneasy. I collected my backpack and started looking for my hotel. I had pre-paid $100 U.S. to stay at the Airport Hotel in the Jakarta Airport, in hopes to have a clean, easy, safe place to sleep for my first night..... wrong.

I found the airport hotel upstairs, and gave them my name. No reservation. Sold out. Not good. I showed them my confirmation number from Agoda travel (similar to expedia) and they frantically began checking their email... apparently they forgot to do that all day and missed the email with my booking information. They had me sit down and wait while they figured out some place for me to sleep. In the end, I was given the massage room with two hard Indonesian massage beds and a bathroom. They apologized, and left me there for the night. At this point I was pretty wound up, so I was ANYTHING BUT tired. I decided to watch some TV. The movie Down with Love was on, so I watched it and tried to make myself sleepy-- by this point it was 2:30am and I had to be up for 7:30 to get showerd and eat breakfast before catching my bus. I was mildly amused by the Muslim censoring of the Movie. Everytime a kissing scene would come on the TV would cut out to some Muslim people praying and chanting... then it would cut back in to the movie when the sinnful parts were over.

Eventually, I crawled up onto the massage bed, and lay there wondering how many "happy endings" had gone down while I tried to fall asleep. I woke up every hour until finally getting up at 7am. The good news: The shower the next morning was amazing, and the last one I've had since. I packed up, left my room, and had some breakfast before beginning my long, scary bus ride to Cianjur........