A Theft

On Friday evening I had a rude awakening to the reality of being a buleh (white person) in Indonesia.

The previous day my friends found and fixed up a pedal bike for me -- a cruiser, with only one gear, a bell, and a nice big basket in front. Friday night I peddled my new bike to the "mega-mall" in town, to find a English book and check out the gym (Planet Fit). I was happy to have the freedom of wheeled transportation; everyone gets around on motorbikes here, so walking is quite unpleasant -- even on the quieter streets I always fear I will be run over by an un-cautious motorcycle rider.

At the mall I signed up for a month membership at the gym. It is a very posh gym, complete with juice bar, six exercise classes each day, lots of cardio machines, and powerful AC. I think it will be my one luxury in Pontianak. After my workout I found a book and some dinner. There is a relatively large bookstore in the mall that deserves a blog of its own -- I will write about that later.

I started peddling back to my guest house at around 10 pm, and arrived at around 10:15. Upon arrival, I realized the gate of my guest house was closed so I parked my bike nearby the gate and left my backpack in the basket while I opened the gate. When I turned around my backpack was gone -- and two men on a motorbike were zooming away. I immediately stopped the first person I saw, a young man on a motorbike, and tried to communicate the theft to him. He understood, and took me to the nearest Internet shop so I could get the numbers for my credit card companies and cancel my cards.

After I made the appropriate calls, I decided to go back to my guesthouse and get some sleep. On the way back to the guesthouse, we ran out of gas (bensin) so we stopped at a restaurant and waited for my friend's friend to bring gas to refill the motorbike. I felt so bad, because gas is quite expensive and I couldn't repay the expense.

By this time it was around 11 pm. Upon arrival at the guest house, to my unpleasant surprise the front door was locked! My new found friend (who worked as a cook in the Pontianak Pizza Hut, and promised to cook me a pizza for dinner the next day) lived next door to the guest house with his mother and little sister. They invited me inside and gave me some water, while we tried to communicate in broken Indonesian and English how I could get into my hotel. I suggested climbing to the second floor, but they vetoed that idea, saying I would be arrested, which was probably true and would be unfortunate due to my lack of a passport, visa, or money (which were all in the stolen backpack).

Luckily the owner of the guesthouse finally returned at about 12:30 pm and let me inside. It's funny, the awfulness of the people who stole my backpack was balanced by the kindness of the people that helped me afterwards.

Now I have to deal with the aftermath of the incident, which means $$ wire transfers, flying to Jakarta to get a new passport from the US Embassy, getting a new Indonesian visa, etc. This will be quite expensive, I think. But right now the thing I most miss are my tennis shoes (which were in the backpack)...I want to take advantage of my new gym membership!