At some point last week the staff in the JICF office decided it was time for an office outing. At the previous places I have worked, normally lunches or maybe even an afternoon of bowling have been deemed as sufficient activities. But, throughout my time in Indonesia I have learned that here you have a lot more options, at a much lower price. So collectively the office workers decided that we would venture to Ancol in North Jakarta and go to Sea World in the morning and Atlantis, a waterpark, in the afternoon.
Sally, I, and two others planned to leave our apartment bright and early—8:00am. (Which I should mention is at least an hour earlier than the normal time I head to the office to work.) But we wanted to get an early start to ensure we had time for all our fun plans. A few minutes before 8:00 we were informed that our car was broken. What did that mean? We weren’t sure so Sally went down to find out. I met her in the lobby, as she came in laughing pretty hard. Sally likes having a good time, but she doesn’t laugh this hard that often. So I knew it was going to be interesting. She told me that we were going to have to pull a ‘Little Miss Sunshine’. If you have ever seen the movie Little Miss Sunshine you know it’s about the road trip of a dysfunctional family. At one point the transmission of their van goes out and they all need to push the van and then one-by-one jump in, in order to start the vehicle. Well the transmission of our Kijang had gone out. Ironically we had just watched this movie two nights prior. The only thing separating us from our day of fun was ‘pulling a Little Miss Sunshine’. So four of us got behind the car and pushed until the driver was able to put it into the right gear. Unfortunately, our experience was not as Hollywood as the scene in Little Miss Sunshine, but it did the trick and we were on our way!
We arrived at Sea World and found that the gang was all there: Wan (the Awesome Administrator), Wan’s wife and two children, Sinur (the Super Secretary), Mona (the Dedicated Director of Children’s Ministry), Dena (the Careful Carrier of the Credit Card that would get as all into the waterpark for half price—she doesn’t work at the office she is a friend of Mona and Sinur, but like I said could swing us a deal so she was invited), Tina and Sally (the Terrific Teen Workers), Isak (the Incredible "I do anything and everything around this place"), Isak’s daughter, and Christov and I (Accelerating Accounting Interns). Sea World was filled with aquarium after aquarium of fish and other sea creatures. The time at Sea World, quickly reminded me of the Indonesia’s take on safety or lack there of. I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised after my day at Taman Safari (see previous post). But, come on! There were three Crocodiles behind a two foot wall, allowing any person to enter the ‘cage’ and making it pretty easy for the crocodiles to escape. There were also four small “Touch Pools” containing baby sharks, sea turtles, sting rays, and star fish. We were able touch all of these animals and even pick them up if our heart so desired. At one point we even got to feed the animals in the touch pools by putting half a fish on a two foot skewer. After seeing the speed and the force the sea turtles used to snatch up their food, I thought twice about liberally dipping my fingers into the water. After our fun at the touch pool we headed over (luckily each of us with ten digits) to watch the divers feed the big fish and sting rays in the large tank. The show was enjoyable to watch. I only had a few irrational flashbacks to the tiger show (see previous post), when four sting rays would surround the diver and he would need to forcefully push one away. These sting rays bodies were probably 5 feet long and then they had a tail was another 2 or 3 feet. The announcer mentioned that the sting rays tail is very dangerous, so the divers need to be very careful—whatever that meant. There was more than enough to see at Sea World and we all enjoyed seeing a variety of creatures, some which I have never seen before.
After an exciting morning at Sea World we ate lunch (most of us enjoying some form of rice, chicken and tea) and we headed to Atlantis the Water Park. Now, I grew up just over an hour from Wisconsin Dells (If you’ve never heard of it, that’s really just too bad—It’s often referred to as the Water Park Capital of the World ), so my standards concerning water parks are pretty high. I’ll give Atlantis a B. Noah’s Ark of course gets an A+++. The waterslides were lacking, but the quantity and variety of the pools was really quite impressive. We were also some of the only people there, which meant no lines and no crowds—a definite bonus. Our group didn’t waste a minute and quickly got to the business of exploring every square foot of the park. We started in the lazy river, which really wasn’t very lazy, as you are fairly aggressively pulled in one direction by the currents. Next we stopped at the slides area of the park and quickly identified the quality and level of fun for each of the five slides. The two tallest slides were labeled as Male and Female. We found that it took an average of 4 minutes to get down the Female slide, due to the number of times you get stuck and needed to use the sides of the slide to continue moving. The Male slide was better, but not great. Throughout the day a simple, non-flashy, rather small, light blue slide became our favorite. The slide essentially dropped straight down 25 feet and then ended with 15 feet of flat slide, allowing you to gain plenty of speed to ensure that your nose fills with water as you enter the pool very quickly and with a big splash. The order of riders on this slide went something like this: Wan, Sam, Kezia, Sally, Leah, Christov, Sam, Kezia, Kezia, Sam, Mona, Dena, Sinur sits down but gets up, Isak, Christov, Sam, Kezia, Sally, Leah, Wan, Sinur sits down but gets up, Christov, Isak, Kezia, Sam, Sam, Kezia, a random Chinese guy goes down head first, Wan head first, Mona, Dena, Sally head first, Sinur sits down, Everyone yells Bisa Bisa!, Sinur goes down! It’s easy to say we more than enjoyed ourselves at this slide.
Another fan favorite was the Dead Sea pool, filled with a very high concentration of salt, which made it very easy to float. Wan thoroughly warned us to not get water in our eyes and that we should only stay in the pool for about 15 minutes. I commented how cool the pool was and wondered why I had never seen something like this in states. Sally suggested that it probably the same reason we don’t hold tigers. I think she is right, combined with the fact that our skin burned and stung a little bit afterwards and Sally had swollen lips the next day.
Throughout the afternoon we also raced in the Olympic sized pool, took on the wave pool (where the waves only came on for 15 minutes ever three hours), dominated the two kitty pools, and Sam and Kezia tired out the zipline that went over a pool filled with just one meter of water—good thing these kids are strong for their ages. By five o’clock we were all pretty tired and worn out from the day. We decided to change and head to dinner. Ancol is located on the north shore of Java, and we were lucky enough to watch the sunset over the water at 6:00. This also provided an opportunity for some pretty good silhouette pictures. We went to a fantastic seafood restaurant for dinner. Where all the fish was very fresh! We ended the evening with taking a short boat ride as a group. Heading home we were all exhausted. The quietness of the car indicated it had been a full and fun day.
All in all in was a great day. It made me even more thankful for the awesome staff that I have been so blessed to work alongside of this summer. The JICF staff is made up of incredible individuals who I have had the privilege of getting to know. I have learned much from them and they have each greatly contributed to my experience in Indonesia.
