Jacque in Jakarta: My fifteen minutes of fame...sort of

View of Krakatoa

This past week Alexander and I traveled to a quaint little place called Carita beach. It was quite refreshing to escape the madness of the city for a few days, though a bit disheartening that it rained everyday we were there. All in all though, it was lovely to go for a dip in the sea and exciting to see the infamous Krakatoa volcano on the horizon.

Living in Jakarta, I've grown accustomed to people staring and calling out 'mister', 'miss', or 'bule', but while in Carita, we experience something a bit more intense.  Of course there were plenty of people selling unnecessary baubles who assumed we had lots of money to blow, so they swarmed us. However, we got very good at saying 'tidak' firmly enough to scare them away. But, the sellers weren't the most surprising reaction. Since Carita is such a small town, the local people rarely see Westerners in person, so they were quite excited to witness two of them on their beach.

As the saying goes, "take a picture, it will last longer". Well, that's exactly what the locals did. They didn't just stare at us, they took pictures. Lots of pictures. There were pictures of us at dinner taken by people who worked at the hotel. There were pictures of us walking on a trail taken by a group of children staying at the hotel. There were pictures of us kissing in the pool taken by other guests in the hotel. I had a bit of an idea for what celebrities must feel, and I can honestly say I did not enjoy it. At first, I took no real issue and didn't mind if they asked for a picture with us, but after four days of the same it grew quite exhausting and a bit invasive. Not only did they ask for pictures, they invaded pictures that we were trying to take. And when we tried to have a private moment and ignore the camera, they called for us to have a kiss for the camera.

In the end, it was nice to breathe some fresh air for a change. Though next time I'd go for an abandoned island....or at least one with people thoroughly adjusted to the sight of Westerners.