If A Picture Paints A Thousand Words ...

... then I don't have to write so many.

Family Lunch, La Hacienda Mexican Restaurant, May 2011

This family was out for a Sunday lunch a few weeks ago and brought their uniformed nanny along to keep them from having to interact with the child.

This is an expensive restaurant for Jakarta, which is probably why they also carried separate food for the nanny - in this case a 50c cup of noodles. The waiter seated the guests, handed out menus and filled her cup with hot water. 

Nanny has started eating before the others have ordered but this is not rude because when the nice food arrives she will be busy feeding the child.

It is not unusual to see a nanny sitting at a nice restaurant, surrounded by fine dining while wolfing down something from a local street stall.

The family will tell you earnestly that their nanny doesn't like western food, this food that they have never once offered her. They will tell you that she would be uncomfortable eating along with the family or using cutlery, this family who has never made her feel comfortable or offered her cutlery.

Sometimes Nanny and kids are banished to a kids' table. She stand beside the children and forks food into their mouths (she's quite adept with cutlery, as it turns out). Sometimes she is sitting alone at that horrible table next to the toilet, alert to a toddler emergency.

Sometimes the nanny has the world "Governess" embroided onto her sleeve and this adds a curious tension to the afternoon: that a children's choir could emerge at any point.

Some restaurants make signs like "no outside food to be brought onto the premises" but also add that the rule does not apply to nannies.

Banda Aceh, Aceh Tsunami Museum, May 2011

During the 90s and early 00' the tourist numbers in Banda Aceh started declining. Killing and kidnapping will do that to your tourism industry.

In 2004 the tsunami hit and Aceh was on the closest point of land to its epicentre. Most of its buildings and all of its infrastructure were wiped out. 

200,000 people died in this small province alone and every Acehnese lost several close friends and relatives to this tragedy. For this reason, tourists should be careful never ask a local about their experience at this time.

7 years on, there is still little left of the town. Closer to the shore there are rows of pre-fab homes which were built immediately in the aftermath. These were abandoned for years while people overcame their trauma and superstitions oin order to move back to their former suburb.

Aceh's only museum was funded with restoration money and the visitors were all locals when I was there.

This inaccurate depiction of people fleeing the tsunami wave is a popular stopping point in the museum. The girl posing in this photo probably had friends or family members amongst those plastic people.

I saw many girls smiling and draping themselves around this railing in a seductive manner; all Muslim and slutty like. I saw grinning people with thumbs up and others making rabbit ears behind their friends' heads. I saw one guy mock fleeing from this wave, seemingly showing the plastic people how it's really done.

Another museum exhibit is of a local house and there is a long queue. The house shakes as it simulates getting hit by a tsunami -– and the queue can peer inside as you rehearse those final moments when your house is unhinged from its foundations or collapses around you. A crowd formed as we took our turn, people giggling and pointing in a that-white-guy-is-so-shit-at-tsunamis kind of way.

La mesa, June 2011

Airport Checkpoint, Medan Airport

Once you've checked in you are free to come and go and there is no need to show your ticket to anyone.

This type of security at a major domestic airport seems to imply that either Indonesia believes it has no risk of terrorism or has no chance of stopping it.