Afternoon at the mall

Before I came to Indonesia, I thought I was going to have to live without chocolate, butter, pancakes, ice cream, root beer, mochas, milkshakes, peanut butter, reliable electricity, English. I’m an idiot: for better or worse, these things all exist in Jogia in spades.

I went to the big mall in town, Amplaz, for the first time on Saturday. It’s huge.

The Carrefour in particular was system shocking. It’s Target basically – you can buy anything you could ever need and the prices are decent. It looks and feels like an American superstore except looking closer reveals all the foreign brands (though many familiar too) and knick-knacks that come with living in another country. It’s like walking into your childhood home and finding a different family living there. Disorienting/paralysing/awesome.

I wasn’t going to get a Starbucks. I wasn’t! It’s too expensive and I’m not homesick yet. One drink there costs at least 40,000 Rp., or~ $4, my whole food budget for two days, whereas coffee on the street costs 3,000-5,000 Rp and it’s delicious. But after wandering around for an hour or two, I was looking at the electronic touchscreen mall directory to see what stores I might have missed (Guess, Baskin Robbins, Polo/Ralph Lauren, Croc…) when a nice guy approached asking to practice his English, and won’t I take a drink with him at Starbucks, anything I wanted. I get a little weary sometimes of English-practicing requests from strangers but oh man, a free frappaccino?! Definitely worth an hour’s tutorial on the past tense.

Guilty as charged. Yep, tastes the same.

Rice cookers, clean water dispensers, buckets for showers, high-tech stereos, and Ralph Lauren.

Sometimes you just don’t want tofu

That’s right: THERE IS A WENDY’S IN JOGJAKARTA, INDONESIA. I dipped handcut, sea salt french fries straight into a chocolate frosty. I’m really not suffering here, guys.

Jogja also has a couple Pizza Huts, one or two Starbucks, a few McDonald’s (24 hours and delivery!), and way too many Dunkin Donuts and KFCs to count. They tend to be pretty fancy; for example, I’m told the Pizza Hut is where you take a date who you really, really want to impress. Western food like that is expensive here though, i.e. as expensive as it would be at home, so I can’t indulge too often on a volunteer’s stipend. Yep, that’s right: I can’t afford to eat at McDonald’s.

And before you judge me: the local frozen yogurt shop in the mall was closed, and Wendy’s is open late night, so…