Sunday: Batam: We enjoyed the buffet breakfast at the Mercure Hotel in Jakarta earlier than usual, and caught a cab to the airport in time for our Lion Air 11:45 flight (which was again an hour late). I had a little difficulty getting a room at the Planet Holiday Hotel, since a convention was arriving in two days and fully booking the place, but MongerX’s friend called Emmy, the reservations supervisor, and we got a room.

After getting settled I went to to the pharmacy for pills to treat the VD; I wanted to be sure Rita didn’t have it although I suspected I had picked it up in Jakarta), I went to Femina and booked Rita, who I had decided to spend my time with (my new wife, as it were). Porker and MongerX got their girls, and we all went to dinner at Oki Pujasera. It was good to be back, Rita was loving, and accepted the pills treatment for VD (1000 mg Zithromax plus 500 mg Cipro before and after the meal) without any problems or questions; I wanted to give her the pills just in case. We had a loving night, she seemed very glad to see me. I didn’t know whether she was, or was just very good at providing service. I didn’t care.

Monday: Rita wanted to go shopping in the afternoon, so I gave her 100,000 Rp. and she took off. I called Lia to make sure she was available, and went to pick her up for some short time (150,000 Rp.) They did not have rooms on the Jungle Minda premises, so we walked around the block to a hotel where we rented a room for an hour (35,000 Rp.)

Sex with Lia just wasn’t quite the incredible experience it had been the first time, although quite good. I explained about the VD and gave her the pills treatment. Rita called twice while I was involved, the third time while Lia and I were walking back to Jungle Minda. Since there was street noise, I answered, and when she asked where I was, I said Center Point (shopping mall). I expected she was back at the hotel, she had a room key—but she said she was at Femina (right next to Center Point), would I come get her.

That flustered me, I would have to get back to Center Point without being spotted, and I felt guilty about cheating (??) on her. A strange new and unexpected feeling for me, between “almost” getting caught in a lie, and liking Rita a lot. I didn’t know whether Rita was just doing her job extremely well, or was actually my girlfriend now—but I didn’t care, the experience felt so good. And she undressed for lovemaking at the slightest hint from me, I never had to ask.

Rita bought a red skirt/blouse outfit that looked good on her, and she wore it a lot over the next days. She posed in it for me (well, in part of it).

Photos: Rita 109 110 111


Tuesday: I gave Rita money to book herself for the day, and she disappeared for a couple of hours to take care of that. Then, we investigated arrangements to fly to Surabaya, where her family lived, for a few days. I was somewhat hesitant about meeting her parents, who lived an hour or two outside the city, but I wanted to see more than the inside of brothels during my trip, and she wanted me to see Surabaya.

A gal named Emmy had offered to help with the Surabaya reservations. She was in charge of reservations at Planet Holiday (or something like that), and had gotten me into the hotel while it was fully booked upon our return from Jakarta. Emmy had been working me to do something for her, and seemed like a good person to cultivate. So I offered to take her to dinner and a movie.

When Rita and I met her in the lobby, she had her friend Patricia with her, the secretary to the guy in charge of marketing at the hotel. We went off to Studio 21 and saw Mr. & Mrs. Smith, with Indonesian subtitles, and had a quick dinner next door afterwards, since Emmy lived an hour away and it was getting late. Patricia and Emmy split some Kentucky Fried Chicken (!) and fried rice. Emmy was good company, vivacious and funny, with a good command of English. Rita and I went home and enjoyed each other’s company.


Wednesday: I didn’t book Rita since we would be going on the trip, and for a brief period she thought she could get away from work without me paying the booking fee. I took Emmy to lunch at the cafeteria in the hotel, she’s an interesting lady. She invited me to visit her town in West Java, and I might just do it (although she’s not exactly a beauty).

In the afternoon, I spent a lot more time than I expected arranging the tickets to Surabaya. Emmy had offered to help, and was booking them through a travel agency where her friend worked. It turned out to be A LOT less convenient than the one in the hotel, a fifteen-minute cab ride away. But she said their tickets would cost less than the ones purchased from the hotel agency, especially on the return trip, which was apparently sold out of the lower-priced tickets.

But when I got to that agency, it turned out that the return flight had not been booked, and the only tickets available were 1,100,000 Rp. each (compared to 540,000 Rp. going)—apparently the flight was fully booked. I would have hit the ceiling if it would have done any good, but of course I remained calm and asked what could be done. After waiting around for over half an hour more, they promised to get tickets that would cost either 850,000 Rp. or 760,000, but by now the airline office was closed, and they could confirm in the morning. I left with two one-way tickets to Surabaya, and the promise that the return tickets would be delivered in the morning.

I wanted to have a short time session, and so I had the cab driver take me to Hollywood, the name of one booking joint that I remembered, where two others were located nearby. Since I didn’t quite know where to go in the hotel (Hotel Pelita) across the street, I didn’t find the fishbowl—only the (empty) karaoke bar. The night club past Hollywood was empty, even though the papasan tried to rouse some girls for me. At Hollywood, out of the only six girls in the fishbowl, Charizma caught my eye. I booked her for 150,000 Rp., and we walked down the hill behind the place to a hotel where I paid 50,000 Rp. for a room. Charizma turned out to be a lively spinner with a better body that was obvious in the fishbowl, and gave me my money’s worth.

Photos: Charizma 112 113 114

I met Emmy at A-1 Pujasera for dinner (that gal owes me a serious upgrade next time I stay at her hotel), and we had a nice talk. After dinner, Emmy went home, and I had the night free. I though that my visit to Batam would not be complete without the experience of picking up a freelancer at Pacific Disco.

The cavernous disco hall was uncrowded enough to circulate, and I did. After a few spins around, girls started grabbing at me as I passed—they realized I was fresh meet. One girl that I fancied stood next to me for a minute as I attempted conversation, then disappeared, not to be found again, just as I was about to bring up business. I have no idea why, other than that I had steered her over to where we could watch the sexy dancer on one of the stages set into the seating area—maybe she feared that I was interested in sex. And she was the one I wanted the most (maybe because I couldn’t have her?)

Later, I found a petite blonde with huge breasts, and we brushed against each other and chatted as best we could for a few minutes, enough for me to get a good feeling about her sensuality. We were on our way out the door when I asked her how much—she held up ten fingers, and I just turned around and went back in—I think she continued out. No point in bargaining with someone starting that high. A girl named Cindy, who was one of the first to grab at me, spoke pretty good English, and had been I flirting with her on a few passes. Her friend Lina was talking with her on my next pass, she was even cuter, a sexy spinner, so I took them both for 300,000 Rp. each. They gave me a good long session, but wanted to leave when I had finished. I let them go because it was getting towards 4 AM and I wanted to get a little sleep before the next day’s journey.

Photos: Lina 115 116 117


Thursday: Surabaya In the morning, Rita came to my hotel shortly after the return trip tickets were delivered. The agency had gotten the 760,000 Rp. price, and I later found out that these were business class tickets! Not a bad price differential, and the total price was still cheap compared with domestic US flights. Since the flight was in the early afternoon, we had time for what we liked to do the most. I loved Rita’s sensitivity to my needs—at the first nonverbal clue that I wanted sex, she started undressing.

We flew to Surabaya after waiting the extra hour I was starting to expect, because our flight was late (I now know not to book connecting flights on a tight schedule in this part of the world). At the KAHA booth, we found that my first two choices of hotels were booked, and the hotel Rita mentioned wasn’t available through KAHA, so we booked a room at the Hyatt for under $50. Since Indonesians pay less than bules, we got the room in her name—which was confusing to me, because the surname she had given me was not the same as the real one on her ID. Every time the hotel staff asked me the name on the room, I had no clue. They must have been amused.

It was well into the evening by this time, the short flight with delays and cab rides had eaten up most of the day. Rita went off to see some nearby family members, and I took the opportunity to enjoy an actual steak at the hotel restaurant. It was served in a most unusual way: raw on a hot stone, sizzling as it cooked. You cut off slices of the hunk of tenderloin, lay them on the stone until they were done to your satisfaction, then consumed them. It was YOUR fault if the steak wasn’t done rare or well enough.

I was a little confused about where Rita went, since she came back so early—I had thought she was going to see her parents, an hour or more away, and wondered why she didn’t wait until the next day, when a visit there was on my schedule. I found out later that she went to see her sister and brother in law, who lived nearby. She came back with a crate full of tangerines that had been grown at their house to take back to Batam, and they were quite good. Rather than have her fly with a cardboard box, I found an industrial-strength plastic shopping bag which was big enough for all but three of the fruits. I was just glad she didn’t come back with chickens or goats.


Friday: We hired a car and driver starting at 8, and even got up on time at 7, but of course the guy showed up at 8:45. Communication difficulties made me uncertain of what we were doing, where we would go, but clearly we were going to the surrounding countryside first to avoid Surabaya rush-hour traffic, and I thought we’d return mid-day, tour the city, then go to see Rita’s parents.

What we actually did was drive to Malang, about 40 miles south of the city, stopping to go through Safari Indonesia, a drive-through zoo with quite a variety of African and Asian animals. Then we went west a few miles to Batu, where we walked through an agro-tourism destination: an apple orchard (the Malang area was apparently known for its apples). The price of admission included the privilege of picking a couple of oranges, and they turned out to have the lightest, sweetest juice I have ever tasted. We had a glass of the OJ at a little restaurant on the premises, I can’t rave enough about what they grew there (although left to my own devices, I would not have chosen that farm as part of my day trip).

When we came back to the city, Rita wanted to go shopping—it was getting dark, 5:30 or so—but I told her I wanted to see her family first. We drove a fairly short distance in the city, and went to the same place she had gone the night before—to where her sister and brother-in-law lived. I asked about her parents, and they were in their kampong two hours away; apparently, visiting them hadn’t been on Rita’s agenda (although I thought that was one reason we were coming to Surabaya—ah, the communication difficulties).

Her brother-in-law Miwa spoke English better than Rita, well enough that we could sort of talk for an hour and a half, and his sister was almost fluent (also present were half a dozen children and Miwa’s father, but I wasn’t sure who all lived there. I was relieved to see that I at least looked younger than Miwa’s father.). Some parcels of food were brought in for dinner, and they were impressed that I ate the Indonesian food hungrily.

As we left, Miwa said I was his brother, call him at the hotel where he worked next time I came to Surabaya and he would make sure I was well taken care of—the driver I had hired through the hotel was too expensive, and so on. A very warm reception, to be sure.

We then headed for the shopping center, full of brand-name stores. Surabaya may not be a city whose name is on the tip of everyone’s tongues, but the retailers sure had zeroed in there. Rita immediately found a bag she wanted, for 850,000 Rp. I told her it was ugly, and she quickly selected one that cost 579,000 Rp. This was actually an attractive item, but I told her it was too expensive, and would not buy it for her. As we continued walking though the center, it slowly became obvious that Rita was pouting because I would not buy her the bag. So, I took her aside and told her that this behavior was unacceptable. It changed quickly enough, and she selected a few items to buy—costing well short of the 200,000 Rp. allowance I told her she could have when I first denied her the bag. She was back to the Rita I adored, but now had one in the negatives column. We had trouble finding an open ATM in the shopping center, which was closing down at 9:30, then went back to the Hyatt and had a good time together, retiring early.


Saturday: Batam again We got up early to get a cab to the airport, and took the flight back to Batam. I was delighted to discover that the additional price I had paid bought business class seats (such as they were—more room, no more service/perks). Rita went straight back to her booking center, the parting was tender but not with the tears that accompanied my departure from the Philippines. But she put another in the negatives column by asking me for more money—I had already given her the standard 200,000 Rp. when we got to Surabaya, so she could give it to her family, plus bought her a bunch of stuff. We had talked about going to Bali together (she had a sister there) when I returned, which would have to be after Ramadan (good Muslim girls don’t have sex during Ramadan). But I will have to think about this some more, two black marks against the really positive experience with her otherwise. She was the first girl I enjoyed enough to spend multiple days with, to be my “wife” (well, except for Margie and Christina in AC, but that was a little different).