Surabaya Johnny, you have no heart
- Bertolt Brecht

I was in Surabaya in Feb 2005. This report started out as a response to an existing thread, but it grew into a report itself.

First, the good stuff
It was my first time there, and I did all my sporting at Dolly, which was why I went there in the first place. It is now my favorite whoring venue outside of South America.

I like good attitude and response (can trade that off for looks and age, within reason of course!). I’m not dumb enough to believe it’s all genuine, I just like a good performance, though over-theatrical porno-type screaming keeps Mr. Wood away. And the Indonesian girls generally do it well. For example, during one session, while in mish, I took a pillow and put it under the girl’s ass, while she wore a puzzled expression; when she figured out what I was doing she pulled the pillow out and reached for a cylindrical bolster pillow and put that in its place so she could roll her hips to meet my thrusts. Four stars for this one!

As mentioned in other reports, Dolly is a red-light section with, literally, dozens of brothels with glass storefronts serving as fishbowls. The neighborhood also has pubs, karaoke places, and massage joints, though I don’t get why there would be massage/hj places with all that FS around. But the style is Third World dump. For you Rio guys, this is kinda-sorta like Vila Mimosa. But whereas VM is cool because everybody is there for the same thing – pussy – and there is pretty strict law enforcement, and not by corrupt Rio cops, there is a bit of roughness to Dolly. An endless array of street vendors, and all sorts of guys just hanging around. I think a lot of the guys you see have no intention of getting laid; cheap as it is to us, a piece of ass is about two days pay for the average worker. Are these guys looking for an opportunity, perhaps? And that could be you. The good-time Charlie routine that makes you such a hit in Pattaya probably won’t play too well here. Being a bule (caucasian) will make you obvious enough, I can’t fathom how drawing more attention to yourself can merit positive results. I have no idea how Indonesians relate to Afro people.
A few times a gal I picked in the fishbowl would refuse to go with me, a middle-aged bule. Oh well, enough fish in this sea, on to the next place.
There was one small fishbowl place where I ended up doing several sessions with different girls, strictly coincidental, a few repeats. There was one who was tall, slim, and pale-skinned Chinese looking with bleached hair. The first time I went there she cringed when I looked at her. The next time there I played into it when she did her “ewwww, bule!” routine, threatening to put my hand on her while she cringed further, and I saw she had a sense of humor. Well, I eventually ended up doing a session with her, and it ranks in my all-time top ten. I’m not keen on bringing girls to my hotel, but if I see her when I go back there she’ll be a candidate for an all-night fuck fiesta.
Sometimes when scoping out the fishbowls a girl will get my attention and point, giggling, to another girl. My first thought is that she’s goofing on her friend “ha-ha, you have to deal with the old bule.” One time I went with a girl out of such a situation and she was quite accommodating. On the other hand, maybe the message is “she like bule.” Go figure, I have yet to crack the Indonesian sense of humor.

Though the price is posted on the wall, usually painted on, there were several times when before the session they made me agree to pay a little more for some reason or other, which I took to be a bule tax. Since it was only about a dollar more I didn’t sweat it, and if it made for an improved session all the better, but I’d always offer some token resistance just to show I wasn’t a complete bobo. The lowest prices I saw posted were 50k, around US$5 at the time. I would say my average session was $7.50.

Rating and Criteria
I have two percentages for rating mongering venues: selection and quality of service aka “disappointment rate.” Preferences are subjective: one man’s hag may be another man’s sex goddess. Some guys have the attitude that bad sex is better than no sex, but not me: a lousy session leaves me in bad spirits. It makes me feel chumped, and worse, that I wasted a shot (ah, youth!).

Selection: of the available women, what percent do I find doable?
Disappointment rate: of the girls I session with, how many were regrettable experiences?

I should also mention here that my favorite women are Brazilians.

So, for Surabaya…
Selection: 40%
Two doables out of every five. Fuckin’ great! I consider one out of four good, providing there’s at least 20 of them there.

Disappointment rate: 15%
This is outstanding! It rates up there with Brazil.

Of the 14 ladies I sampled, only two were duds. I’ll get to the bad ones in a little bit.


The Ladies
Most of the girls in Surabaya are voluptuously full-hipped and somewhat fleshy, with full lips, and rounder eyes and more prominent noses, looking more Indo-Aryan than East Asian. I find this generally head-turning, unless those hips get too wide and the gut develops Dunlop’s Disease. Some of those asses even manage to point south when the gal is walking north, something near and dear to my heart. What I don’t like about fishbowls is you can’t check out their asses while they’re sitting down, and they’re not as forward as the Brazilian girls who get up and shake that thang for you when they see you’re checking them out (bless ‘em!). The variety of body types ranges from petite spinners to big Samoan-looking sumo wrestler types. The skin is usually brown, anywhere from light olive to dark as a Tamil. While there may be some remnants of Dutch colonization in the gene pool, generally light skin is evidence of Chinese input.

Most of the women I was with told me they were from somewhere in East Java, in or near Malang. In one place all the girls looked like sisters: all had the same shaped nose and all were made up the same way, as if they were clones. Would have made a hell of a photo!

I was in Indonesia for about a month in total: landed in and flew out of Surabaya, with several trips to the sticks. My total visits to Dolly were probably close to 20. I had repeat sessions with a few faves. I never saw another non-Asian there. When I wasn’t off in a room doing the deed, I was hanging out at a noodle shop where the owner spoke English and had a beautiful wife who did the cooking. I met one Dolly gal who spoke near-fluent English.

I didn’t try Dolly in the daytime. I went rather early one evening, around 6pm, and most of the fishbowls were empty.

Tretes
I took a side-trip to Tretes, one because I heard about the red-light district and two because I wanted to check out what the colonialists used to call a “hill station,” places they would go to escape the heat.

Big disappointment.

My first night there I did the red-light thing. The way it works is you get a moto to drive you there, then you pick a girl and take her back to your room for two hours. None of the pimps would let this bule pay less than 25k. (it was here that I found the place with the clones). Only one place had a pimp that spoke English. So, I picked a young cutie and it was back to hotel, three on a moto (including driver). And here comes the story of disappointment #1.

We get to the room and she showers and lays in bed with the sheet over her (it gets a bit chilly at night in the hills) while I shower. I should point out here that I go easy on the girls, subscribing to the “more flies with honey than shit” philosophy. I go the bed and gently begin to pull the sheet from her shoulder. She tugs the sheet back, not looking at me. I try again, she tugs back more vigorously. Shit!

Ok, like Otis Redding sang:
Young girls they do get weary…
And when they do, try a little tenderness

So I lay next to her, towel around my waist, her beneath the sheet, and try a little affection. It goes over like a lead balloon. Playing the aggressor in a hard-to-get act can be fun sometimes, but I prefer when the gal grabs my dick without me prompting. Nothing of the sort here, and I was detecting zero coquettishness. As I get more persistent, her pushing me away gets more violent. Quasi-rape scenarios are not my style, and I was by now pissed off.
She knew no English, my Indo language skills didn’t go beyond counting money and ordering food, but I decided to express myself in English anyway: if nothing else, she would get the message I wasn’t going for this shit. In the tone which I’d admonish my brat of a nephew I spoke my mind, while getting up and handing her her clothes. She eventually yielded, but it became an “I’ll lay here and you can fuck me” situation. For me unimpressive, though enough pros have told me some guys like it this way. In fact I know a few guys who dig this “reluctant virgin” sort of game. But it’s wasted on me. Making the best of the situation, I put her in doggie style and worked away at that fine brown booty and thinking about the hotties I did back at Dolly.

And all this for the price of three or four sessions back in the big city. You get what you pay for, eh? Of course, it’s always luck of the draw, isn’t it? If I had picked the slightly older, fleshy one who said “hello mistah!” and giggled it may have been a night to remember.

BTW, the second disappointment was in Dolly, and it mostly involved her trying to control the situation by being a brat. She didn’t want me to put my hands her, anywhere, not even touch her shoulder, she’s swat it away like a fly. But at least in that situation I knew I was only out $6, and all I had to do was put my pants back on and go pick another of the hundreds available. If not for the language gap I would have refused to pay, demanded a discount, or negotiated something. I know some guys make a scene, demand their money back, etc. Fact is, once you’ve been in the room and she touched your equipment all bets are off – unless you have some intimate relationship with the management you’re about as likely to get out scot-free as you would from a casino pit-boss when you blame the dealer for fucking up: decisions are always in favor of the house. She would probably say I shoved her or some bullshit, and then I’d really get mad, probably say or do something really stupid, and so on. Best course of action: take a hike. When I paid up I gave the guy the thumbs down.

Big problem with fishbowls and a language gap is it’s tough to do a pre-agreement interview. After this lesson, I did manage to put together a sort of playfulness test for that brief moment between when she gets up off her ass and we head to the room.

Anyway, Tretes was a disappointment in another respect. This was not an idyllic vacation spot in the hills. Plenty of people, same typical Indonesian in-your-face style, and as many motorbikes as people. I thought I’d be able to do a little day hike and get some nature and fresh air, but there was not one trail I could find that didn’t involve motobikes, with their noise and exhaust fumes, in regular succession.

I stayed in a guest house that first night. There is a huge five-star hotel (Surya?) at the top, with sprawling grounds and tight security. As luck would have it they had a big sign up announcing a promotion, beginning that day, of certain rooms for $10/day (usual price is around $50), weekdays only. I checked it out, and it came to about $12 with taxes and all, so I stayed a few days, mostly just hanging in my room watching cable tv, sitting in the bathtub, and recharging my batteries, planning my next assault on Dolly. A real treat for me, as my budget usually doesn’t let me stay in such posh places. For meals I’d leave the grounds and hit a local restaurant where I managed to make myself understood and the food was good.

Tretes summary: for pussy, may as well stay in Surabaya. For mountain resort, try elsewhere. There may be a way to have a session on the premises and pay less. It wasn’t told to me, but I didn’t ask.

On the Ground
From here on it’s travel logistics. For those of you who use the reports as ammo for flogging your mule don’t waste your time.

Intro
I guess I should introduce myself and my situation to give you some perspective of what follows.
I’m retired and live in various places in the Less-Than-Developed-World (LTDW) (as opposed to the Developed World (DW)) that suit my criteria. One such is cost of living. My monthly budget is less than what most Hombres spend on a three-day weekend in TJ. Still, in the LTDW this puts me in the middle-class cost of living bracket. It takes a bit of planning and research, and $100 sessions are rare, but I’m pretty happy with my lifestyle at present. I’m on a worldwide quest for places to live on a more permanent basis. I usually live among the locals, as opposed to the areas set up for foreign tourists. Local hotels, local eateries, local shops, and, if they agree to service my caucazoid carcass, local pussy. Seeing the sort of accommodation most CHers prefer, you won’t find me recommending hotels in here!

I’m usually well-prepared for my destinations, but this Surabaya trip was more like a snap decision as part of a visa run from Thailand. I photocopied a few pages from an ancient Lonely Planet (LP) guide to SE Asia, got some stuff off the web, the info on CH, and that was it. I’m in South America as I write this. I don’t have my notes or map handy, so I may lack in exact details. I always went to Dolly alone. I travel alone and usually prefer it that way when I’m in these off-the-tourist path places.

Accommodation
My usual level of hotel is a notch above, say, LP, but definitely below the Marriot. I look for the kind of place where an out-of-town traveler from that country would stay. You’d be impressed to know how long I can go sometimes without seeing another foreigner. But in some places this can be a bit too trying, and Indonesia is one of them.

The average Indonesian hotel has a big foyer, which serves as the public room where the guests hang out, chat, smoke cigarettes, and watch tv. The rooms open directly onto the foyer, so even with your door closed you still get all the chatter, cigarette smoke, crying babies, television sounds, etc. Bear in mind in this country everyone wakes up in the pre-dawn for prayers. And of course, when they hear you unlatching your door, all eyes will be focused on your grand entrance, as everybody heard that there is a foreigner present and nobody wants to miss a minute of The Bule Show.

The Indonesians are incredibly social people. Everybody speaks to each other. Being aloof and above it does not play well. This seems to be the way it is throughout that part of the world, Malaysia, Philippines, and Pacific islands included. Now many of these yokels never saw a real live white man before, so they are going to find you riveting, especially in those first few moments when they try to figure out whether you’re 007 or Brad Pitt. You’re expected to be part of it, make yourself available, join the conversation, etc. While I can appreciate the friendliness (beats the hell out of that dopey goggle-eyed mouth-hanging-open Puff Daddy look of the predatory gutter-snipes in South America!) I don’t really have the patience to go through being the show-and-tell subject more than about once a week. While I’m not a sociopath, neither can I be dubbed a people person. I need my space. Having the world rush at me the moment I open the door a crack is a bit much. Sometimes the Indonesian hotels will have a garden area with rooms off of that, with a bit more privacy and more mosquitoes.

Well, back to Surabaya. When I first arrived I stayed at an Indonesian hotel listed in LP. The room was ok, clean, clean bedding and hot water, the old Chinese guy who ran the place spoke fair English, had a good attitude. As ancient as he seemed, his mother was also there! The only room available was next to the driveway, but at least it was away from the foyer. $8. There were several such rooms along the whole side of the garden area, each with a little sitting area of its own. When I woke I found a satay (kebabs) peddler right in front of my door. Lucky me.

The old chap told me I could get anything I needed at Tunjungan Plaza, a short walk away. I set out and passed a few nice Western-style hotels. They were all in the $50 range. The cheapest in the category was $35. These may have been a bargain for what you’re getting by DW standards, but it was beyond my budget – I try to keep it around $15. I did find a few hotels that were of Western design (you know, with hallways) in my price range which were probably nice at one time but were now run down. I tried staying at one but lasted only two nights. Word of warning: when the rooms have carpeting and the cleaning staff does not have a vacuum cleaner, go elsewhere, and in the meantime don’t go barefoot.

I’m happy to see someone has since posted about a decent hotel for around $25, will definitely check that out.

Eating
Surabaya has loads of street stalls. One difference here is they put up cloth walls around the stalls to offer a bit of privacy. I especially appreciated this, as sometimes my presence would draw a crowd, people wanting to see the bule eat. Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes? Grilled meats, fish, rice, stir-fry. The eating gets better when you start meeting locals and learn the local dishes, I don’t just mean Indonesian but local to that area. By the time I left I was able to order all these things and my pronunciation was good enough that I didn’t have repeat myself, which felt good.

Internet
I found a placein Tunjungan Plaza.
It’s on the bottom-most floor. Look for the A&W. To the right of it is a hallway with a money changer, bank, and ATM. It’s at the end of that hall, just off the street.
The is also a place new the main post office, in the same compound.

Tunjungan Plaza
This place is huge. The mall is actually four separate buildings. Giving someone directions to a certain spot is not easy. Usually, when I was not in my room or out getting my pole waxed I was in the mall somewhere. Someone posted that this used to be a popular place with freelancers, but alas I was not lucky enough to have such an encounter, and I assure you my eye was roving. Maybe they cleared them out?

On the top floor of several of the buildings are a bunch of restaurants. One in particular was mostly Indonesian and Chinese. I took a lot of my meals here. Another building has Pizza Hut, or something like it, and some other boring DW places. There’s a fast food court where you can get soft ice cream.

There’s a Starbucks! I have to admit I felt dumb paying $1.50 for a coffee when my lunch cost less than a buck.

There’s supermarkets on the bottom-most floor of two of the buildings. There are also a few pretty good pastry bakeries.

You can get a SIM chip for your cell phone at certain kiosks. Cheap.

There are several movie theatres. Cheap. I saw “Aviator” here. Not bad quality, except for the line down the middle of the screen and the sound too loud, which was ok because it covered the people’s talking.

I saw an advertisement somewhere in there for a place outside of town where you can go and shoot all sorts of automatic weapons, might be a good way to blow off steam.

Strangest sighting: there was a kiosk selling deep-fried Brazilian snacks, pasteis. WTF? Maybe these two countries have more in common than quality pussy?

Da Peoples and the Town
There are really only two major cities in Indonesia, Surabaya is known as the second. The city itself is not too likeable of a place. It is mostly huge boulevards with lots of traffic and pollution. The neighborhoods are areas inside of the huge blocks defined by these blvds, accessed by narrow alleyways. Instinct told me not to go down these narrow lanes, but that may have turned out to be silly paranoia, as I probably would have been approached by the residents, offered hospitality, neighbors would come by, etc. As for the quality of the environment, it was more reminiscent of Cambodia than Thailand. Holes in the sidewalks dropped into sewers/rain gutters, really fucking disgusting. It seems there is no cheap bottled water system that everyone uses, like in Thailand and Mexico. Scary.

Save for one incident when I was sitting with two lads at a street stall in Dolly I never felt threatened. These two guys were drinking this pink iridescent shit in a plastic pitcher that looked like that glowing stuff they use for biopsies or maybe antifreeze. I had just come out from a session and was in dire need of a cold drink. One knew a little English and he told me they had to catch a boat back to their home island at 5am so were staying up all night (Surabaya is the major port for East Java). I could see from their eyes that crap was hammering them. After a while they started whispering and looking at me sideways (um, they could have spoken out loud in their language as far my knowing what they said was concerned), and I knew I had to disappear. On the other hand, one night after finishing my punting I felt so good I walked back the three km or so to my hotel. Not for the faint of heart, but I lived to tell the tale.

Whenever I passed the larger, highly visible Western-style hotels, I noticed there was always a good number of loiterers. Of course the taxis, but there were lots of others too. I think avoiding high-visibility is a good idea, especially in a country where people make less than $100 per month and you know there is craziness like people killing for god. (Anyone else remember “Farm Film Review” from the old SCTV show? “He blowed up real good!!”)

I saw people wearing American flag t-shirts and hats, pictures of DW pop-stars, etc. There were even Indonesian bands that sounded like Offspring and Green Day.

Once I was in an upscale bakery and they had this rap music playing with really vulgar lyrics, every line had “motherfucker” and “suck my dick” and so on. Most of the patrons were Chinese, many of whom speak some English, so I wondered if they understood. A bizarre moment.

I was in some rural areas as well as Surabaya. I never picked up a “we hate you honkies” vibe. I did speak with a few Indonesians who brought up the Bali bombings.

Two things in particular really surprised me. I flew in from Malaysia, where alcohol for Muslims is a big taboo (check out the pic on my pad page). I was surprised alcohol had so noticeable a presence.

The other thing was how filthy the place was, and how unclean some things are. If there is one thing you pick up when you’re around Muslims in the DW it’s that when they want to denounce something the first word they use is “dirty.” One would get the impression (as I did) that these people must dwell in spotless environments. Wrong. Things were so gross, even to my far-below-Jewish-mother standards, that whenever I took a hotel room in (save for the Chinese place in Surabaya and the 5-star in Tretes) I went out to buy a bottle of bleach to wash the place down. I picked up a bar of antiseptic soap there called Asepso and washed myself well after each Dolly trip. It lathers into a green foam, looks real weird. Even cooler as it looked like the soap Leonardo was going critical mass with in the movie I saw there. Several times I saw people washing their hands in puddles on the street, and these were not vagrants – that one really hit home!

Did someone say squat toilets? I actually find them preferable in places with questionable cleanliness, as I can keep my lilywhite from contacting a filthy bowl. Where’s that bleach bottle?

One of the things about Indonesia that makes me uncomfortable is there can a spontaneous combustion among the people. For example, some time in the 1990s there was suddenly an uprising against Indonesians of Chinese descent. Shops, factories and houses were burnt down, people dragged out into the street and butchered, etc. I don’t recall if this was just Jakarta or nationwide. It makes me wonder what’s going to et them off next. The newspapers certainly don’t help. While I was there, the country was disputing some oil drilling rights with Malaysia, and the headlines in the newspaper made it sound like war was about to break out. Surabaya is proud of its history of expelling the Dutch colonists, and I’m concerned that any unpleasantness involving a foreigner could throw the switch on their nationalist pride.

Summary
While I really like Dolly, I’m not thrilled with Surabaya. I’ll probably go back just for the girls. When I do, I’ll probably do it the same way, but stay in a nicer hotel, at least for a few nights, and leave when I’m fucked out. See ya at the mall.

From what I read on CH of the level of comfort contributors are accustomed to and such, I would not recommend Dolly, or Surabaya, to any but the most adventurous.



(Message edited by bendejo on December 26, 2005)

Darn good post. I hope you write more about some of the places that you have visited or lived in.

Good report, I only wish you had some photos of the locations, the hotels and the girls to go with it.

Master Bates.

Bendejo, realy, realy good report w/ some helpful insights. I agree you should be posting more TRs. Am hoping to get out to SUB soon and hope to add my two cents about this place.

Just curious, how would you compare SUB w/ JKT using your criteria of doables and disappointments percentages?

(Message edited by merlin on December 26, 2005)

I'm back in Surabaya now. We all have diferent tastes but I'm finding ALLOT of very attractive ladies. GREAT service too. Last night a little spinner sucked and fucked me nonstop for 45 minutes keeping pace to the beat of Indonesian tecno music for $7. She didn't miss a beat Unfucking believable. I'm finding everytime I walk out of a place I see someone else I want to do. I love it here. As for Jakarta, I think the top 10% ladies in Jakarta are better looking but I think all but the most picky types will be happy with looks here. Theres ALLOT of ladies. There is something for everyone.

This was a superb, very insightful writeup. I'm amazed at how many intelligent guys there are on this board. I'm also equally amazed at how so many of them keep pushing the envelope further and futher. What's the final frontier?

(Message edited by merlin on December 27, 2005)

Gregorio, that's what I love about this site, the pushing of the envelope. I think for many long time loiterers on this board, one of the most exhilerating things about our hobby is to find that new gem of a monger destination. Especially true when I thought that all venues had been explored and favorite destinations pegged.

BTW: in the Movie "King Kong" notice the ship the adventurers set sail on to discover and explore a new island is called the "Surabaya...".

(Message edited by merlin on December 27, 2005)

Bendejo, I see what you mean about Tunjungan Plaza. This place is fucking huge. I got totally lost inside the mall. No luck finding FL's in the mall but shitloads of beautiful women. If I was looking for a GF this would be a hell of a good place to find one.

Strangest sighting: a resturant offering "the famous Mexican bun from Malaysia". I had just ate or I would have had to order one just to see what a "famous Mexican bun from Malaysia" is.

Merl. Notice in the cheesy 70's King Kong the exploration ship departed from Surabaya enroute to the Kong's island. I see King Kong is showing here in Surabaya. Maybee I'll grab a lady and go see it.

Oddly, I don't really feel like I am pushing the envelope here. Maybee it's just me but it's all pretty point and click for being off the beaten track and all. I agree it is a little rough around the edges for some folks but for adventurous types it is a pretty easy destination.

Thanks for all the positive feedback, gents.
Never been JKT, at least not yet.

Some of us have a taste for rough and ready travel, some don´t. I actually traveled in a much more rugged fashion in the 1970s, these days I´m a wuss by comparison. But there´s a certain Darwinism at work -- you either develop a set of instincts and tolerances or you´re somehow eliminated from the game.

Benj-- great reading. Thanks for taking the time to put together the well done report. Between you and Sancho, one can get a pretty good handle on things... ;)

-DM

PS. go to JKT.

I just returned to Jakarta yesterday from Surabaya. I'll be writing about Surabaya a bit more in my report, but I'll have to admit that I was severely disappointed with the place. We all have our likes and dislikes; what Surabaya has to offer fell mostly in my dislike column. I spent 3 hours wondering around Dolly and saw a grand total of 5 women I'd do. It is definitely not the place for the likes of DonMarco, Khun Mor or MongerX, and I don't think Merlin would be much for it either, but you never know until you try. At least I went and sampled, however hindered I was with the health problem. Ahhh, Jakarta....

"So I lay next to her, towel around my waist, her beneath the sheet, and try a little affection. It goes over like a lead balloon.

Playing the aggressor in a hard-to-get act can be fun sometimes, but I prefer when the gal grabs my dick without me prompting. Nothing of the sort here, and I was detecting zero coquettishness. As I get more persistent, her pushing me away gets more violent. Quasi-rape scenarios are not my style, and I was by now pissed off.

She knew no English, my Indo language skills didn’t go beyond counting money and ordering food, but I decided to express myself in English anyway: if nothing else, she would get the message I wasn’t going for this shit. In the tone which I’d admonish my brat of a nephew I spoke my mind, while getting up and handing her her clothes. She eventually yielded, but it became an “I’ll lay here and you can fuck me” situation. For me unimpressive, though enough pros have told me some guys like it this way. In fact I know a few guys who dig this “reluctant virgin” sort of game. But it’s wasted on me.

Making the best of the situation, I put her in doggie style and worked away at that fine brown booty and thinking about the hotties I did back at Dolly."

As I have had some similar experiences with street girls in Tijuana, I appreciated your response - and share your dislike for such episodes.

I also like to see how little $$$ I can get by on spending, so, do not hesitate to write about your accommadations and other aspects of your trips. Often, the low-elevation areas of the tropics are hot, humid, and uncomfortable. Your report on Tretes was thus also of interest, along with the sad lack of wilderness options.

Given the ripoff many of us are taking/will be getting with pensions, Social Insecurity, and other such Ponzi Pyramid Scams, many more of us will be joining you in the LTDW.

Murasaki, It sounds like we were both in Surabaya on the same dates. I didn't know you were around or I would have loved to have said hi. I try to qualify everything I say about Surabaya with "it's not for everyone". Definitely not the place for mongers who prefer a high end glamor sceen. Myself however, I'm still tickled silly over the quality of the sessions and the quality of the women I was finding out there and even just the great way I was treated by most,,, certainly not all but most, of the locals. Taste is certainly a major factor and you are right, this is not the place for those seeking a more civilized high end expirence but I certainly get a kick out of the place.

(Message edited by I_am_Sancho on December 29, 2005)

Excellent report, Bendejo. I might have been tempted to extract my butt (and other body parts ) from JKT to SUB if I had read this when you wrote it, but internet access was at a premium in JKT.

Very well written, good information. I will put SUB on my mongering list as a result of your report. Did you find anything to do during the day other than TV and the mall? The one day I was there with my gf-of-the-moment, we hired a driver and drove around outside the city, kind of nice (but probably outside your budget requirements).

BTW, did you mean that the price in Tretes was 250K (not 25K)?

I like to walk around, ride the locals buses, fall into conversations with the great unwashed if language and circumstance permit, and so on. Local buses ain't too comfy there. You probably saw it all on that cab ride. It was also hot and humid, not conducive to walking, and it's not really a walking city. But I still want to check out the place with the guns.

app 10k rupiah=$1, so $25= 250,000r
Those powers of ten always fuck me up too.