Day 63 Jakarta

Wednesday, overcast early, hot and sunny midday, 1600 dark with thunder and showers. Last night I got a picture of another great tropical sunset. Sleeping in port seems kind of boring now. The steward had to get a tooth pulled. The exchange rate here is about 11,000 Rupiah to 1 USD. We went into the city midmorning, with one of the 3 cadets. He wanted to buy some work clothing. Instead of a taxi, we rode as passengers on motorcycles. I have few pictures here, because I was concentrating on hanging on, and making sure my knees didn't collide with truck body parts. Like many local transportation providers, mine tried to renegotiate the agreed on price, when we returned to the port gate, unsuccessfully.

Saw 2 McDonalds and a KFC. I had hoped to acquire local coffee beans and local dark chocolate. Milk chocolate is apparently more popular here. Had to settle for Tablerone Swiss dark chocolate. It was just in time, because I had the last square of Belgian chocolate tonight.

The air was ripe with allergens before the late afternoon rain washed them out. The rain brought a total stop to the cement loading on the next ship, which is painted pink on its lower surfaces. At sunset, while the sun was obscured by clouds, the bottom of the cloud ceiling looked like it was on fire for a long time. Our stay here is brief. We depart shortly after 7 pm, to the north through the Java Sea, between Sumatra and Borneo, enroute to Singapore. Going out past the breakwater is going to be a traffic jamb. I'm not even going to look. Amazingly, our time advances another hour tonight, so we will be 14 hours ahead of CST. The number of hours will keep increasing until we cross the international dateline in early February 2009, when it will be 18 ahead of CST, and then flip to 6 hours behind CST.