This is the first in an on-going series chronicling our trips to Indonesia to launch the first of hopefully many rainforest projects. This is our first trip to SE Asia so we’ll have a learning curve as we adapt to to the culture.
Our trip started in Denver Colorado on Thursday, July 9th, with lay-overs in Los Angeles CA and Taipei, Taiwan, we arrived in Jakarta Indonesia on Saturday the 11th. With all of the timezones we crossed we seem to have lost a Friday in the process. My sense is that we’ll get it back when we fly home in a month. The majority of the flight was on China Airlines. A friend of ours from Denver that flies to Asia occasionally on business told us the service would be good and she was right. It is so refreshing to fly with a company that obviously takes a lot of pride in what they do. The food on the flight was excellent. A very cool in-seat entertainment system with free movies and video games helped the 13 hour flight go by quickly. My only “complaint” was a lack of leg room in the economy section but, since I was the tallest person on the flight, I guess I can’t blame the airline for not planning for me in advance. On the flight home we’ll try to get emergency row seats.
Our associates waited patiently as we waited in line for an hour at the Jakarta Airport for our “Upon Arrival” visa that will allow us to stay for a month.
After a quick celebratory greeting the first order of business was for our hosts to bring us to a deli style restaurant to try some of the local dishes that they’ve been tempting us with for the last few weeks. Jocelyne and I are big fans of Asian food so we were really looking forward to trying authentic dishes. It’s easy to eat vegetarian here, there are numerous tofu dishes. We tried one called gado-gado which seems to be vegetables smothered in a peanut sauce, similar to pad thai. Of course it was delicious. If all of the food is as good as our first meal here we’ll be very happy.
After a quick meal we drove to the office of our associates, Greenlinecare to meet some of the team and start discussing our itinerary. The first order of business will be to secure a 3,000 hectare island to release orang utans on. We’ll be working on that later today and I’ll pass along the details to you as they become available.
My laptops battery is almost gone and I don’t have the adapter to plug into the Indonesian wall sockets yet so I’m going to sign off for now.
I’ll be posting as often as I can, and adding images as we get into a flow here so keep checking back. We’re really excited about sharing the details of our trip with you, and showing you how we create huge avoided deforestation projects.
July 12th, 2009 at 5:45 am
Great to hear from you guys and to know you reached your destination safely
. Keep us updated on the adventure! And best luck, as always.