Day 2 - Broiler Farm (meat chickens)

Today we started off a little earlier and got on the road about 9am. We stayed in the Bogor area but headed towards the countryside which was quite beautiful. The mountains in the distance look to be several thousand metres high and we got quite close to them, however the surrounding area is all valley so you do not feel as though you are in the middle of a mountain range by any means. The broiler system here is quite impressive. The first farm we went to ran over fish ponds, allowing the chicken feces to be reused as fish food without any work! They grow asiatic carp here, the same fish we call a nuisance in Toronto as they out compete our other species but here are considered great food. The water for the ponds is diverted from a river, but flows back to the river after entering the farm. They claim they monitor the water quality as it is released back in to the river but I am sceptical of such a practise. However I was very very impressed with our well run everything is. The chickens looked to be relatively happy, or as happy as anyone can be in that heat. It is a very open cage compared to a closed building you would find in Canada, making it susceptible to disease transmission from wildlife from way cheaper than building a closed building that would require air conditioning. We also went to visit another farm owned by the same farmer but about 45 minutes away on some back country roads. It was pretty fun driving through smaller villages and seeing the beautiful scenery. The other farms were similar enough but collected the feces for fertiliser (less profitable than fish) as there was no river in the region. For lunch we went to the Univeristy area and ate at what the CIVAS people said was their favourite restaurant. It was pretty good food, fancy to look at, though I am finding Indonesian food to not be my favourite. However I never realised how many foods are actually Indonesian inventions. Things like chicken satay and tempe were actually created here. Afterwards we went in to the mall which was very impressive. It was fairly large and extremely modern. The grocery store was massive and had a large selection of foods, even Activa yogurt. The best part though was the donoughts which cost 60US cents but are all sorts of crazy flavours. You can get tomatoe, cheese, and chicken, but we all got dessert ones (like oreo or chocolate with peanuts). They have Starbucks as well but I do not know if I will venture in. Movies however cost only about $1.50 and they have all the current ones (Angels and Demons; Night at the Museum 2). We are going to see a movie tomorrow and cannot wait. Tonight we played badminton, that is what happens here on Wednesday nights!

Day 1 - Chicken Collection

Today was the first day (Tuesday) in Indonesia after arriving late last night to our room in Bogor at CIVAS. Probably the hottest night of my life but being so exhausted from 2 days of travel and 3 flights made things significantly easier to sleep. Though we were told to get up and be ready for 9am, we soon found out that we were not leaving to head to Jakarta's chicken collection facility until 2pm. We were obviously curious and so wandered quickly around the city of Bogor, which is basically a suburb of Jakarta but someone calmer than a city of 22 million people with comparatively better air. Wandering around took about 20 minutes as the extreme heat and lack of Rupiah (money) made doing anything difficult (as did the lack of sidewalk and overall omission of any goal for our walk). Heading back, we decided to play a board game (Amanda won...surprise surprise) and then we had a really cool lunch of things cooked in peanut butter. They called it peanut sauce but it actually tasted a lot light peanut butter to me and it was not just flavouring, almost like a peanut butter curry and served with shrimpy chips (without the shrimp flavour). Heading out at 3pm we discovered that everything here is really far. Either they have no idea how fast we are actually traveling or my watch is broken, but 60km on a highway similar to ours should not take 1.5hrs. That being said, their highways are quite impressive. Not very busy and with conditions similar to ours road quality wise. People love to pass on the shoulder but that is really the only difference, even the road signs are similar to TO's. Of course with no drinking in the entire country (being mostly Muslim and all) drunk driving also does not exist. I shouldn't say alcohol is not existant as apparently you can find it if you know where to look and there are even two beer breweries in the country. However outside of hotels and the most touristy spots there is almost no drinking, or pork eating (but apparently you can find pork too if you are in the know). I better get on to the chicken collection facilities, which actually consisted of an entire neighbourhood. 325 individual families in the neighbourhood collected chickens, keeping them on the bottom floor and living upstairs. Try to picture Eastern European type alleyways and houses with chickens on every bottom floor and people living in quite good accommodations upstairs (as the chicken business is quite profitable...$1.65US for a 1kg bird.....they make a very decent living here). It was not where chickens were really grown, rather it was like middle men (or families) buying from farmers and then filling orders for people who want to buy large amounts of chickens for the market (or restuarants I guess). They sell slaughtered or not, and the slaughtering is all halal which means they have to bleed out (it has to technically be a natural death). Anyways, it was really interesting and everyone was so excited to see us (so many kids followed us around the town and old women brought out their digital cameras to ask for pictures with us). We then went out for dinner and were treated to a special form of Indonesian food found mainly on the island of Sumatra. We were supposed to go to an even more popular Sudanese place, but we were closer to this restaurant. They put out all of their food on the table and you simply eat the plates you want. It would be like ordering everything on the menu (about 15 things) as well as rice for a base, and then choosing the things you think look good. The food was quite good, lots of different curries and coconut milk, beef and especially chicken, and then many vegetables. Some more interesting things were the beef skin and tendon (basically the outside part of a cow leg) and stinky beans (a bean that smells!). However common things like eggplant, cuts of fish and chicken, or fried red peppers were also there. It cost roughly $2.50 each and apparently we ate way more than the average Indonesian would (they usually take 1 plate each with rice while we split about 10 dishes between 5 people for variety....nobody told us we were eating too much!). That is all for now, I will try to add more later this week.