I lay on the bed, closed my eyes, spun out into orbit above the earth. I could see its size, its incredible scale, see the shroud of dark night moving slowly across the hemisphere I call home while outside my window it was broad daylight. I could picture so clearly the dark streets and houses of my family and friends -- the way the light from passing cars will shimmer through lace curtains across the wooden floors and paintings in the dark living room of my parents’ house in DeKalb -- the sound of a police car’s tapped “blatt-blatt” as it pulls through a red light out of the station near our old house in South Philadelphia -- the stillness of dark ocean under bright stars in Maine. I walked familiar streets and familiar rooms in my mind’s eye, longing for them.

It was all I could do to drag myself out of bed again and onto the streets of Bandung, which were not at all where I needed to be in that state. After the cool ocean breezes and small-town friendliness of Kalianda, the hot, traffic-filled streets of this smoggy city choked me, and I had no patience for haggling fares with taxi drivers or navigating a chain of public transit to negotiate day trips out of the city.

After a day in Bandung, the plan we arrived at was to head straight to Jogja on Thursday, but we arrived at the Bandung train station around 9 a.m. only to learn that the train to Jogja had left at 7:30 that morning, and there wouldn’t be another until 8:00 p.m. A representative from the tourist office in the train station came over, intent on selling us a package tour to a nearby mountain followed by a visit to the hot springs in Cipanas. We turned him down -- hiring a private car and guide is way beyond our budget -- but decided to take his suggestion and headed to Cipanas via public bus.

Cipanas means “hot water,” and there are multiple towns across Java named this for their hot springs. In the Cipanas we visited, near Garut, the main tourist attraction is that every hotel room has a huge, deep, tiled bath tub with a pipe from the hot springs constantly flowing into it. We checked out a few different options before settling on a room that we bargained down to about $11 for the night. Not the cheapest option we’d looked at, but it had a bit more light and a bit more space. After the first of several baths, we wandered around a bit, enjoying the quiet and walkability, and practicing a bit more of our Bahasa Indonesia (indonesian language). We were the only non-Indonesians in town that day, as far as I could tell.

Lunch and dinner were both delicious -- we have been eating very, very well in Indonesia -- and after some more time in our private hot spring, we went to bed early. But the calls to prayer that we have become accustomed to hearing throughout the country were especially loud and especially frequent that night in Cipanas, and between them and people chatting outside our room and a few loud cars in the parking lot nearby, I slept fitfully, still pulsing with occasional pangs of homesickness.

In the morning, our trek to Jogja began again, this time at 6:00 a.m. with an angkot (public minibus) ride down the hills from Cipanas to the nearby town of Garut, where we were supposed to catch our bus to Tasikmalaya, where we were going to catch the train to Jogja. But the angkot only took us part of the way there, dropping us off on a street corner in Garut. Asking around, we learned that we were still a few kilometers away from the bus station, and every angkot that came past was crammed full already, people hanging out the sides. Eventually, we flagged down a passing horse-drawn cart that seemed to have space for two more passengers, if we squeezed. I hefted my backpack onto the back running board and squished onto the small wooden bench seat next to two girls, probably heading to school, and an old woman who smiled at me and helped me hold my backpack to keep it from falling off.

“Hatur tuhun, ibu,” I said -- “hatur tuhun” is “thank you” in Sundanese, the local dialect that most people speak in that area. It is the one thing I know how to say in Sundanese, having learned it from our very friendly waiter at Rumah Makan Sari Sunda, the Sundanese restaurant where we’d eaten in Bandung a couple nights before. “Ibu” literally means mother, but is the general term of respect for adult women -- similar to “ma’am,” I suppose. She was charmed, and asked in Bahasa Indonesia if I spoke Sundanese. In indonesian, I told her no, but that I spoke a little indonesian. She asked a few other things that I was able to make out well enough to answer -- where we were going, how long we had been in Indonesia, where we came from, whether we were married. These are the things that almost everyone I’ve met in Indonesia -- at least in smaller towns -- is interested in, so it is the vocabulary I’ve picked up. Ke mana -- to where? Dari mana -- from where? Berapa -- how much or how many?

We parted ways from the horsecart and caught our bus to Tasikmalaya, grabbing a quick breakfast to go at the bus station -- steaming-hot spiced, fragrant rice, curried hard-boiled eggs, and fried vegetable fritters wrapped up in brown paper and fastened with a rubber band. The bus ride was slow going but incredibly gorgeous -- a rollercoaster ride puffing slowly uphill and then roaring downhill on twisting mountain roads overlooking brilliant green terraced rice paddies above a winding river, while dangdut music blasted from the speakers behind us as the bus chugged along. We had to catch a 10 a.m. train out of Tasik, and had been told this bus would get there around 9 -- plenty of time to get from the bus terminal to the train station across town. But 9 came and went, and we were still plodding along. Around 9:45 we finally pulled into the station, where we raced over to the number 8 angkot -- which some fellow riders on the bus had told us was the one to take to the train station -- only to have the driver sit there, waiting for more passengers. There were no taxis around, so we offered him the equivalent of five regular fares (10,000 rupiah, or a little over a dollar) to leave right away, and started our languid progress to the train. In pidgin indonesian, we said that our train was at 10, and could we please drive faster? The driver sped up a bit, getting us to the station around 5 minutes to 10. We had realized in the interim that, between the unplanned trip to Cipanas and the bus delay, we hadn’t had time to go to an ATM in the past few days, and were down to our last 130,000 or so rupiah -- not quite enough for train fare, but the train was pulling into the station. Thankfully, the agent let us make up the difference with $6 US dollars, and we ran over to board the train.

And now it’s hard to believe that was only yesterday. Jogja so far has been a complete change of pace from anyplace else we’d been in Indonesia. We arrived yesterday in the early afternoon, found ourselves a nice hotel (very clean, air conditioning, private bathroom, but no hot water -- but under $10) and settled in. It was immediately apparent that we were in tourist central -- after almost a week of seeing no westerners other than each other and Anita, and of communicating, by necessity, almost wholly in indonesian, we were in a place where menus and room rates were explained in English and where backpackers from sundry nations wandered down every street. It was a weird sort of culture shock.

But I have been enjoying Jogja, mostly because it is walkable, and I value walking in cities so much. Last night, we walked down to a museum that puts on a nightly wayang kulit -- shadow puppet -- performance. We watched episode one of the Ramayana, which was part of what we’d seen performed during the kecak in Bali, as well. And today, we spent most of the morning walking the city -- first over to the Batik Museum, where we looked at a range of examples of antique batiks from the early 20th century onward, and later through the southern part of the city. We have seen some evidence of the earthquake, and talked to a few people about its continuing effects on the area, but the neighborhood where we’re staying seems not to have been too badly damaged.

The other thing that has happened since yesterday is that the homesickness, at least this first bout of it, has passed. I think it helps to be staying in a city where I can walk around, and go to used book stores, and drink avocado milkshakes, and generally have some semblance of a moment-to-moment existence that is familiar and comfortable. It helps to be close to an internet cafe, and to have talked to my parents on the phone yesterday, and to be staying in a clean, well-lighted place.

It will probably be jarring to leave Indonesia next Saturday, a country that has become more and more familiar over the past couple of weeks, with a language that I pick up more of every day. I have no idea what to expect of Malaysia, but I think I’m starting to get my sea legs, to get the routine down -- getting from town to town, finding places to stay, washing laundry in the sink or in a bucket and hanging it to dry on a line rigged in the bathroom or, even better, on laundry lines outside the hotel where we’re staying. I am excited about all that’s to come.

But of course I still miss Philadelphia and family and friends terribly -- so please stay in touch.

Love, Sarah