After our arrival in Jakarta, we were transported to the Hotel Ciputa, where we would spend the night. It was a very nice hotel, far above my expectation. It was a nice place to prepare for roughing it in the heat of Sungai Galing (SG).
We had a short rest at the hotel before we went on a tour of the largest mosque in Southeast Asia, Masjid Istiqlal. Unlike other mosques that I have visited, Istiqlal is built using very modern architecture. It is 5 stories tall. It is so large that the main worship and the adjoining courtyards can hold 200,000 people at one time. Each of them would have a 3’ x 6’ area in which to kneel and pray.
Our hotel was attached to a big shopping mall, so after the tour we decided to try out the “food court”. We ended up at a place called “The Chicken Story” and tried some of the local dishes. I can’t remember the name of mine, but it was some kind of fried noodles with chicken and shrimp. Not bad for the first meal. Very cheap, too… 35,000 rupiah (or about $3.50 including the bottled water).
In the morning, after a nice breakfast at the hotel, we took a flight to Pontianak, the capital of West Kalimantan. There we met Iksan, a student from the Indonesia Baptist Seminary who would spend the week with us in the village and serve as one of our interpreters (and much more). From Pontianak, we took a 3-hour boat trip up the Kapuas River to Sungai Galing. It was a small, fast boat, about the size of a ski boat in the U.S. The villages we could see initially along the river looked very poor. We asked if that was what SG was like. The answer: “slightly better”. Ok, good.
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| The boat that took us to Sungai Galilng. |
The highlight of the journey was our arrival at the village. As we pulled up to the “dock”, the steep river bank was lined with the people of SG, adults and children alike, there to welcome us. It was a sight that I will not soon forget. What a way to start our work there!
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| The people begin to gather to welcome us. |
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