Soto Kalkun

Soto is a delicious Indonesian soup that is pretty much like chicken noodle soup, except that instead of noodles, they use rice. And usually you put hot sauce and lime juice in it. Deliciousness in a bowl. Anyways, Hotjaga told me awhile ago that there is a place near his house that sells turkey soto (soto kalkun). That is weird, since Indonesians don't generally eat turkey. Hot knows how much I love turkey, so he's invited me a few times to go try it. The stars all aligned properly this week so that Hot is working afternoons, Nav (his wife) is on break and I am also. So we decided that Friday morning (today), Melanie and I would drive over to the next town, Ambarawa (about 30 minutes away), to try this turkey soto we'd heard so much about!

The day did not go as expected. AT ALL.

I meant to go into town at 8:30 this morning to pick up ingredients for baking Christmas cookies and to get a new battery for my phone, which is regularly freaking out lately. I needed to go to three different places (it is so complicated when ONE STORE can't sell both butter AND brown sugar) before picking Mel up at 9:30. But the jaga at the back gate was Pak Kur. So I didn't actually end up leaving until 9. But I now know all his family updates, what he is doing for Christmas, and I am invited over on Sunday to help cook for the out of town guests they will have for the holidays. Pak Kur informed me that at school, he is not berani (brave) to treat me like family, but in his own home he is berani, and he WILL put me to work. I said OK! Anyways, by the time I got a new phone battery and a kilo of butter, I didn't have time for the brown sugar, so I just headed to Mel's house. The whole house was still dark, but Mel's roommate let me in and told me that Mel had JUST gotten up. So by 10 o'clock we headed back to my house to drop off the butter and pick up my raincoat, because by now it was sprinkling.

Right as we were getting ready to leave my house, I got an SMS from Navita saying that she had very bad news - the turkey soto place was randomly closed FOREVER. We decided to go anyways and make the best of it.  We raced (and BEAT) the rain, and since we were all hungry, we decided to go out for normal soto. After eating until we were full, Navita said she wanted to take us to the train station. The Ambarawa station was built by the Dutch and is now a museum. Lots of old steam engines are parked all around, and a lot of equipment that was used in the original station is on display. So we went there. And it was closed. For renovations. So we snuck in a back gate and looked at everything anyways!

After that, we decided to go to the war museum. With our luck, we figured it had probably burned down during the night or something, but as it turns out, it was the ONE place that was open! So we got to see lots of old German and Japanese weapons from WWII along with unexploded ordnance. That seems very safe. Then we found an American airplane - a Mustang - that had the Dutch flag painted on its tail! Mel and I both climbed up on it and explored the cockpit. Because this is Indonesia and there are really no rules about climbing all over antique aircraft. It was fun locating the "Drop right bomb" and "Drop left bomb" levers and reading the warning signs for ejecting the seat.

After hanging out at Hotjaga and Navita's house (where Hotjaga cooked and served us French Fries and flavored water), we drove back home. In the now POURING rain. Hotjaga had to come to work at the same time, so I kind of felt like we had a police escort. It was nice to drive with someone watching over us though, because the road we took home is very winding and FULL of nasty potholes, but it has NO drainage, so when it rains hard, the road turns into a river of running water that pulls your motorbike all different directions and prevents you from seeing the asphalt and knowing where dangerous holes are. It just makes the challenge of driving that much more exciting, I guess. The funniest part was when we passed a minibus going the opposite direction - it was going FAST and spraying water everywhere, but right as the bus got even with us, I think it hit a particularly deep patch of water, because it felt like a tidal wave hit us! I came out of that one sputtering and spitting out a mouthful of brown water and feeling like a drowned rat, but I managed to keep the bike on the road, thank God.

When we got home, we went to go to the seamstress who, naturally, was closed. So we ran a bunch of other errands instead - still in the rain, though less torrential. Then we went to Melanie's house to order pizza (a recent exciting development in my town!) and watch a Christmas movie - only to find that we were locked out! Thankfully, Mel's roommate got home about 10 minutes after we did and let us in.

I am exhausted from all the driving and the cold rain and the errands and going to 13 different stores/houses/museums/restaurants in two different towns. But sometimes the most unexpected days are the best days.


Aaaand tomorrow, I am going to Pak Jono's retirement party. Apparently we are fishing? I expect a good adventure.