Pestablogger 08, and a great going-away feast.

Last Saturday was the big Pestablogger 08 event, drawing Indonesian bloggers from all over the country to the capital - where they could meet, greet, and listen to us foreign bloggers ramble about our experiences, among other things.

I was in excellent company - Mark Tafoya, American personal chef and half of the team behind Culinary Media Network; Anthony Bianco, peripatetic Australian who stared down the Peruvian road of death and survived to tell the tale; Jeff Ooi, courageous Malaysian blogger-turned-politician; and Mr. Brown, Singaporean techno-geek with a taste for the absurd.

We few, we happy few, we band of bloggers!

We were also accompanied by our "handler", Indri Rosid, and event all-around organizer Hanny Kusumawati. (That's them on the right.)

The BPPT Building along Jalan Thamrin was packed to the rafters, and we got on stage to talk about our experiences at about 11am. We recounted our adventure so far - skipping across Java, from Bali to Jogjakarta to Jakarta, playing dress-up with traditional Balinese outfits, climbing stone temple steps, watching Hanuman defeat fire, eating calf brain at Sari Bundo, and looking over Jakarta from the Monas.

Was there anything to criticize about the journey? Someone from the audience asked.

I thought to myself - I'd been put up in the best hotels, fed the best food, taken from one historic place to another without charge... I'd be a son of a bitch, really, to complain about the whole deal that was dumped onto my lap. Maybe the schedule could have been looser, but as Mark Tafoya later said, we might think differently on hindsight.

Ah, yes, Mr. Brown put his finger on the problem. "Your internet suuuuucks!" Everybody laughed. In most of Southeast Asia (with the exception of hyper-modern Singapore), Internet has a few hitches to fix.

Lunch was a boxed affair (last year's buffet setup was too expensive and too unevenly-distributed), after which Mark, Anthony, and I joined the Travel breakout session. We were also joined by Indonesian travel bloggers Nila Tanzil and Trinity "the Naked Traveler", who sadly was not dressed as advertised.

Before an audience of about fifty journalists and bloggers, we went on a freewheeling discussion about tourism in Indonesia, and how bloggers could sell their country to tourists across the world.

The issues, as far as I could tell, boiled down to two separate debates:

Bloggers vs. the Tourism ministry - should the government spend more to get the word out? Could the government get a bigger budget for brochures and take-ones? Or should independent bloggers take the initiative?

English vs. the native language - most bloggers communicated in Bahasa, while tourists with the much-needed revenue spoke English. Should Bahasa-fluent bloggers shift entirely to English when blogging for tourism?

I loved the crackling passion in the air as we debated these issues. Ministry people were on hand to argue the points in person, but the tone was still very respectful and reasoned (what I could understand of it, anyway). What I couldn't understand, Trinity made a point to explain to Anthony and myself.

It took a whole day to wind down, and I was glad of the chance to dress down a bit and see Jakarta by night. Indri had a surprise waiting for us.

We took a taxi to Menteng district, now one of Jakarta's more upscale neighborhoods, and childhood home to one Barack Obama (we passed his school on the way).

In Menteng, the street food is to die for - nasi gila (crazy rice), a spicy treat of fried rice, meats, spices, and rice crackers that can clog arteries but leave you dying with a smile. Now that's a death I can agree with!

We were scrambling over ourselves to get to the spread that Indri ordered for us. Satay with your choice of peanut sauce or soy sauce. Chicken feet, whose flesh you had to gnaw from the bones. We ate noisily, ignoring the traffic rushing past. It seemed just right to me, summing up our Indonesian experience as a time travel journey: from the graceful traditions of Bali to the modern hurly-burly of Jakarta.

I was, and am, thankful to the guys who accompanied us from start to finish. Guys like Indri Rosid, Hanny Kusumawati (both from PR firm Maverick), and the tireless folks from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism - Nobel, Era, Oca, Indri, Iqbal, and Andris, without whom we would have been aimless, destination-less, and reservation-less.

I’m also grateful to have met some new friends along the way - Roy the best Jogjakarta tour guide in the world; Ong Hock Chuan, Maverick maestro; Sharon Issabella and Shilla Christianto, Maverick mavens; Enda Nasution and Budi Putra, Indonesian blogging overlords; Shinta Dhanuwardoyo of Bubu.com; Preetam Rai of Global Voices; and many more bloggers who joined the growing discussion on blogging and travel in Indonesia.

Our flight was at nine the next morning, so Mark and I had to regretfully call it a night at ten pm. I took a good look at night-time Jakarta, just before we hailed a cab back to Borobudur Hotel, and swore that this wouldn't be the last time I'd be seeing the view.

All images © Mike Aquino, licensed to About.com.