1/23 - British Expat Mallrats in Yogya

At this internet cafe they play the same few reggae songs over and over again, so putting photos on the blog yesterday and today we've been treated to a lot of it. Along with constant diesel fumes. Where from is anybody's guess. Luckily, earlier, they gave us a brief techno and Michael Jackson interlude, for about ten minutes. It's raining a lot here, on and off, but quite dramatically each time. It is, after all, the rainy season. We weren't aware of this on Bali because every day was sunny and bright, but a guy on the beach informed me that it was only after the big earthquake that the rain stopped. He said it'd been theorized that there was a connection. Interesting, I thought. I guess the earth has righted itself by now. There's flooding in Jakarta, where we're headed tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the Mallrats, as Aubrie calls them, are quite puzzling. It's a crew of about five or six (possibly more) older English guys who frequent the Ciao cafe in the Malioboro Mall. This is actually the best cafe in town for decent coffee, so I can't totally blame them, but the odd thing is that they're there every day (yes, so are we, but they stay for hours, and we merely for minutes, to read the Jakarta Post and have Iced Coffee.) They all sit around and smoke, talk to each other, and have oddly flirtatious relationships with several young Indonesian women, including the entire wait staff. Most of them speak Bahasa Indonesia. One of them looks very near death, but that's beside the point. So, we wonder, daily--what are they doing there? Why are there British expats, who never leave the mall, in Yogyakarta?