Rail Jerker's Diary.
MALANG HASH HOUSE HARRIERS II, East Java, Indonesia. Run # 740 Friday, 6 May 2005.
Hares: "Draimulen"; his wife "Mentek"; and her sister "Ayam Mini".

Splendid Inn Hotel is the "Hash Head Quarters & Correspondence" of Malang Hash House Harriers II, a mixed hash, which runs every Friday, with HHH (Happy Hash Hours) at the Inn on Wednesday evenings.

The uma of the Saguguluk is a common destination for foreigners. Getting there does not involve great distances. But distance is made up for by the degree of difficulty in getting there, without which the journey would have much less appeal anyway. One climbs up out of the settlement moves through cultivated forest into primary growth areas, and follows river beds in the absense of a torrential downpour, these being preferable to slogging through the frequent sections of knee-deep mud.

For the past 40 years Hotel Indonesia in Central Jakarta has been the capital's major landmark, and its fame is often linked to the country's political pride. Built to fill the need for an international standard hotel for the 1962 Asian Games, Hotel Indonesia was the first high-rise hotel in the country. At that time, it had 14 floors and 400 rooms compared to its current 586 rooms. As a landmark, the hotel's acronym, HI, was adopted as the name of the roundabout where Jakarta's main thoroughfares, Jl. Sudirman and Jl. Thamrin, meet.

The first thing I saw was green. Green grass, green leaves, green trees, there was earth everywhere. Between short scraggly grasses and luxuriant ferns, palm trees rose from the ground, uniformly arched; their leaves languidly reaching to the sky in perfect circles. Enhanced by the pale steamy sky, the smell of rain and grass emanated from the air, tingling my taste buds, filling my lungs and sending cool, flowing shivers down my spine. Except for the distant murmurs of birds and insects coming from the surrounding forest there was complete quiet.

The Rules of Hashing: Rule # 36c of hashing states, "When thou shall enter into an unknown territory, thou shall first of all contact, physically or otherwise, a harrier or a harriette, because verily he or she may turn out to be your true friend and protector." Accordingly, on arrival in the hill region of Bandung, the capital of West Java, one of the most beautiful provinces of Indonesia, I called the On Sec of BHHH, Hakon "Short Snake" Andresen. He was not at his desk, so his sidekick spoke to me.