Preparations for Idul Fitri

There is an air of anticipation here in Jakarta as the celebrations for Idul Fitri, the festival marking the end of the holy month of Ramadhan, are getting started.  Indonesia is just going to plain shut down for over a week, starting this Friday.  It’s rather amazing.  It would be a great time to go do some traveling, but unfortunately Idul Fitri is like Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Year’s all rolled into one, plus everywhere you want to go is on a different island, and the roads are bad to begin with anyway.  We may be staying home for most of it.

Comments 2

  1. Sandy November 10, 2004

    What a great opportunity to experience the culture – though I imagine travel will be difficult, I hope you won’t get cabin fever.

  2. Julie and Tom November 11, 2004

    It’s going to be hard to actually experience the culture of Ramadhan, we fear. If everyone goes home to their villages there’ll be no one left in Jakarta except for rich Indonesians, expats, non-Muslims, and the like. We have been experiencing the culture every night between 2 and 4 AM as the various calls to prayer go out. We’ll have to describe that sometime.

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