Jakarta transport

I've had a lively time in spicy old Indonesia tracking down information about orangutans and the rainforest.

Last night, for instance, I spent two hours at the office of Singapore Airlines in Jakarta trying to convince them to reinstate my booking home after the computer cancelled it. Thankfully, Singapore Airlines was listening.

But I was so tired after that flight and the two-hour debate that I jumped into the first taxi I saw at the airport. Big mistake, particularly in Jakarta.

The driver was coughing with some kind of horrible disease. There's nothing like the paranoia of thinking you're going to catch whatever a cab driver has just as you arrive.

If that wasn't bad enough, his taxi was shimmying and shaking so badly that it's a miracle it held together.

We hadn't gone far when he pulled into a gas station. Aren't you supposed to turn the engine off while you're putting gasoline into a car? Something about explosions? Maybe that didn't bother the driver because I was the only one sitting in the car while he was fuelling it. Hmmm.

Then he tried to wedge his car a bit too aggressively between every car, bus and truck on the road. That was an intimate experience for us all.

He told me the tolls into Jakarta were 50,000 rupiah, so I gave him a 50,000-rupiah note and then observed signs that the tolls were a lot less. So, when we got to the hotel -- the fading Marco Polo -- I argued that that some of the fare should be deducted from what I'd already given. The argument over the fare was in passionate Indonesian between him and two hotel staff, with me standing on the sidelines. He left with a modest tip.

All this hassle and piratry makes me wonder how we'll ever do anything more complex than take a taxi ride -- like saving the rainforest.

I'm learning a lot from taxi drivers, though.

A taxi driver in Bali was convinced that the red maple leaf of my country Canada is marijuana -- or what they call "ganja" here.

He was sure that we Canadians made marijuana our national symbol. Some people would be happy with that, but it's simply not true. And you can't smoke the maple leaf either.

I think I crushed the taxi driver's sense of what a progressive nation Canada is. Now I wonder how many people there are who went through this taxi and are now spreading the word about Canada around the world.

When those people see a Canadian smile, they may have the wrong idea.