BUKA BERSAMAN.. BREAKING THE RAMADAN FAST IN BOGOR, INDONESIA

Exactly 44 hours after leaving the Blue House among the Indians, I walked out of the customs hall at the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport at CGK in Jakarta..Visa on arrival, you pay them 25 dollars and they give you a stamp and the immigration official affixes the stamp on your passport and within a minute or so you are out of the immigration and customs hall.
The Flight was a Qatar Airways Flight from Doha to Jakarta, a nine hour flight, very similar to Miami to Paris. The breakfast had been exceptionally good, even by QR Qatar Airways standards..
My friends were waiting at the airport and very soon we were on our way to Bogor, Friday and it was around 430 pm and within one hour it is the time for Buka Bersaman, eating together, a metaphor for breaking the Ramadan Fast.
Jakarta is a very congested city and depending upon the time of the day, you can be in traffic for hours on end. We were not unlucky and within one hour and half we arrived at the Resto Gunung Mas, a family seafood restaurant in Sentul City which is in the outskirts of Bogor.
There were six of them, Javanese names do not give you a clue about their religious affiliation.. even though one has to assume that most people are moslem in this populous islamic country.
You know enough about Indonesian food, so what would you like? asked my friend, who is in charge of the Travel Agency here in Bogor.

A typical Indo meal was requested: fish, chicken, shrimp, green vegetables. Time passed quickly enough and i noticed that no one was gorging themselves but eating just enough to satisfy their apetite. 
We went upstairs to the offices of my friend, whom I had come to visit, the humble man of Bogor.
He has Nespresso coffee machine and it was nice to drink a familiar drink and it was time to repair to the hotel room to fall asleep.


I must say that there was not a single discussion about Religion or Ramadan but mainly the conversation was centered around the purpose of my visit to Bogor and Jakarta: Health and Happiness and Compassion towards others...