The Poop Scoop: During our last few days in Jakarta, Helmut and I decide it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee…

Dear Hewdge readers, while in Jakarta I discover something incredible, and it has to do with coffee! Yes, I am talking about THE most expensive coffee in the world and it comes from Indonesia! Each coffee bean used in this product makes the most interesting ‘inner journey’, so to speak, that I feel it is a process worth describing. So how does this particular coffee, called KOPI LUWAK, become such a precious commodity? To begin with, the sweetest and ripest red coffee ‘cherries’ are eaten by a strange, cat-like mammal, called a Palm Civet.

Once inside this creature’s stomach, the coffee beans soak up enzymes and gastric juices, then carry on through the intestines until they are at last, excreted (or may I use the word defecated?). After emerging partially digested, the beans are gathered, sun-dried, and lightly roasted before eventually ending up costing a coffee drinker in New York or Tokyo $30 a cup! Isn’t that marvelous? To celebrate this triumph of profitable recycling, and in delicious anticipation of future dinner parties, Helmut and I grab every packet of Kopi Luwak we can lay our rubber-gloved hands on! Dear readers, this is truly a beverage not to be sniffed at!

What fun then, do Helmut and I have in store for our dear friends and future dining companions? Well, while our guests are sipping their après-dinner Kopi Luwak coffee, Helmut and I will insist on telling them, with the aid of colour diagrams, all about its scatological history and will SO ENJOY watching their faces as we talk feces! . Should there be the odd, humorless guest who starts to feel queasy, Helmut will point again to the graphic pictures, then back to their cup, and jokingly ask if they would like a REFILL!!

Leader of the Free World

While we are in Jakarta, we take the opportunity to visit the primary school once attended by a current leader of the free world. Simon Cowell? Rupert Murdoch? Lady Gaga?  No, I am referring of course, to Barak Obama, 44th President of the United States! In the modest front courtyard stands President Obama’s statue, which depicts him at the age of eight, smiling broadly and in a grandiose gesture, lifting up his hand towards what could possibly be the Debt Ceiling

Dear readers, this is a powerful and prescient moment, and to mark its solemnity, Helmut and I both reach into our Indonesian sweat-shop hoodie pockets for some gum…

Leaving Jakarta

Alas, a few days later, it is time to leave Jakarta for the next city on our Going Global tour -Saigon – but irritatingly, when Helmut and I arrive at the airport, we are told we cannot board our flight! Is this because we are overburdened with the Bombay? No, much worse! We cannot fly because we do not have the required visa to enter Vietnam! Immediately, Helmut and I spring into action and try offering a bribe, but unfortunately, stockpiling Kopi Luwak has depleted our resources…

Back in Jakarta for two extra days, we book a high-end hotel near a shopping mall, but to our surprise, find that the wall that separates our bedroom from our bathroom is made ENTIRELY of GLASS. This is because the bath and toilet being visible from the bedroom area, is the latest annoying hotel trend!

The next morning, I peer through our glass wall into the bathroom, and offer Helmut a cup of Kopi Luwak while he’s ‘powdering his nose’. But he is strangely irate and aims his new paperback ‘Civet Farming For Dummies’ directly at my Bombay Sapphire. I believe I also hear him mutter, “Dammit, leave me to recycle my recycled coffee beans in peace!”, but dear readers, I am FAR too busy restocking the mini-bar to answer the dear man…

Next posting: Helmut and I reach Saigon and see red at last!