This one happened in Jakarta and even though I was right in the middle of a very large city and about a mile or two from the Australian Embassy (before it was bombed) it was still just as scary as being out in the middle of nowhere in Kalimantan.

This happened about three or four years ago....my Indonesian girlfriend and I decided to go clubbing after dinner on a busy Friday night. We both got all dressed up in nightclub gear...you know, the high heeled shoes...strapless dress...the works. She is a little bit more conservative in the dress department but when it came to drinking, she was way more....I mean WAY MORE...indulgent that I can ever hope to be.

I got along really well with her (until this night) because she is one of the very few who spoke reasonable English (albeit with a very difficult to understand accent). She was well known around the clubs because she was the Customer Relations Manager at Hotel Indonesia (before it was torn down and re-built) and she used to arrange fun evenings for guests at the hotel.

We went to a night club called Tiga Puluh (meaning 30...I guess for 30 year olds and over, I'm not sure..but the clientele were certainly not teenagers or in their early 20's) at the Le Meridien Hotel..a very nice 5 star joint right in the central business district of Jakarta.

There were many expats there, mostly men and many, many "ladies of the night" all dressed up in their very sexy gear. Some of them looked absolutely amazing and I remember thinking if these girls were in Australia, they would be models or actresses or something along those lines.

My friend Eta (short for Margaretta, she says...although I doubt many Indonesians would have called their baby daughters Margaretta...lol) started talking to some men she was obviously acquainted with....regular guests at Hotel Indonesia who were in Jakarta on business. They were nice gentlemen who bought us drinks...which I'm not really into, because I prefer to pay for my own...therefore not being obliged in any way....but she insisted that it was okay and I should let them pay, otherwise it would be insulting to them.

I'm not much of a drinker anyway so I thought one drink (which is my limit, before I  start to feel sick) would do for the whole night.

Much to my surprise (I didnt know at this stage that she even drank) Eta was downing her drinks like Kool Aid (???)...and she was mixing them which is not good. She was having glasses of wine here...a bourbon and coke there....a vodka and orange somewhere else...and goodness only knows what else she drank. I was starting to get worried because she was getting drunk and quite boiterous.

By 2am in the morning (we'd been there since about 11pm) I thought if I didnt get us out of there, I would not be able to handle her drunkeness and I was depending on her to get me home (I was still miles away from knowing the streets in and around Jakarta) safe and sound...and it started to look as though I was going to have to find a way to get her home instead.

We jumped into a Silverbird (limo type cab) which is the safer and more reliable taxi group...a little more expensive but worth the cost at 2am in the morning. If you saw the other local cabs....you wouldnt get in one of them in a fit.

Half way home, on a major road called Jalan Casablanca...right near the Marriott Hotel which was very recently bombed by terrorists, there was a police road block. They were stopping vehicles at random and checking id's which you are supposed to carry with you at all times. I knew this and I didnt take any notice..which was stupid of me.  But my little evening purse only had room for the obligatory purse pack of tissues...toilets in Jakarta never have enough toilet paper...not even in five start hotels....a tiny wallet just big enough to hold money, a lipstick,  little brush and a mirror compact and my mobile phone. No room for my ID card which was bigger than my purse.

Random meant every other car or so....so I thought (and prayed) they wouldnt stop us. Well, guess what...we got stopped. He asked our cab driver to pull into the lane they set up for the random checks and asked for our indentification cards (all in Indonesian by the way, so at this stage I didnt know what was happening or what they were asking for...and Eta was very drunk and couldnt focus.) Our cab driver spoke a little English (which is a Silverbird criteria to get a job as one of their taxi drivers) but not enough to explain in full what was really happening. Eta was being very noisy and I was getting very nervous.

Then, she did the one thing I was hoping she wouldnt do...she got out of the cab and started arguing with the (nasty looking) police officer. I was terrified!!. I kept asking her to get back in the cab but she wouldnt listen to me. She kept trying to tell the officer who she was, where she worked and that she would get a security officer from the hotel (where she worked) to come and identify us and she even lied and told the officer I was a guest from her hotel!!

Then she pulled out her mobile phone to call him and thought at 2.30 in the morning, her security officer would be awake and would actually come all the way from Hotel Indonesia (which was right across town) to deal with this situation.

Well, the police officer wasnt interested in that, he kept trying to get me to step out of the cab (there was no way I was moving out of there) and show him my identification. I kept repeating that I could not understand him, so the next thing, he opens the door, grabs my elbow and pulls me out of the cab. When Eta saw him do this, she freaked out and started yelling at him to leave me alone. She came over to him and was inches away from his face, yelling at him in Indonesian (I didnt want to know what she was saying to him...lol) and he kept trying to push her away. He told us both to stand right where we were and not move (I understood that from his sign language more than from what he was saying) so I pulled Eta over to where I was standing and told her to shut the hell up.

The officer left us there and walked over to the cab, told the driver to move out and leave....he wasnt even worried that we hadnt paid him for the fare, he just up and drove off.....I was mortified!!. It was almost 3 in the morning and where in Gods name were we going to get another cab at this hour.

The other thing that was distressing me BIG time was, I was busting to go to the toilet, (drinks do that to me everytime) and combined with fear I guess, I was very, very close to wetting myself.

The officer who pulled me out of the cab had gone off to talk to one of the other officers working the road block (obviously discussing what they planned to do with these two women....one who was very drunk and one who couldnt speak a word of Indonesian...and both without ID's).

I told Eta my dilema and told her if I couldnt get to a toilet in about ten seconds, I was going to pee right there in the middle of the road. By this time, a few bystanders (lord knows where they came from at that hour of the morning) had gathered around just to watch what was going on. Eta walked over to one of them and asked if he knew of a toilet anywhere nearby.

We were right in front of a mall (which was closed) and he told us there was a toilet in the basement with access to it from the side alley. Obviously he was a night watchman of some sort because he had keys to the door of the basement.

Eta "hollered" at the officers that we were going to the toilet in the basement and grabbed my arm and pulled me with her down the alley without even waiting for permission from the officers. One of the officers followed us into the basement and stood outside the toilet door but he wouldnt let us close it.

The "toilet" did not have a toilet....all there was  was a cement basin on the floor, a faucet alongside and of course no toilet paper....(and it stank to high heaven).

We were both busting by this time and didnt care anymore so we both squatted over the basin for much needed relief. 

The officer then followed us back out to the road and by this time the other officers had pulled up the make-shift lane and finished their random stops. The road was now very quiet with just Eta, myself and the three police officers. She kept trying to tell them that the security officer from the hotel was on his way and that we would just wait for him (which was a lie because she wasnt able to get hold of him....and her mobile battery had died as well).

So we waited about 20 or 30 minutes for the security officer who was still asleep somewhere obviously, and then the officers were getting pissed off and did not want to wait any longer. They told us to get into their vehicle....Eta freaked again and told them we were not getting into their vehicle...so they literally pushed us in and took us to the local police station. It was now after 3.30am and the station was very dark and quiet and I was starting to freak out myself.

This police station was a building inside a compound surrounded by concrete walls and a gate which was left open. I asked Eta if this really was a police station or the local jail house. She didnt know, she was feeling ill by this stage and we were both very thirsty.

The officers had walked into the building but for some reason they left us outside without saying anything so we sat down on the concrete steps not knowing what to do.

Outside of the double gates there was a little cart with a vendor selling bottles of water and some snacks (obviously he was there for the night shift officers who would come out and buy water and snacks from him throughout the night). Eta got up and started walking towards the gates saying she was going to buy us some water. I got scared and told her to stay put but she walked off anyway. All I could do was follow her out and hope it didnt get us into more trouble.

The officers came out and watched us walking back into the compound with our bottles of water but they didnt say anything. Finally they asked us to get into another vehicle and I thought for sure this time they were going to take us to a proper jail house for the night.  Eta kept asking them where we were going but they would not tell her. We drove for about half an hour but thankfully in the direction of the suburb where I lived.

I asked Eta how much money she had left and we both checked our purses and had almost 500,000 rupiahs between us....around $50.00 US. So I asked her to speak to the officers....there were two of them.....and offered them 250,000 each to take us home instead of wherever they were taking us. After lots of negotiations where we actually had to show them that was all the money we had left in our purse, they agreed and headed to my house.

They dropped us off at the end of my street (the security gates were up for the night), I gave them the money and Eta and I walked to home. It was almost 5am in the morning and she had to be at work at 7.30am that morning.

I was mentally and physically exhausted, and I got very angry with her for putting us in a situation by being drunk and fighting with the police officer. If she had just stayed in the cab and talked to them and explained why we didnt have our ID's they probably would have just let us go. I dont get along with her very much anymore after that night...we dont see each other much....last I heard she got a job doing the same thing at another hotel since they tore down the Hotel Indonesia.

I guess this isnt exactly being taken into custody, but close enough.

The End.