Don’t Judge a City by Its Travelers: 3 Lessons I Learned in Jakarta on How to Live a More Fulfilling Life

Most people spend their entire life stressed without ever giving a single thought as to what it is they really want or what's important to them. See, I'm here to cut through all that noise, connecting you to yourself and the life that you were meant to live. I used to slave away at a corporate job that I hated, but I broke through the social norms and pursued my passion. As a result, I own my own coffee company. I'm Espresso Sommelier, and I get to travel the world. You too can live a life that you love, but it starts with getting clear about what you want. It starts with a new decision. I'm your host, Donnie Rouse, and you are listening to the podcast One Life. Don't judge a city by its travelers. This past November, I was traveling around Asia. Specifically, I went to Korea, Kuala Lumpur, Indonesia, and Taiwan. Fast forwarding to the Indonesian part. I was flying into Jakarta, and when I was speaking with other travelers, everyone was saying, spend one day in Jakarta and then get the hell out of there. It's just a big, dirty city. And it wasn't just one traveler that actually mentioned that to me. There were many travel near. Not many. Nearly every single traveler that I met that had visited Jakarta was like, stay a day. Get the hell out of there. But I've had enough experiences to tell me otherwise. I've had experiences where people told me not to spend a day in a city, and then I ended up going there, and it ends up being one of my favorite cities. Case in point was Casablanca in. In. In Morocco, as well as Genoa in Italy. Both places, people were like, they're dirty. They're port cities. You know, transit and then move, move on. I ended up going there and having a great time. So as a result of this experience, I was able to see Jakarta from a different, different perspective than most travelers. And so the reason my intention for coming on here today is to have you look past the biases that you may get from other people, not just in travels, but in life. Because it is by doing that, right, by going against that and allowing yourself to have the experience. One, you have new experience, and as a result, you have a different perspective. Two, you realize that the friends you meet along the way are what make the experience. And. And then three, what was my third? Is that you get to experience new things. And I'll go into how those experiences allowed me to just live curiously in life. So in Jakarta. I arrive in Jakarta and it was nighttime. My Uber or my driver was taking me through this area, and it was very, very dimly lit. There weren't a lot of streetlights. And as we're driving through what looked like a shanty village, I was freaking out. I was like, oh my God, where the hell am I? Hope this car doesn't break down because I'm gonna die. Like, I'm gonna get murdered. It's just gonna happen. Please let me get there in one piece. I arrived to my hostel and I am just kind of flustered because of what I had just experienced. To give you a little bit more detail, as in what I experience, I'm looking out there, we're driving down this narrow street and there was just like hordes of people sitting along the sides of the street. And you couldn't really make out the faces, but all you saw were like, eyes. And they knew they were, they were, or at least I assumed that they were fixed on me as I was driving by and then looking at the buildings on one of the sides. One side was like water and the other side was, was houses. And they were, they look like shanty. You could tell they were broken down. There wasn't. Might not even been running water. They just looked very, very run down. And when I got there, I was flustered and I started talking to a couple, a couple other travelers I met and was pretty much at that point I was confirming as well, you know what, I'm just going to stay here for half a day and then I'm going to move on. Morning comes and I decide to venture out into the world. I started to explore. I was like, you know what, let me, let me go a little, a couple streets. Let me see what that feels like. As I started walking down, I started realizing, well, you know what? This place is not so bad. It doesn't feel as unsafe as I thought it felt when I was arriving at night. So lesson number one is that anytime you arrive to a city at night, it is often, at least in my experiences, very different in the day. So let that be lesson number one. Lesson number two. As I was going around walking in the city, I was walking solo and I was having a great time. Because one of the things I love about traveling to a new place is that it opens your eyes, you become curious. You start to release all of the, the, the, the expectations that a place is supposed to have. You just live curiously. So as I was going through, I was walking towards the Chinatown because there was an old coffee shop that I wanted to visit to try to try a. Something called Cham, which is tea coffee and tea coffee and I think evaporated milk. I'm walking down and I see this giant mall there. I'm like, that place looks cool. Then I see in the window a sign that says Karaoke Cafe. I was like, if that's the best combination I've ever heard in my life about coffee and karaoke, what could be better than that? I walked in there and there's not a single soul in the place. And by when I say the time I walked in there was probably around like 11 o' clock in the morning. I walk in there, I looked, you know, I see people that the bar is fully staffed and I see someone like in the back room manning the karaoke machine and there being a giant stage. I walked in, I'm like, are you guys open? They're like, yeah, yeah, we're open. I was like, okay. Possible to sing? Oh, yeah, yeah, it's possible. So in that position, I was like, what the hell do I do, right? I just had a ton of coffee at the hostel because they had a cafe. I'm like, what do I do? I could have another coffee here, but I'm already a little over caffeinated. The trip's been a very caffeinated one. And I was like, well, why not? Plus it was so stinking hot. I was. By the time I. Once I stepped out of my hostel, it was like insta sweat. I started, I was like walking in, my shirt was just moist to the touch. Like you could touch my shirt. And it just, it was damp. I got used to it. So I said, all right, what the hell, it's morning, I can have a beer. So I got one of those giant like beers. That's like two beers in one. It's like a half, literally. And. And we're. I was sitting there and I put a song and I put my favorite song, Babylon. And as I was there, I put my set, my recorder up and I started singing and everyone in the bar was kind of cheering and it was just an awesome time and it was unexpected. And the reason I tell you this is because of that curiosity that I was living with. I. You know, I. I see a cafe. Oh, that looks like it's interesting. Let me go in there. I see this store here that's selling Buddhist beads. Oh, that looks cool. Let me go wander in there. It allowed me to be more curious being in a new place. Because what happens when you're in familiar environments? The law of familiarity kicks in. All of a sudden you're like, oh, I know what that is. It was like, oh. A new restaurant opened up in downtown Stanford. I've been downtown Stanford a hundred times. Hey, I'm sure it's nothing. It's nothing great. So you want to constantly put yourself in new things and look at it from. Not a beginner's mindset, because that's a different way of looking, but just looking at everything with fresh eyes, because that is the only way that you are going to really experience something different from life. Otherwise, your mind tends to go in its own patterns, and you go blind to life and the world around you. Now, let's fast forward to probably the most important aspect of traveling. One of the things I love the most and one of the reasons why I travel multiple times a year, and it is the friends you make, right? I always laugh when people like, oh, Jakarta, it's a big, dirty city. I happen to like that big, dirty city. It was one of my. One of the highlights of my trip. And the reason why it was one of the highlights of my trip was because of the people I met. Like, I can't even hold a straight face. I met one guy from Holland. His name is Bink. He was such a freaking who. We had a blast together. But I'll tell you about the. How we started this friendship, because we ended up hanging out two days in a row. It was, I think, later in the evening at the hostel, and I had just gotten back from that day of doing the karaoke and then hitting Chinatown, trying the different coffee shops. I come back and I meet the two German girls and a Dutch guy named Bink. As we're talking, I'm like, you guys. What are you guys doing? There's a karaoke place. Do you want to go tonight? And, you know, everyone's like, I'm sure. What the hell? Why not? What else are we going to do here? And we ended up going there. And at first, everyone was slow to open up. One of the things I pride myself in being able to do is to get people comfortable and out of the comfort zone. So we go there, and immediately I ordered, you know, a first round of beers. When you're traveling, a lot of people are like, you know, they're. They have. They may have, like, six months. I think Bink was traveling for six months. So people who. They have, like, all this, you know, all of this time left in their trip. So they're, like, looking at the finances like, oh, shit, all right, I can't spend too much here. And so I immediately, right out of the. Right off, right at the starting gates, I said, listen, let me buy the Rounds. So I bought rounds for everybody. We're all sitting there drinking in these small cups, which is one of the ways I like to drink, because it makes the drink a social affair. So we're drinking out of these very, very small glasses that may have like 4 ounces in it, but as a result of that, you're pouring more, you're drinking more, you're. You're. You're talking more. So that night I ended up having about 12 to 15 beers, but really they were literally like 4oz glasses, so they didn't have that much. I'm exaggerating. We may have had like two beers each, but it felt like that much more because we were kept refilling the glasses. So back to the story. We are in here, we're breaking the ice, we're having drinks, and all of a sudden, you know, we all start going to sing. I went first, obviously, and then slowly everyone else started to join in, and we're all cheering each other on. And again, we were the only people in the place. Oh, no, we were not. There was one other place, and I'll explain the story there. So we are all karaoke. We're having a good time. Bink goes and does this Dutch rapper that I had heard when I was in Penang in Kuala Lumpur. So I was like, oh, do you know the song? He's like, oh, of course. It's very popular in Holland. So I was like, can you sing this song? So he went up there and was rapping to that song, and it was awesome. I have it on video. And then next it was the. The two German girls. It was their turn to sing, and they were nervous about going to sing together. So, I mean, solo. So they're like, you know what, let's go. We'll just sing together. So they're up there and they're singing 99 Loft Balloons. Again, my suggestion, because that's the easy one for if you're German. And they do it. They. They do such a great job. But most of all, they're having a blast. They're just having a good time doing it. And so they come down and saying. And this is the one. The part I was saying, well, we weren't alone attached to this. To this karaoke cafe was a. I don't know, some kind of, like, shop that was selling homemade, like, quilts. I mean, they. So they were selling a bunch of things. It looked like an auto store as well. And the guy who was the owner came over to one of the German girls, and he complimented her, she was a blonde girl. Blonde girls usually get complimented in these countries. And he comes over and starts asking her if he could sing a song with her. And she's like, all right, well, sure. Moments later, the guy's wife comes by, he stands up, she smacks him in the face, and then goes. Leaves and goes in the back room. It was pretty, pretty, pretty interesting. Long story short, that was just one of the experiences. We end up leaving that cafe and something happened. And another benefit travel is that you start to learn. You get new ideas, and you learn different customs. When I was there prior, there was no paying for the songs of karaoke. They're like, hey, you got a drink? Go sing a song. When we were leaving this time, like, okay, well, you owe all this money for all the songs, you're saying. I'm like, wait a minute. Why didn't. You didn't charge me this morning? Why. Why are you charging me now? And she's like, well, that's how we do it here. I was like, well, no, then let me know up front. You know, I brought everyone here because we were drinking. That's why we kept drinking. And so that was the night. And so we built a very, very tight bond. And all of us ended up going out the following day to just kind of explore the city and look at one of the monuments. And I'll bring up a different point about travel is by opening yourself up to experience and the people that you meet. One of the guys that we had met at the hostel, his name was Al. Al was Indonesian. He's actually from the island of Bali. And when I first met him, he was very. He just looked like there was a dark cloud on him. If you're listening to this, Al, I'm sorry, but I love you. And it ends up turning out to be a good story, but he just felt like he had this dark cloud on him. And we invited him out that. That day, and I was like, oh, man, he's got to be a drag. But as we got to know him, he ended up being freaking awesome because he started to open up like a flower, and he started to bloom. Later that night, the girls ended up going off somewhere else, and Al Bink and I, we all decided to go to a place called New New Jakarta City. New Jakarta City is basically like the new Chinatown. It's this new development with all these really, really nice shops, eateries, a boardwalk along the water, and tons of live music. So we are out there, and Al is really. He's had a few drinks now because he wasn't drinking earlier that day. He was drinking, but now he's had a few drinks, and he's making known his preferences on the. The type of girls that he likes. And just a different side that I had seen before. We're walking down the boardwalk, and every single singer there was freaking amazing. I was like, holy shit. Every single one of these can be, like, a top 40 recording artist. One bar in particular caught. There was a female singer up there, and she was singing, and I was blown away. And I was hanging out, looking, and someone said, hey, do you guys want to come in for a drink? Sure. And as we were sitting there, before we even order a drink, they were like, who else wants to come sing? And I looked around, the place is packed. And I'm like, I'll go up. And so they're like, well, what do you want to sing? I was, well, what do you know? And I'm like, how about Babylon? And he. They listened. They never heard the song before. And then, like, I let him play it, and he was listening to it. He was a talented musician, this guy who was playing the keyboard, listening to it, and he just started playing, like, the chorus part, which. The same few notes over and over. It. It didn't really sound anything like the song, but if you know Babylon, then you could kind of make it out. So I started. I went up there and I started singing like, Al and Bank are having a great time. Because they're just laughing at me. They're laughing at, like, this guy has freaking balls. He's just right in the middle of this bar, singing in front of anybody. And the song doesn't even sound good. Needless to say, shortly after that, the owner of the bar complies. Man, that was really good. I think he was being nice, or maybe he wasn't. And he bought us a round. So we ended up having, like, I don't even know how many beers we had that night. It was an awesome night. And lo, what I'm trying to say is, don't judge a book by its cover as it relates to people as well as how it relates to city, because there are so many factors that influence how you experience a city. Just like there are so many factors on how you experience life. So let me recap, right? Number one, don't take anyone else's word for it, because everyone brings something different to an experience, and as a result, they're coloring that experience with their experience. So allow yourself to come up with your own opinion about it. Could be anything. It could Be a city. It be. Could, it could be a person. It could be an experience that you want to try, but everyone tells you you won't like it and you're like, ah, well, maybe I won't try. It could be anything. Have your own experience. Secondly, live curiously. We get into these, these tunnel vision modes of tunnel vision where we don't allow ourselves to just live curiously and explore different things. Without going off on a tangent, I was at Home Depot and I was buying a bathroom vanity. And I'm going in, I'm rushing into the store, like sprinting into it, and then I'm sprinting out. I realized like, as I'm coming out of store, I'm like, this sucks man. Like, why am I, like, I'm stressed. Why am I stressed? I'm buying a vanity. Then I remembered when I was in Indonesia, like I went to this department store and I was like, it was like I was a child at Toys R Us. I was in there, I was looking around like, oh, wow, look at this coffee drink. And I ended up buying. This is for a different story, but I end up buying this coffee because it had all these special herbs. And it comes to find out it's like a coffee drink that men have before they have sex because it's supposed to stimulate you. And I was going there and it was like everything was new and it was just my approach, it was just my mindset, nothing shifted. So as I was walking out of Home Depot, I was like, what was different between Indonesia and now? Clearly I was in Indonesia, but it was just my mindset in being able to be immersed in that moment and to enjoy just the experience of walking. Literally, I walked to this department store which took like half an hour to 40 minutes. Like I was just immersed. So immerse yourself in day to day life. Try to, you know, when you say, ah, it's going to be this way, that means go, do it, do something different. And then lastly, and the most important again is the friends you meet are what's going to make your experience. Like, I am so happy. It blows my mind that I had such a great time. Even Bink and I, we text and we were just, he's like, yo, I, I miss you, man. He's like, we, we exchanged it like that brother love. And he was just like, I miss you. It was such a great time because we, we all just connected so well. And I think that is one of the things really, really missing from society today is that there's all of this surface connection. It's not even a freaking connection. Like, you know, it's not real. If you want to have a real connection, you need to get intimate. And I'm not talking about intimate in the physical sense. I'm talking about intimate getting to know somebody beyond what's there in the surface. Travel's awesome because what, for me, I'm stripped when I'm in traveling. Everything's off. But when I'm home, I usually will have a little bit of a show on. I try not to, but I'm honest with myself and I'm aware. And so what that time together spends. There is a quote I'd recently read. It talks about intimate. Like, how much intimate time do you actually get with somebody? And in this book, they were saying spending four hours with somebody, you might get 20 minutes of intimate time. 20 minutes of intimate time after spending four hours. And that's four hours of just talking to the person, not being distracted by what's on your phone or doing the computer or watching a TV show. Right? Because that is not intimate time. Intimate time is where you start to get to know. You start to appreciate the people for who and what they are. So that is the third of the lessons that I want to impart to you. And hopefully this will get you to. I mean, my real intention. I'd love you to go out and travel the world, go to these places that are not the highlight reels of Instagram, because that is where you're going to meet the real people. That is where you can have the authentic experiences. Why I avoid Bali? I didn't go anywhere close to it. So, I mean, but in. In life, it's so easy to forget that if we want to experience the same emotions, we simply. We simply have to do the same thing, approach it with the same mindset, and we will have the same emotions. But we. And I. And I speak with myself included in this because I'm very guilty of it. I'm getting better, but I am very guilty of it, of playing almost like playing a different role when I'm home versus when I'm abroad. And when I say a different role, meaning like here, I try to focus on work and getting things done. When I play, I play. I play really well. So that's it, man. That is all I have I wanted to share with you, you know, get out there, explore new worlds, form your own opinions, live curiously, make amazing friends, because those memories are what you're going to remember for the rest of your life. And that is it. That's all I've got for you guys. Guys travel the world. Get out there. So I hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you liked it, if you learned something or at the very least if you found it entertaining, there's much more where that came from. But hit that like button, hit the subscribe share with somebody, leave a review. I can't tell you how much that helps because the only way this podcast will grow is if people like you say this is good. I like it. You should listen. So please do that. If you have any questions or would like to leave a comment, you could do so by visiting my website@www.donnyrouse.com that is D O N N Y R A U S.com that is all I've got for you guys today. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Remember you only get one life. Live fully, live passionately and most of all live now. God bless you guys and I will see you again soon.