Jukka Riipinen watches the notes of his first trip. Sweet and crazy memories will be published as a novel in the future.
Rock in Jakarta. Jukka and the jolly good fellows: guitar player Bid, not working, and the sax player Lucky, working.
Bangkok, Suvarnabhumi airport. The 15th February 2010, 7.30 am.
The runways were busy.
Countryman sat in the Finnair Airbus. It was waiting for a permission to land. He came from Hankasalmi, a Finnish town of 5 500 people.
Now the countryman watched through window. All he saw was an Asian metropol with over 10 million people.
He had never been outside of his home country. Suvarnabhumi would the first place for the countryman to set his feet on foreign ground.
“What am I doing? This is crazy”, he thought, being amazed and scared, at thle same time.
“Did I make a mistake? A very big mistake?”
THE BEST DECISION
“No. I didn’t make”, says the countryman, Jukka Riipinen two years later. He’s at the capitol city of Indonesia, Jakarta. A city of perhaps 20 millions of people.
He’s sitting in his living room or, as he says, in the office: the Memories Hostel’s cafe on Jalan Jaksa -street.
“To leave was the best decision of my life.”
Memories Cafe is his living room because Jakarta is his other hometown now. And usually he lives at Jalan Jaksa.
Jukka knows the people there. If he doesn’t, he gets to know.
In Finland he used to be shy. Not here.
“He’s so friendly. Knows everyone here already. I like”, says Bid Ardian Rubberclock, a Jakartan rock artist.
Bid and Jukka met when Jukka was in Jakarta for the first time, on November 2011. Jukka doesn’t remember, how. He believes he was drunk.
The Finns usually are.
EVERYBODY KNOWS THE BEAR
Bid and his band play often in a music club Equal Park at Jalan Jaksa. It’s one of Jukka’s favourites.
And Bid is right. When Jukka’s sitting at the Memories or at the Equal, or walk on the street, many people shout: “Yucca, hello!”
“I don’t remember all of them”, Jukka admits. A little embarrassed.
As they say: everybody knows the monkey but the monkey doesn’t know anybody.
Jukka is not a monkey, not even a gorilla.
Rather a bear.
Very big man, with a long blond beard. A viking.
Though he’s Finnish, not Norwegian.
HAD TO GO
A few years ago Jukka hadn’t even thought he’d want to go abroad. In the wintertime 2009 he was unemployed and totally fucked up with doing nothing.
Jukka’s bigger brother was worried. He threw Jukka a dvd.
“Watch that so you’ve something to do!”
It was a Finnish gonzo-style travelling program, Madventures. Two guys, Riku Rantala and Tunna Milonoff, traveled all over the world and tried the weirdest things the local people do. And even more.
“I watched the dvd and realized I have to go”, Jukka remembers.
GUIDES FRIENDS IN ASIA
A year later he landed to Bangkok. He had a return ticket. Return was three months later.
Jukka took a bus to Khao San Road. A friend had tell him there he could find cheap accommodation.
During his first Asian trip, Jukka toured Thailand, Malaysia and Laos.
“I was one day in Burma, too.”
Jukka didn’t fly to Burma from Bangkok. He went there from Mae Sai, a small town in the northern Thailand.
Local man took Jukka to Burma with his motorbike. They toured there a day. They had to go back when they met a roadblock. No turists further than that.
After his first tour in the Southeast Asia Jukka knew that’s his life. Not exact place but seeing different places, different countries, cultures and continents. Different people.
Jukka has even his own travel agency, JR Travels. It’s not official, it’s humour. Still Jukka is a travel guide: he guide his friends all over Asia. Many of his friends have become interested in Asia when listening Jukka’s stories.
Now Jukka is on his third trip in the Southeast Asia. It’s his third time outside Finland.
NO RETURN
Jukka left Finland in the beginning of December. Now he hasn’t return ticket.
He’s been in Jakarta three weeks this time. It’s his second time here. The countryman fell in love with this supermetropol.
“It’s quite easy to stuck in here.”
Soon he’s to go somewhere. Savings are running out.
Jukka is a constructor. In Finland the work is done mostly in the summertime. It’s difficult when there’s a meter snow and -20 degrees Celsius.
Jukka is going to travel next to Australia. Finnish constructors are appreciated there.
YOU’LL NEVER WALK ALONE
He plans to get a job there and earn more money. Then the tour may continue.
“From Australia to the South America, maybe. Or somewhere, who knows?”
Just somewhere.
For sure Jukka’s coming back to Asia, and Indonesia. Many times. Jakarta is now one of his hometowns.
He doesn’t miss home yet. But the Finnish summer is a thing Jukka may not want to pass. The forests and the lakes, the midnight sun.
Jukka is a hunter. And a fisherman. When he’s working in the summertime in Finland, he always takes a boat after work and rows to the lake. For fishing.
“I’ve never bought a fish from a store. Hadn’t have need of that. Every time I have catched it myself.”
Jukka isn’t on a holiday. He’s on a travel.
On his own. That’s what he wants it to be.
“You may travel alone. But you’re not alone.”
Jukka and “the office”: The Memories Café.
