Indonesia: Life In The Islands

Workin' It

I realized today that I haven’t written anything on this blog about one of the loves of my life in Malang—my gym. I searched for a gym the first four months in Malang and finally found one in early December. It’s called Istana Dieng.

I first knew this was my gym when I walked in the front entrance and saw that suspended from the ceiling were giant portraits of people Indonesians consider to be American paragons of fitness and manliness: John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, and Brad Pitt circa 1985. From the entrance you can also see the neon light up stairs, the many koi ponds, and the discoteque/bowling alley. There’s a steak restaurant downstairs, a Japanese reaturant upstairs, and an ice-cream stand by the gym entrance. In the back is a water park: three huge pools with slides and suspended walkways that are wrapped around them. I almost started hyperventilating; it was that beautiful a building. And I hadn’t even been inside the main gym yet.

Note: the following may seem like an exaggeration, but it’s absolutely true.

You walk into the main gym and plastered all over the walls are huge posters of extremely jacked men and women. My favorite features a muscular woman squeezing the bicep of a giant man and a thought bubble saying, “Women love men with HUGE muscles!” Next to that is a sign advising that in order to get the largest muscles, you need to pump the big weight. This can be achieved through dedicated and strong lifting partners, says the next sign. What make these signs so funny is that the people in the gym are the smallest, least muscular people I’ve ever laid eyes on. They struggle to do lat pull downs with fifty pounds and gawk at me when I can do eighty. My relative beastliness here is another reason I love Istana Dieng.

When I went in my first day to work out, an abnormally tall and fit Indonesian man named Taufiq introduced himself to me and said he would help me train, because “I obviously had a lot to work to do and I was very big.” I started laughing and allowed him to measure my body fat and weigh me. I’m not going to write the measurements here, but they weren’t too bad considering I hadn’t exercised in about five months. A good stomach virus every month or so helps to keep the weight off, I’ve discovered. Taufiq, however, could barely hide his horror.

“You are very big. You need to lose ten pounds this month and twenty more by the end of March (I actually checked these numbers on the BMI scale and those weight measurements would give me a BMI of 14, which is decidedly NOT healthy). When I argued that I had half a foot on everyone else in the gym and that’s why I was bigger, Taufiq told me that making excuses would prevent me from ever losing weight. Well, that settled it I guess.

There isn’t really an AC at Istana Dieng, so my workouts are limited to about 45 minutes of trotting on a jerky treadmill. Apparently their commitment to muscles extends more to the weight machines than building lean muscles on the treadmill. Occasionally Taufiq tells me I look “maybe not as big today” and that I should run faster.

I can only run for so long before some kind of class will start behind the treadmills. The soundtrack in Istana Dieng is usually pretty standard: the ATL CD by T.I., anything by Tupac, and my personal favorite, 3 6 Mafia. Nothing is edited at all, like most rap in Indonesia. They want to pass a law making tank tops illegal, yet they blast music about bitches and drugs. Beats me.

Every once and a while I’m lucky enough to be at the gym when line dancing class takes place. Indonesian women and the occasional man in workout gear don cowboy hats and prance around to whatever kind of music you line dance to. I thought this was my favorite class. BUT the other day the cheerleading class took over the top spot. One woman, dressed in a tiny skirt and a half top, energetically led four other women in an hour of cheering with pom poms and hand claps. This was all performed to Madonna and Britney Spears.

The great thing about Istana Dieng is that because everyone stares at me so often, I feel absolutely free to gawk back. I get off the treadmill and laugh at the people doing line dances; I see nothing wrong with staring at the people on the machines until they get uncomfortable and get off. Unfortunately, this policy came back to haunt me today.

I ride a mikrolet for half an hour and then take a motorcycle (or ojek) up the hill to the gym each day. So when I got there today and realized I had forgotten my shorts, going home wasn’t really an option. So I went to the front desk and asked if they had anything I could wear. Here are the options they presented me with:

1. A pair of men’s running shorts, like the ones they wear in the Oylmpic marathon—short and sweet. Basically flesh colored underwear with three inches of fabric on each leg.

2. A pair of white, size small children’s capri pants from Old Navy. They were stretch jean material.

3. A pair of shorts which I swear to God wouldn’t have fit me anytime in the last fifteen years. The waist must have been twelve inches.

4. A pair of pink spandex pants.

The girls who work at the gym are my age and find my awkwardness and hugeness extremely entertaining. They made me put on the spandex pants first. They were so tight I couldn’t walk. They assured me I looked beautiful.

Options 2 and 3 were not viable; nothing about my knee was getting into them. So Option 1 seemed to be it. I put on the shorts, covering up exactly 4% of my legs. I let the girls laugh at me for a while, and then just decided to own it. I’m in a gym in Indonesia that idolizes Robert Mitchum, has a bowling alley, and offers line dancing classes. Might as well fit in.

So I walked across the mirror paneled room, smiling and nodding at each exerciser who stopped to stare and point and giggle at me. As I told one especially giggly man, “Oh please…you WISH you had these shorts on.” And he just nodded and giggled some more. It was one of my most satisfying workouts ever.

posted by Caitlin @ 7:03 PM