After my temple run concluded in Yogyakarta, I went back to Jakarta for a couple of days before my Cebu Pacific flight back to Manila. At the hostel, I met two other Filipinas who became my accidental tourist buddies. Since we were all going home the same night, we decided to spend our last day just roaming the city aboard a tuk-tuk, stopping for some sights and shopping along the way. After walking out of the National Monument park (Merdeka Square), we were approached by a thin, middle-aged man wearing blue slacks and a tucked-in polo, introducing himself as an employee of the local tourism office.

Famous beat writer Ken Kessey unofficially formed "Merry Pranksters" in the 60's. It is composed of a group of people bonded by a singular thread that weaves them all together. Theirs was a choice of an unconventional lifestyle, of living communally and taking road trips across the United States (while high with something - LSD?). It was a set-up that have provided them a rich set of experiences, that somehow made it into works of literature, as most of them are writers in the said era. To know more about these gregarious people, reading Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" should be a good start.