Note to Self: I Am a Stupid Emerging Markets Poser.

So. I like to pride myself on being slightly more badass than your usual expat or traveling reporter when it comes to emerging markets. I don't fly business or first class, and I don't hire car services. I hate making a schedule before I leave prefering to scrounge around locally to find great stories. I'm incredibly zen when things go wrong or take too long. Forty weeks in developing countries, and I have found my peace with "island time," "African time," "Indian time," "Brazilian time" or any other time you can throw at me.

Meet me in any country where I've spent more than than a week, and I will take you to an awesome, very local, off-the-beaten path place for dinner and tell you what to order. (cc: Anthony Bourdain) My friend Christopher is a bad-ass travel reporter who spends months at a time just roaming around parts of Africa,and I managed to impress him with a restaurant choice in Rwanda.

"How'd you find this place?" he asked, as our RAV-4 lurched up a clay, deeply-furroted, steep hill to a small bluff side restaurant lit by candlelight, excelling in its whole, freshly-caught-and-grilled Tilapia.

"Oh, it's just a little place I know," I shrugged.

Yep. I'm just a traveling badass.

Except, I'm not really. I'm a traveling bad-ass compared to many Americans, sure. But I've realized in the past 48 hours just how much I rely on a hotel staff-- even a bad hotel staff. This epiphany hasn't hit because I've had great service.  And not because I've had poor service either. But because I'm staying in a friend-of-a-friend's apartment in Jakarta, and I've had no service at all. The apartment is great, like a nice hotel room, but the thing that missing is the human layer. No one just downstairs helping me flag down cabs, get directions, hook up my wifi, get a SIM card, bring me food at 1 am. I can't dial zero and get anything, partially because there's no phone.

I don't want to give the impression I've been neglected-- quite the opposite. People have been swarming offering to help me out with things since I've been in Jakarta. I keep having to say: "I'm fine, guys!" But a hotel staff is different. They aren't friends or sources. They are people there to do stuff for you and trained to relate to obnoxious tourists and Westerners. The problem with that? They enable obnoxious toursts and Westerners. Yes, I've had to face, even me.

Pampering is fine, but it creates distance if you're trying to understand a place. Just wandering (read: getting utterly lost in a slum) around my apartment yesterday, I got insight to Jakarta I didn't see from looking out my window at this same neighborhood from the Shangri-La the trip before. Now that I've had a larger taste of non-hotel life, I may panhandle borrrowed apartments everywhere. My badass pride is at stake.