July 15
11:55pm Java time (Thailand time- we went back an hour from Malay time)
This is what lonely planet said about Jakarta. Unfortunately, it's pretty correct. Jakarta is not a nice city. I would only recommend coming here because I think it is good and important to experience and see cities like this. It really reminded me a lot of India. There is so much trash in the city. Piles and piles of it. There were even people digging through it. The smells are unbearable sometimes. Its actually kind of funny because New York is nick named the Big Apple and Panji said Jakarta is nicknamed the Big Durian. Durian is a fruit that supposedly smells terrible. Some people like it and others say it tastes how it smells. I do need to try one at some point. There is a ton of traffic. Lots of people. However, the people are rather clean and healthy looking compared to India. The streets and restaurants are also very clean compared to how they would be in India. It was definitely a lot to process after being in Southeast Asia for so long. Panji said Jakarta is the largest city in Southeast Asia. I don't know if is it larger than Ho Chi Minh or not.
I'm glad that all our breakfasts are included in Indonesia because it is way nicer than having to find your own every morning. Panji said that we may only need $200 for all of Indonesia. That makes me super excited because Thailand was really expensive. Annnd, Australia will be expensive as hell.
We met Panji in the lobby at 9am. He took us for a little tour of Jakarta today.
We started off taking a taxi ride from the hotel which is in the nicer part of town, to the ship yard. It was really confusing because we went through a toll booth thing and had to pay 2,000 rupiah for each of our tickets but there were only 4 of us in a cab (plus the driver) and we ended up paying a total of 11,000 rupiah ($1.10). It is about 10,000 rupiah to the USD.
The ship yard was very loud. Like lots of noises. I could barely hear Panji speak. He said that a lot of the people who work there aren't from Jakarta and they live in other places and lower their standards of living and live away from their family. They make more money by doing this and that allows them to send a lot more money home but they also don't need to spend that much to live in Jakarta. He also said a lot of the products are loaded onto ships in Jakarta and transported to the rest of Indonesia because they have the supplies here. We saw motorcycles being lifted onto the ships. There was also a lot of dirt and dust and pollution in the air. We saw one guy fixing a hole in one of the ships as well.
We walked along the ship yard and then Panji took us away from it and led us through the streets. The streets here are really busy. More like India I guess. Lots of cars and motorbikes and buses and tuk tuks (which they call something else that I can't remember now and they look the most similar to the tuk tuks in India). We walked along the side of the street for a while and it's also loud. There were lots of horns and reving engines. There are some areas where there are traffic guards there to help us cross the street but Panji basically did the Vietnam thing and went across and stopped traffic with his hand. There were also areas where you could see breaks in the walls and there was just massive amounts of piles up garbage.
He took us to the area that used to be where the coast was and where ships had to pass through but now there is more land on the other side which is all reclaimed land. We got to go up one of the towers and look out over Jakarta. Everyone kept saying it was pretty depressing. I thought it was pretty cool. I love looking out over cities because I feel like it is so descriptive of the city. We could see slums and city and lots of vehicles on the roads. It's very brown looking. Not very pretty at all.
Then we walked around Kota, the old city. That's pretty much the only thing the lonely planet book says to do here. There is a fantasy land and a sea world but I feel like they would be really disappointing compared to home. Marie and David went to sea world and said it was pretty boring. Katie and Jillienne kept talking about how there really wasn't much to see. And things to look at wise or things to visit wise, that is very much true. However, I still took so many photos. And I mean, it is me, but I feel like saying there isn't anything to see is a little off because there is so much to see. When you aren't busy visiting monuments and looking at things it gives you time to watch the people and see what their living conditions and daily life is like. So, even though there wasn't "too much to see" I still really enjoyed the time walking around and taking in the surroundings. Marion said something to me about how we really were staying in the nicest part of Jakarta. She couldn't believe it was true when we first talked about it yesterday with Panji.
After walking around Kota we took a public bus to the National Monument. The public bus was air conditioned and very clean which surprised me since the city isn't too clean. However, I think there are also other buses as well because driving in yesterday I saw a smaller, really old, really dirty bus with no windows and a bunch of Indonesians in it. So, although I like the local experience, I'm glad it wasn't too local.
The bus system (transjakarta) was kinda strange. There are specific bus lanes on the streets and there is an elevated area where the bus stops to let people on and off. It's a lot higher than street level but its where the doors on the bus open up to. Here, you definitely need to "mind the gap". It's huge. We bought a single use ticket which cost 3,500 rupiah (about $0.35).
After we got off the bus we had to walk to the National Monument. This area seemed a lot nicer. There were clean sidewalks and nice wooden benches lined the walk. The other side of the fence there were also trees. Then, we saw a big White House that is where the president conducts his meetings (he does not live here) and the entrance to the monument.
The monument area was pretty nice. There was some construction going on though around the grounds. We paid 15,000 rupiah ($1.50) to have access to both levels and go all the way up to he top. The tower is white and is 133m high. You can take the stairs, but the elevator ride took what seemed like 2 or 3 minutes so I can't even imagine how long walking up the stairs must take.
The elevator in itself was an experience. We crammed 11 people into a very small elevator. Personal space definitely didn't exist for that ride.
At the top you could see the whole city. There is a huge mosque and a church. There are also some skyscraper areas. It's not the most beautiful city, but it was still pretty cool to see. I got caught up in taking photos and ended up losing the group... Surprise. I did manage to find a few others and when I walked out of the exit I couldn't find the rest of the group. Then, Marion yelled my name and I found them. They were waiting in the shade of the entrance/exit. We then got into taxis and took them back to the hotel. The taxi rides are pretty cheap here and they are all on the meter.
By the time we got back I was exhausted. Soooo tired! I went up to the room and fell asleep pretty quickly. And managed to sleep for 3 and a half hours. Which is why it is 2:30am and I am still awake. So although it felt great at the time, in retrospect that may have been a poor decision on my part. I'm not sure if I was exhausted from being on sensory overload again or if I was just sleep deprived. It could be both.
At 7pm we met Panji for dinner and he took us to the backpacker street for dinner. It was actually a really nice area. It's different from Khao San though. It's more restaurants in buildings with a few food stands on the street. Dinner was really good and I was hungry since I skipped lunch to sleep. I had sayur asem which was a weird spicy soup with veggies in it. I wanted more of a morning glory type dish but they ran out of that and Panji suggested it. It didn't really make me feel like I got veggies. I also had sate ayam which was really good. It's chicken on sticks with peanut sauce. Instead of large pieces of chicken like at home though, it's a lot smaller. They're Indonesian chickens I guess. The peanut sauce is so good. I also got a banana split which had no banana in it and a lot I chocolate ice cream so I gave most of it to Jillenne since I really don't like chocolate ice cream. Panji also got some type of chicken satays from the street with a what is supposed to be spicy sauce but I didn't think it was too spicy. My spice tolerance has definitely increased exponentially during this trip.
Jillienne and Katie both finally got money so we settled their debt at dinner when we were just sitting around doing nothing after everyone had eaten. Yey!
After dinner, (which I only paid about $7.30 for the entire meal including a "healthy juice" which I think was guava juice), Panji took those of us who wanted to go out for a beer (Jillienne, David, Marie, Katie, Rowie, Marion and I) out. We walked down this really poorly lit alleyway. I definitely would not have walked down that way on my own. Ever. Motorbikes were going the opposite way and you had to make sure not to fall into the gutter on the side (which I believe is the sewage system). The bar we went to though was pretty nice and had live music. I shared a beer with Katie (the beers here (Asia) are huge) and I can't drink it all on my own. It was $3.50. The Indonesian beer is called Bintang and its probably my least favorite beer I've tried in Asia. It's a light beer, like all of them, but it had absolutely no taste. I did peel the label off in one go though and there was nothing left on the bottle. I wish I would have saved beer labels from the first part of my trip as well. It would have been cool to mark where I was in my scrapbook with that. But oh well. I don't even think I would have been able to keep up in Vietnam since all of the cities have their own brews.
That was pretty much the day. The gutter thing was something you had to pay attention to on almost all of the streets. And a lot of Indonesian men will yell out to us as we walk by. Honestly, if there is a place that I would ever want to look fat and unattractive, it is Asia. Wearing baggy clothing and making sure that I didn't have short shorts or any low cut shirts was really smart. You already draw so much attention to yourself as a Westerner, with that it is even worse.
I am really enjoying the Indonesian food, although it hasn't topped the Vietnamese food or Cambodian dishes yet in my mind. Definitely better than Malaysian food.
Tomorrow will be interesting. We head to a homestay in Cianjur for 2 nights. From the sounds of it it will be more like the homestay in Vietnam than Laos, but we will see. We stop at a tea plantation on the way there. I should maybe try to sleep since its 3am and we are leaving at 8am tomorrow. It will definitely be nice to get out of Jakarta.
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