First impressions of Jakarta

18.10.11

We were sad to be leaving Singapore this morning but looking forward to coming back in

1 month time and to our month in Indonesia.

It took under 2 hours to fly to

Jakarta and we had arranged to be picked up from the airport by a taxi and taken

straight to our accomodation, which we had booked in advance.

The first thing that struck us about Jakarta was the traffic. We were on huge

trunk roads, with 3/4 lanes (they made their own lanes!) and they were overloaded.

We also noticed a system of bus lanes, with shelters in the middle of the

carriageway, people stepped off the shelter about 3 foot off the ground on to

buses. The shelters were connected by walkways across the manic roads and

down the middle of the carriageways were wide, filthy canals, strewn with

rubbish. We had read that Jakarta was very large, with no real centre and

notoriously difficult to get around on foot and what

we were seeing confirmed this.

It took us about an hour to get to our appartment block where we were met by the

notorious William. This was an ordinary residential

unit with 32 floors, there were 3 other identical blocks with a pool complex in

the centre. We were in a condo on the 16th floor, with a small kitchen/lounge,

2 bedrooms and a bathroom. We could see the amazing pool down below, it appeared

to be almost olympic size, with a moat like pool around it and surrounded

by paths and raised flower beds; very picturesque.

We wanted to buy a sim card so William very helpfully took us to a store in the

basement and helped us to buy one. There was also a supermarket so we

picked up a few bits for a snacky lunch, before we headed down to the pool.

There were lots of children in the moat and other more serious swimmers in the

pool. I realised that my bikini wasn't going to be appropriate, as many of the

women were wearing shorts and t-shirts to swim, so I didn't get in.

Later that afternoon we ventured to the mall which was only 5 minutes away.

Again it was very grand, housing a 5 star hotel, cinema and Fun-Land! There

must have been about 50 restaurants aswell, most of which seemed to be doing

good business. We decided to get dinner in the food hall. It was interesting

trying to decipher what was on offer, we had no idea what the dishes were

and there was little English spoken. So we pointed to couple of photos on the

menu and hoped for the best! I ended up with a Gado Gado, a cold vegetable salad, served

with a boiled egg and covered (swimming) in peanut sauce. It was very tasty

but the sauce got a bit much. Martin had something similar but it was a

noodle salad in the same sauce.

Afterwards we went to check out the cinema. The normal seats cost around £2 each.

There was also a Velvet cinema, where seats were like matresses with pillows

and a small table so you could lounge. These seats cost a tenner. We

decided to come back tomorrow night to watch a film as we were tired. So

we went back to the apartment, watched a film in our lounge, novelty, and sampled

some local largers, Bintang (cost 10,000 rupiah or about 70 pence) and Anker,

which were very pleasant!