Bumi Karsa Hotel Jakarta

... us and told us we weren't allowed down there without a guide for saftey reasons. We relented and ended up paying a fellow 125 000 rupiah to take us down, of course we found out eventually that it isn't necessary at all to have a guide, and the little ******* would have been laughing all the way to the bank. He did end up proving useful in showing us parts of the volcano most people would miss, like taking us across one of the smaller craters and showing us ...

... back to the Dutch occupation as well as several museums most with an entrance fee of 2000 IR. Buildings are probably more impressive than the actual museums specially after having visited the National Museum.

Meanwhile I have decided to fly to Yogyakarta on Sunday, Sept. 13 and visit that part of Java. I will work my way back to Jakarta for my flight to Bangkok on Oct. 14

(I paid 170 Malaysian Ringits for tmy indonesian visa)

... and we did a few tours visiting Borobudur the Beautiful buddhist temple, it was rediscovered by a brit in pieces and half buried and they put it back together one brick at a time. Apparently trying to fit every brick together and numbering them..basically a process of elimination...i don't think i'd have the patience! But the end result was stunning, though we spent a lot of the time be harassed by people taking our photos and autographs and filling out school children's questionnaires ...

... Problem solving * Egg drop * kang kang ...

... fare. Late afternoon and I returned to the Bumi Johar Hotel where I discovered (1) the toilet had now flooded the bathroom and (2) the tour kick off meeting had been deferred from 7 pm to 9 pm. The Hotel transferred me to different room and while I was waiting I ordered a cheese sandwich - big mistake 'cos they eventually served me some sort of iffy eggy creation and I felt discomfort almost immediately afterwards and, off and ...

... of a train after standing in a really dirty train station for over 2 hours Lydia was set to kill someone! So we left the train station and got into a tuk-tuk (so much for being stubborn and taking the train!!!) We got to the old Dutch Quarter and had a look around a few shopping centres. While walking from one shopping centre to another we were hit by a Yakult (yoghurt drink) which someone threw out of a passing mini-bus. Both our feet were covered ...

... price (as i had no idea). How lovely! I'm sure the cabbies are never happy when that happens and realize it's for a tourist...haha. I'm happy though. Made it to the station literally right on time as i got shoved (in a nice way) to the bus as it was just pulling away. The 1st few hours were trying as there was no a/c, just tiny windows up above and we were stuck in a massive traffic jam for the 1st 3 hours...hello holidays! I didn't melt though so it's all good....

... at one stop, there was a cargo train with fuel stopped. we saw children and teens climb up the sides of the tankers as soon as it was slow enough, open the hatches and drop sponges down in the barrels for fuel. we are amazed as always at people's ingenuity. the scenery is beautiful and green with the classic rice paddy photos rolling by for many many miles. after 10 hours on the train, jakarta failed to impress us of ...

... we had no internet and called the IT guy and het detected that the problem came from your room! ik: what? hij: yes, do you have a device in your room? ik: you mean that russian translator device with the red button? ...nee hoor.....yes, a wireless internet device. hij: yes, we had no internet the whole day and need the IT guy to connect it correctly. ik:sorry...but how is that possible? Maar nadat hij op mn kamer kwam kijken en ik ook vroeg hoezo ze me gewoon niet hadden gebeld zodra ...

... silly screams! we continued into sunset and well past sunset and such beautiful colors hues pf orange and blues and the shadowed mountains in the background..... priceless evening when drying off we were trying to determine where this fell on the best days list of our tour thus far -- def top 3 but we had some disagreement as to which were the other 2 in our top 3 following the evening our spontaneous guide took us on a night walk across a long bamboo bridge -- so ...