Ciputra Hotel Jakarta

Today I briefly met a group of Canadians before meeting Robbie (from Liverpool) he was a nice guy with some colourful stories from Liverpool. We joined up and I told him of my desire to go to Krakatau volcano island, so he was up for going so we went to several travel shops and found it was quite pricey, so decided to leave it. The Afternoon was spent eating, drinking and getting washed. We then got the transjakarta bus to Kota, in the north of Jakarta; the old centre ...

... sedih atau ceria di esok hari. Esok hari belum tiba; biarkan saja... tapi...... Hari ini. (PRESENT) Pintu masa lalu telah tertutup; Pintu masa depan pun belum tiba. Pusatkan saja diri anda untuk hari ini. Anda dapat mengerjakan lebih banyak hal hari ini bila anda mampu memaafkan hari kemarin dan melepaskan ketakutan akan esok hari. Hiduplah hari ini. Karena, masa lalu dan masa depan hanyalah permainan ...

... Tour kampoeng * Belajar bercocok tanam ...

... to dinner at a Lebanese restaurant to try and take Rachel's mind off the mass of insect bites she had acquired. When we walked in, we assumed we couldn't afford to eat there as it was very nicely decorated and the staff were smartly dressed. The prices, however, were very reasonable and we enjoyed a delicious meal followed by lashings of mint tea - lovely! When we arrived back at the hostel, we discovered the room was full of mosquitoes ...

... boat. It's inland a good 100kms but on a river which, i assumed the ferry would chug on up, but at the ticket office the guy says something about a bus transfer. Yep, turned out he was right, everybody got off at the coast and jammed into these two pint size buses... Some days pedaling is really hard work, its sweaty and uncomfortable in the saddle and i watch jealously as other tourists woosh past in air cond buses in total comfort, arriving at their destinations hours before me ...

... him to cut it out he let me in We were gladly surprised, the city is very modern, fairly clean, even that it is mainly Muslim, the people are very friendly and open minded, big change from Malaysia. We tour around for a while and took the flight to Bali, this time the people of Air Asia were not very aggressive as far as their policy goes so it went smoothly

... crushed peanut chunks or chocolate sprinkle before the other half put on top. The savoury one is thin, crisp wrap of chicken or beef mince, egg, shallot and onion slices, fried in flat wok. This comes with thin sweet and sour sauce and cucmber pickle. (Let's skip the post script of this feast after so many years eating non-spicy other than thai-on-the-corner. Squeezing my loudly-protesting stomach and spoonfuls of antacid, still, it's worth it......)

... you can't use the standard screwdrivers in OT... Hmm... I thought, quite a problem to remove plates then. I had been very interested to buy on behalf of Mercy. Additionally, I was told that he doesn't sell the implants rather donates to the public. He muttered Amal Jariah. Allah bless him! We then went to the seminar room to discuss 3 tumour cases. We were then asked to present ours but due to some computer malfunction, they couldn't open our files.... Hooray... consultant says let's ...

... two rows of stalls going for as far as the eye could see - seriously! It was about 34C and I was gonna go for it! I guess I kinda assumed that I'd be able to find a bank machine and get some water. Uhhhmmmm. I kept walking and walking till finally I reached the end of one side then I started back down the other. Probably 3 hours total. Sucked. However, instead of monkey brains, snake handlers and extreme piercing all I saw ...

... a hill in the dark. Sounds like a great idea. Although we spent the one and a half hours it took to get up there sort of grumbling at each other and finding it hard to understand how the muslim community get up at 4.30am every day (Java is something like 75% muslim), it was pretty good -despite the clouds. We are destined to not see the sun rise or set without cloud. You don't often get such a stunning volcano backdrop though, they are ...