Crowne Plaza Jakarta

... Bali is Hindu they believe in afterlife so this whole process is a celebration and a happy time for them. They cheers as the bones come up. "Get up! get up!" You've lain there too long kinda thing!!

Then it was onto Lombok and the Gilli Islands, these islands are described as paradise and yes the beaches were beautiful golden yellow sand, the water was clear and blue and the snorkelling brill too. But step back from the main road and the ...

Alright, so I don't have time to write a real blog for Jakarta, but I felt like I was leaving a blank in my blog and I don't like that. But to sum things up...Jakarta isn't nearly as bad as I thought! Sure, you can smell the pollution in the air...but it has a nice and big and surprisingly clean central square, and the tourism district is very pleasant and friendly. So overall I wasn't sure why everyone said they "just wanted to get out of Jakarta ...

... sunda - Belajar bermain angklung ...

... rolex ,LV etc etc) the other jakarta is the poor, dirty messy one where you cannot understand how the people can go fishing in a stinky black water of some canals ( probable black wate canals) or the sell some food on the cross street when the car are waiting for the green light.one of the good face of jakarta is shangri la hotel ( i call it the " golden cage" ) where everything is perfectly clean and beutifully arranged, where the bell boy is so kind that could be even ...

... when told to sit etc, which is a start, but we obviously have our work cut out for us as we raise the wee man. Back to me on my trip! The evening in Pekanbaru saw us heading to a local restaurant to try some of the local specialities. Extremely spicey food with everything either being covered in chillis, or actually just being a whole dish of chillis... To top that, etiquette was to eat with your fingers, so I did my best to forget all the manners my Mum spent ...

... I also give him some of my prawns, which i said i didn't like, so he would eat them. As we chatted, i said i was going to Bali. I asked him what it would cost to buy a moped. He said about 5 mil Rp which is a little over $500. I thought, if i could sell it in Bali, i could atleast get most of it back, and have an adventure i'd dreaming about. He said he would help me find one and make sure I didn't get shafted and get all of the registration and ...

... so it'd be quite boring anyway I thought. We took the cable car ride which was nice and windy and we saw the whole layout. Apparently there are 23 houses but I could clearly see about 12 only. (Acheh, Minang, Riau, West Java, East Java, South Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, East Kalimantan, North Sulawesi, South Sulawesi, Papua, Bali - no signs, but we kinda of guess which was which). They had a large lake with all the islands mapped out but too bad, it didn't have any signs again ...

... seen any liquor since I've been here, so thats a good thing too. Oh yeah, and I thought I would rub this in...on Saturday I got a one hour massage for 50,000 Rupiah, which is about 5 or 6 bucks in U.S. dollar! Get it? Rub it in? No but really, you know you're jealous because you pay about 60 bucks, and I'll be getting another one this weekend. That's all for now. I'll be taking more pictures when I leave the hood and travel to a new place. I hope to visit Central Jakarta ...

We broke up the 5 buses journey on the way back by visiting the temple of Borobodur. A huge buddhist structure it's a pyramid style temple with about 5 levels that you walk around on the outside. On each wall as you walk around, stone carvings tell buddhist stories. Although, even though we watched a very long video about it, we still couldn't work any of them out. At the top, hoardes of schoolgirls ...