Ritz Carlton Jakarta

Today was the day I fly to Jakarta, I was mainly killing time before my flight, I called James and wished him a happy birthday, best wishes and spoke to Helen and Rebecca. I got the MRT to the Changi Airport and took off at 5:20pm and arrived in Jakarta at 5:50pm (local time) and took a Damri bus to Gambir station near where I was staying tonight. It was pretty intimidating getting ...

... realized that the postings were from 2 days ago. found today's list but still our flight wasn't listed. went through "security" nonetheless and same our flight posted: reading SCHED 18:55, STD 17:10, yet the kiosk supposedly taking our bags was posted as KL. so we figured our flight time had been changed to a later time. exited the "secure" area and had a meal. went to go wander and noticed our flight was not only now posted, but our gate was ...

... Fahrer gefragt wie lange er denkt, daß es noch dauert.... 'also, das dauert noch sehr lange, wollen sie ein anderes Taxi?'. Nein danke, also hab ich mich auf den Weg zur Hauptstraße gemacht und hab noch 10min gewartet, bis ein freies Express Taxi vorbeikam. Das hat mich dann zum Bus Terminal Lebak Bulus gebracht, von da sollte ja der Bus fahren. Hab mich also durchgefragt und der Bus fuhr gerade los, als ich um die Ecke gebogen bin - gut, daß die hier immer alle warten! Man hatte ...

... the cause of the bites last night!) and spent a full hour with Rachel finding them and Stuart leaping around armed with a flip flop. Despite killing about 8, we still got bitten in the night! Jakarta officially has the most evil mosquitoes of our trip so far! So now we're enjoying a morning relaxing before we fly to Bali where we're being met by Gaye, Elise's mum (Stuart's kind of cousin). Looking forward to it and hoping the weather stays this hot.

... gets even more dangerous. The MFin' buses. The best way to describe them, truly, death on wheels. When we arrived to our hotel, Yudi was cleaning the bike in the morning and the owner of the hotel talked with him a bit. Yudi told him that we rode in last night on our moped from Jakarta. He said we were very lucky. That is the most dangerous highway in all of Indonesia he said. Three people in two separate accidents died that day we came over. He said ...

... to stop. The others emerged puzzled but knew it was my doing! We saw some crocodiles and snakes before the star of the show. The single komodo dragon was large but it's belly was so fat and obese that we think it would never be able to move! Either it was used to a life of luxury or it just ate something but we positively think it's the former. There was then the "petting zoo" which we wanted to skip but since the minders had taken out their tortoise and python we were obliged to ...

... either....OH, did I just throw that in there? but yeah, it should be a cool experience and I'll take some pictures and write about it of course. I have 10 days off from school, so I might be out of connection for awhile, but that should leave quite a nice long blog when I get back. Until then......PEACE! nate p.s. I will try to get some pics of the kids and students soon too, and of course me in my snazzy dress clothes with Lumberg-style coffee cup and dry erase markers....

... the buddha statues that are encased in stone cocoons with holes in them. No 'spiritual' time to yourself up here as they chase you around saying - hey mr/mrs can you be in picture - and you feel faintly famous for about 10mins. they loved Paul, of course. Just got out of the temple in time to catch the last bus. We of course refused to pay the over inflated price of 60,000 when it should have been 10 ...