Jakarta, Indonesia
Trip Start
Aug 31, 2008
1
8
47
Trip End
Apr 30, 2009
Jakarta,
Java,
Indonesia
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Once we left the airport, the surroundings resembled a shantytown. We quickly found out that it was the last day of Ramadan (Idul Fitri) and it was obvious that this was a special day in Indonesia. There were people everywhere, riding on top of buses, praying in mosques, and blaring prayers everywhere
Suharto's erection
. Our taxi driver told us that we has a Christian from the north of Sumatra but his English was not good enough to tell us much about what was going on. He drove us straight to the Hotel Bandara Jakarta as we had requested, but pointed out every other hotel option and its price along the way. In hindsight, we probably should have taken him up on his recommendation, but it was late and this was a pretty scary looking place. The road to the hotel was a twisted road lined with very rough looking characters, mostly with motorcycles. I was so hungry that I was ready to venture on to these streets to locate some food, but Lisa pleaded that this was insane, so we went to bed hungry.
Lisa said that the prayers went on through loud speakers until around 4 AM, but I managed to sleep through it without waking up once. Once we got up though, Lisa went looking for some breakfast and was disappointed to see that everything seemed closed. Fortunately the hotel brought us some coffee, tea, bread and jam to our room. After eating this and getting cleaned up, we asked the hotel reception if they could get us a taxi, which was not a problem.
It took nearly an hour, but the taxi ran it meter and took us to Jalan Jaska where we want to stay in Jakarta. We had to pay for the road tolls (3000 + 8000 Rp), but the cost was still just over 100,000 and took about a half hour. Considering this was the same price we paid to the taxi to take us a few kilometers from the airport, we realized we had paid way too much the night before. Once we arrived in Jalan Jaska, we quickly found Hotel Tator which had cheap air-conditioned rooms and a decent review in the Lonely Planet. We opted for one of the better A/C rooms at 115,000 Rp/night and supposedly it includes breakfast. It seems as though this place works different than the places we stayed at in China in that you only pay for one day in advance (meaning you go down and pay every day for another night)
Indonesian kids
.The Jalan Jaska area of Jakarta was vastly nicer then the area we spent the previous night and there were many other backpackers lining the street. There were also ample restaurants to choose from and we went to one familiar to many backpackers in Jakarta: Pappa Kafe. Lisa ordered Spaghetti Bolognaise (20,000 Rp) and pineapple juice (8,000 Rp) while I got Kentucky Fried Chicken and Rice (19,000 Rp) with a lemon iced tea (8,000 Rp). Before we had anything though, we drank a 1.5 liter bottle of water (6,000 Rp) to rehydrate ourselves. The meals were decent, but the drinks stood out more than the food (especially the pineapple juice.) This restaurant was pretty busy with almost exclusively foreign patrons and had cheap beer available. I have a feeling we will be back again.
We found a convenience store nearby that sells snacks, water, beer and other necessities and have restocked our emergency food stash somewhat. The 620 ml. bottles of Bintang (Indonesian pilsner) cost 13,500 Rp which is not a great deal less than what they are charging at restaurants (18,000 Rp) it seems. However it provided an easy way for Lisa and I to sample a couple in our room, which is what we are doing now as I catch up on this journal. Bintang have a rather malty taste and are stronger than the Chinese beers that we have been drinking at 5%.
I know we are not supposed to eat or drink in public during Ramadan, so we are happy to find beer and food so readily available
Street Satay
. The beer is more expensive than it was in China, but we have been told it is cheaper on Bali compared to Java. The food seems to be around the same price level as China, but we have only been to one restaurant thus far. I have not found free Internet since leaving Yangshuo, but there are lots of Internet cafes nearby. They claim to be open 24 hours but are closed right now, I suspect because of the holidays. I have caught up to where we are now and it is nearly time for dinner. We really want to try out Indonesian food now that so I will hopefully be able to write about that soon.Oct 3, 2008
With everybody on vacation, the restaurants are stocking only around half of what they list on the menu. Every time I find a delicious sounding Indonesian dish, they come back two minutes later to explain that it is unavailable. We went to dinner at another popular Jalan Jaska restaurant: Memories. I tried to order Gado gado, but they didn't have it available so I ended up ordering a fried chicken rice dish that has become somewhat of a staple food for me lately. The Bingtang beers were actually more expensive for the Oct 1 to Oct 4th time frame at 25 Rp. We guessed that this extra charge may go to the poor employees that have to work through this important holiday season.
We awoke the next day and sauntered down to the Hotel Tator café area for our free breakfast. They only serve two things for breakfast and one of them was all gone (toast and jam), so we both had a pretty standard Indonesian breakfast of rice with a fried egg. With a little chili sauce added to this dish it was rather delicious, although it reminded me of what I'd usually for lunch rather than breakfast. After breakfast, Lisa and I headed out to walk the streets of the area and it was already hot and humid out. We didn't get far before we decided to head back for some lunch. Most of the restaurants and stores of the area were still closed so we decided to go to Pappas Kafe again.
The establishment was rather full with a wide mix of travelers with a few standouts that were already totally drunk. It was hard not to follow their conversation and we soon found out the loudest and drunkest individual was an American. The good news is that I finally got to eat the very first dish that I ordered: Gado gado. It was not like any other dish that I have eaten before, but it was packed with vegetables and seemed healthy and delicious. I have heard that this is a pretty famous Indonesian dish so I am sure I will get to sample it from other restaurants. Based on the menu selection, I believe that Pappas Kafe is likely an Indian owned establishment.
During the heat of the midday Lisa and I ducked into our air-conditioned room to do our own laundry. We had hoped to find an open laundry facility during our walk, but 95% of stores were closed so we were on our own. Lisa picked up some laundry detergent from the Indomaret convenience store that was specifically for doing your own laundry in a bucket and that seemed to work much better than the soap and shampoo concoction that we used earlier in our journey.
In the afternoon we wandered over to the Gambir train station, which was only about a 15 or 20 minute walk from Hotel Tator. After speaking with somebody at the Information booth (in English), we found out that prices for train tickets to Yogyakarta were much higher than they regularity were, due to the vacation season. The only trains that left the Gambir station were Argo class, a class of ticket above the executive level first-class tickets, and they were going to cost us 330,000 Rp each. Although this wasn't a huge amount of money for a ride of eight-hours by Canadian standards, we knew that we could catch business-level and executive-level trains from the Pasar Senon train station for less than half of that price. We also found out that we could buy tickets for those trains from the Gambir station, so that is what we tried to do. Unfortunately for us, the executive level tickets were all sold out for every day that we checked on, so we ended up buying business level tickets (with no air-conditioning) for 150,000 Rp/each that left at 6:20 Saturday morning.
Around dinner time we decided to have a Bintang from the Indomaret and we ended up meeting some American surfers from Florida. They had spent the previous two months in Bali and Lombok and were on their way to Thailand so we were able to exchange a little advice on what to do and see. Soon we were joined by a Kiwi named Wade that I expect to see on TV one day. He was one crazy dude and kept us entertained with stories of madness and insanity for the next few hours. Although he said he had lived in the area for nearly seven years as an English teacher, I was able to show him an ATM machine that he did not know about in the area. He was so grateful that he came back with a beer for me to show his gratitude. I was really surprised how easy going the American surfers were with Wade's stories of madness because they were extremely offensive to just about anybody. I guess they enjoyed a good laugh about it just like I did. I cannot repeat Wade's stories here because they are way too offensive.
After a number of stories and Bintangs, one of the surfers went to grab some street food from a vendor a few feet down the street. He was selling chicken satays with rice, which all three of the Americans said was consistently delicious and affordable. They were right; it was my favourite meal in Indonesia so far and at only 12,000 Rp also the cheapest. After Lisa and I split the first one, the second one went down even easier. While we were sitting and eating our satays, somebody pointed out that we were sitting in front of a brothel. Of course Wade the Kiwi was already pretty famous with many of the boys and girls working at the brothel, but wasn't exactly polite with anybody working there. He called one of the girls his girlfriend, but then again she was married and I admired how well this tiny little girl could handle the rude and obnoxious foreigner.
The Indomaret store closed a little before the posted closing time of 23:00 so I thought the night may end a little prematurely. Fortunately one of the local men on the street noticed my plight and showed me a street vendor selling more beer. I asked how much for more Bintang and was told 20,000 Rp. Since I knew the bar down the street was selling them at 18,000 Rp, I declined and returned back to share the bad news. Before I got back though, the local man noticed my empty hands and said "come with me." He went to the store, opened the closed garage door and spoke with the cashier and Indonesian. I am not sure what he said, but it must've been the right thing because I was able to go in and buy one last round. I thanked him many times and he said he had been watching us drink with our new friends and was happy to keep us drinking.
We had heard so many bad stories about Jakarta before coming here but after this first day I think we should be approaching this city with a more open mind. The people here are friendly and go out of their way to be helpful and kind to foreigners. Most of the time when we were sitting around and drinking, we were surrounded by a half dozen children that were constantly playing with us and giggling. Lisa gave them all some of the Canadian flag tattoos that we brought from home and they were all delighted to wear them. One of the girls spoke English quite well and said she knew where Canada was. She spoke English quite well but if when we said she knew how to speak English she told us she didn't (in English of course.)
The next morning we woke up and came down to the Hotel Tator lobby for our free breakfast of rice with a fried egg again. Like the day before, we both got coffee to accompany our meal. The coffee here is great, but they do not filter the coffee grinds here, so you have to be careful about drinking every last sip. I did not realize this was the normal way to drink coffee here at first and I stirred my coffee like I always do back in Canada. This of course gets the grinds that have collected at the bottom of the cup distributed evenly throughout the coffee, which obviously does not improve the experience. However the coffee grinds are so small that it also does not ruin the coffee like you may expect.
While we were eating breakfast, Lisa and I talked with a guy from Japan and another guy that we had spoken to earlier from Hawaii. Right as we were finishing up breakfast, he mentioned that he was in dire straits over his computer problems. As a writer in the medical anthropology field, a computer was very important to him, so I offered to help. It turns out his hard disk was fried, so I said we should try to find a USB chassis and then see if we can fix the disk from my laptop. Mark was pretty familiar with Jakarta and knew of the huge electronics mall that I had read about earlier: Mangga Dua Mall.
He was also familiar with how to get there via the Jakarta subway, which was really just a bus with dedicated lanes, but at least it was air-conditioned. It only cost 3.50 Rp to ride, and apparently there are several lines distributed throughout the city. We could walk to the one we needed to catch and after a half dozen stops or so, we were at the electronics mall. Unfortunately for us, it was still the holiday season and 90% of the mall was closed. We wandered around for an hour or so and just as we were ready to give up, Lisa found the right kind of store. As we were trying to explain what we were looking for, Lisa also found the appropriate part in the display counter. They asked for 60,000 Rp, but Mark negotiated down to 50,000 Rp and they even tested it with a computer to ensure it worked.
We were in the Glodok neighborhood, which we wanted to explore earlier, but it was too hot and everything seemed to be closed, so we simply headed back to the Hotel Tator. Mark's hard disk turned out to be in very bad shape, but fortunately he had purchased a new one in the USA and brought it with him. I was able to hook up the new one and since he brought all of his installation disks with him, we were able to rebuild the operating system with all the device drivers and he ended up with a vastly improved laptop by the end of the process.
Mark wanted to buy me a beer to show his gratitude and we ended up heading to Memories and he showed me where you can have access to free electricity and wi-fi Internet. We ordered a couple of Bintangs and started chatting about traveling and surfing. It turns out that Mark has taught surfing lessons in Hawaii, so I gathered advice on how we should approach surfing once we got to Bali. Both Lisa and I are interested in learning to surf and are now considering buying some used (long and round tipped) boards and then selling them again before we leave.
One beer turned into two very quickly, and then three and four, after which I lost count. Before I knew it, it was 8 PM and time for dinner. Lisa had already eaten some of the chicken satay street-meat earlier in the evening, but now she wanted a sit-down meal, so we went next door to the Kuala Lampur Kafe. In my drunken haze, I forgot to invite Mark along, but I am did remember to grab his email address so I can thank him for all those beers as soon as I find Internet access again. I do remember that the K.L. Kafe served excellent food at a marginally cheaper price then Memories or Pappas, so it is a place I would recommend.
Since we had to get up at 5 AM the following day, to catch our train to Yogyakarta (pronounced Jogjakarta), we tried to make it an early night, but it was well after midnight before I got to sleep. We got up the following morning and were out the door by 5:20 looking for a taxi. Since there was only one hanging out on the Jl. Jaska street, we were not able to negotiate much, but still agreed on a set price of 20,000 Rp for a ride to the Pasar Senon train station. He also got us there in record time (10 minutes at the most), so we had nearly an hour to kill before our train left.
We hung out in front of the train-station and then showed our ticket to a man at the station entrance to obtain entry to the tracks. We were surprised to see that although most people were showing their tickets, the people in front of us simply handed the security guard some cash (20,000 Rp I think) to be allowed entry. It was quite easy to find our seat on the train, since Indonesians use the same Roman characters for numbers that we do in English, and there was ample room to store our bags in the overhead luggage storage.
We were disappointed to see that a majority of fans in the train cart did not appear to work; at least they were never turned on. The train got hot; really hot! There was also a constant barrage of beggars and vendors selling everything from food and drinks (no alcohol though) to kids toys and wallets. I gave the first beggar some of the change that I had accumulated, but after considering how these people got on the train I didn't give anything to the next ten that bothered us. Some of them even woke me up to ask for money which obviously did not make me very happy.
We did buy food and drinks from the vendors at fairly reasonable prices though. A breakfast of rice with a fried egg was 10,000 Rp, while a cold can of Sprite was 8,000 Rp. We also bought a much needed hand-fan for only 2,000 Rp. I suspect the people we saw paying money to security (instead of showing their tickets) were either these vendors or beggars. It seems rather counter-intuitive to me that beggars pay money for the right to beg on the train, but we are not in Canada any more. The vendors and beggars did not target us any more than they targeted their Indonesian audience, but it still got annoying. There was a vendor/beggar bugging us at least every five minutes for the entire 11 hours we were on the train.
