Jakarta, Indonesia

  Jakarta, Java, Indonesia
Sunday, October 5, 2008

We arrived in Jakarta at about 1am on Thursday night/Friday morning. We met a couple from Leeds in the airport and shared a taxi with them to the main backpackers area. We knew we would be arriving late in the night so we booked a double room with air conditioning and a TV in a place we had read good things about - the Borneo Hostel. When we arrived they had our reservation and had kept us a room. It was the worst looking place we had seen in a long time - 2 tiny beds with dirty sheets and a tiny little bathroom with a manual flush toilet and no tap on the sink. You could touch the four walls lying in bed and there wasn't even space to put our backpacks anywhere. As for the TV and air-conditioning, I think that was some sort of joke from the receptionist when she took my booking over the phone - nowhere to be found. So we went straight out and looked for somewhere else, luckily enough the backpackers area was still lively enough, there were a few bars still open and a good few people around. We found another place twice as expensive but so much better. Lydia wouldn't have slept in the other place especially after seeing a big cockroach crawl under the door next to ours when we went back to pick up our bags. We told the receptionist that it was our first night in Asia and we needed a place with air conditioning!

Monas

Old Dutch Quarter

The next morning we were hoping to put our bad start to Indonesia behind us but things started to go wrong from the beginning of the day. We got up for the breakfast that was included in the price of the better hotel but all they had was Set 2: Fried Noodles with Tea or Coffee or Set 3: Fried Rice with Tea of Coffee, Set 1 was finished, that was toast with jam and butter, so Lydia wasn't impressed and just had a cup of tea and I had the fried rice which was actually really tasty. We went out to get a train ticket to Jogjakarta for the next day or the day after because we thought it might be difficult because it's the end of Ramadan now - kids are off school, shops are closed, banks, business and universities all closed for a week so everyone is traveling. We got a ticket ok and thought that things were looking up so we decided to go see a tourist attraction called the Monas. It's a big tall statue commemorating Indonesian Independence from the Dutch and you can get a lift up to the top to see the city. Because of the end of Ramadan holidays it was packed and the queue to get to the top was ridiculous so we left. We saw later on the news that it was the busiest weekend ever for the Monas with 7,000 visitor queuing up to go to the top - in the blistering heat - no thanks!

Art Museum

History Museum

So we left the Monas after walking around the museum at the base of the monument. The museum was actually quite interesting and went to get a tuk tuk to the old Dutch center of the city in the harbour area but the driver brought us to the opposite end of the city. I think it was a simple misunderstanding, we asked to go to Sunda Kelapa but he brought us to Sunda Kelapa Street. He then wanted a whole 50,000 Rupiah (less than 4 Euro) to take us to the correct place so we walked to the nearest train station out of stubbornness! Lydia called him every name under the sun when we were walking around in the roasting hot trying to find the train station. When we finally found the train station we discovered that the train wasn't coming for 40 minutes - Lydia's mood worsened and she kept going on about how much she hated Indonesia and Jakarta even though we were only in the country 12 hours! I was just trying to take everything with a pinch of salt and see the funny side of things. Well, when there was no sign 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 in yoghurt - nice. You can only imagine Lydia's mood now!!!
Anyway most of the shops were closed due to the holidays but the Dutch Quarter was actually nice, with canals and some really nice colonial buildings and museums. Unfortunately, the museums were closed due to the holidays, as were all the shops and cafe's in the area which was just our luck as all we wanted to do was relax with a cold drink in a cafe or something. Anyway it wasn't to be so we decided to give the train system a chance to redeem itself. Train turned out to be fine and we got chatting to a really nice local family who were taking the train with a 3 week old baby. We met a couple of Dutch guys too and between the four of us we managed to find our way back to the backpackers street!
Went straight for a much needed beer after an eventful day and had an early night as we'd an early train booked to take us to Jogjakarta the following day.