Jakarta

After missing, but thankfully being rebooked on a later flight out of KL to Jakarta, I was relieved to finally land in Indonesia. It's kind of funny that after overlanding every step of the way thus far, the one plane ride ended up taking up essentially the same amount of time. Just a quick note as to how impressed I was with the Air Asia staff for re booking our ticket on the next flight eventhough we bought one of those non-refundable economy tickets.

In any case I arrived at 9:30 and after obviously getting ripped off on the cab ride into town and fighting the infamous Jakarta traffic I found a spartan room to crash for the night. After chucking the bags I walked down the backpacker strip called Jalan Jaksa and found a street side restaurant to eat dinner. I was hungry as the last meal I had, which I admit was Mcdonalds in the airport was over eight hours ago.

Sitting down with Pat, I start to go over the menu, I notice something especially cheap on the menu but don't take much notice. Not being able to decide I go back over it and the cheap option was CAT and rice. Only fifty cents for a nice plate of cat and rice. As there was a stray cat resting next to my foot at the table I felt just a little too uncomfortable to try it and instead went with a safe chicken and rice. Pat on the other hand being a little more risky went for a fish dish. Both turned out to be decent with the fish tasting ok but smelling like it came out of a polluted river.

Having enough energy we decided to head out for a beer at this bar called Top Gun. While it was alright, live band who were good, the place was crawling with old Euro men and flooded with young Indonesian women, who lets just say were feeling quite friendly. We stayed for a beer or two, watched and joked around for a bit but left shortly as it wasn't the scene for us. After trying a couple more bars in the area which had much of the same we called it an early night.

The first actual day in Jakarta was spent seeing the few sights, such as the National Freedom monument, history museum among other things. Its a pretty hectic city with not that much to see so the main goal was to book a ticket out as soon as possible. I had heard the train was decent so after the monuments headed down to the station to book on overnighter. Unfortunately so was everyone in the city as it turns out it was Haj and a long weekend for Muslims, with their primary destination being Yogajakarta. I only found this out of course after waiting in a line for about 45 minutes in a sweltering train station. Not to be deterred we walked back to the guesthouse to find alternate transport.

After searching travel agent after travel agent, with each conversation going "why no take train?" and me responding its full, "ahh Haj yes yes long weekend many people go to Jogja haha" I finally found a mini bus leaving the following evening that we booked and would take twelve hours.

The following day we board the mini bus at 4pm and are hoping to get into Jogja (as the locals call it) by six in the morning. I have learned that South East Asian time is at least two hours slower than everyone else's. We have yet to leave Jakarta yet and its already 7:30pm so I know I'm in for a long day / night. In any case the supposed twelve hour mini bus ends up taking, and I'm not joking twenty hours! Yes twenty. I was in a dilapidated knees pressed against my chest, bone jarring bumps and little to no suspension bus for twenty hours, and you know what? I didn't get agitated or mad once. I think this Buddhist culture may be wearing off on me but wow, I was relieved once I finally arrived. It got to the point where I almost thought I would miss the bus, kind of like a prisoner who can't function in the outside world. In any case I was here and ready to see what this city which is supposedly the most cultural in Java had to offer.