We said goodbye to some of our group and also to our guide at the airport and took the short flight to Indonesia. We had to pay $25 US for our visa, another rip off! But we made it in to my final county! We had a new guide for this leg who was local and he met us at the airport. We drove to our hotel and got back into poor run down Asia again. Malaysia had been a palace in comparison! We were left to our own devises for the afternoon and told to go to 7 11 for lunch. We weren't sure so we asked the receptionist where to go and tried to follow his directions. It was closed so walked into a very local place and walked straight out! There was nothing anywhere and we felt very uncomfortable! So back to 7 11 and actually had a good nasi goreng.
We met with our new group members in the evening and went out for dinner. Vegetarian options seek like they will be hard to find! I think I had the only veggie option on the menu. There was not much to do so we got some beer and sat in the lobby.
The next day we had a city tour organised. We had to meet at 8am and were told we would be having this tour until 4pm! We set off up the road and understood why it was going to take so long, he would stop at so many random things and explain about then in so much detail! We walked to the national monument, which was not so impressive but we got to go up inside it and see the view from the top. This was great as it was so hot and the breeze up there was so nice! Everyone wants to have their photos taken here with the white "boulays" here. No one seems interested in me though as I'm too brown! They all love the pale newbies!
We had a super fun time looking at the creepy dioramas about the history of Indonesia at the bottom of the monument. And posing for photos with kids and babies. It seems that the Dutch screwed then over a lot. We walked around the perimeter of the huge monument sure for what felt like miles to get to the bus stop. Here we paid our 3500 rupiah (18p) and waited at the strange elevated platform with open doors out onto the road about 1.5m off the ground. When the bus came it's doors were level with the platform and the women got on at the front and men at the back. This is so they don't get their sweaty pits in our faces and also to stop then touching us
Next we went to the old town and stopped for lunch. We got abandoned for a two hour excessively long lunch break. It wasn't an amazing old town. Not so interesting. Very Dutch. We had to walk back to the bus sot and it was so busy! We waited for ages being penned in in the queue. It was horrible and so hot. When our bus finally arrived we all had to push ourselves on it. It was crammed! And they kept letting more people on it and the stops!
We got dumped at the worst shopping centre ever and had to make our own way home. The shopping was terrible so we went to macdonalds to get some wifi and see if there was anything better to do or shop around and then tried to walk to another shopping centre. We couldn't find it and got totally lost and them spent ages walking home. Rubbish! The road are also terrifying to cross. Even worse than Vietnam!
In the evening we to a taxi to the backpacker area for dinner. Again so hard to be vegetarian, but they did have roti canai! Afterwards we went to a reggae bar which was great! Unlike the reggae bar in KL this one actually did play reggae and it was live! This was the only good thing about Jakarta! Not enjoyed it at all. There just seems to be nothing around and it's not even pretty or historical. Not sad to be bussing it to our next stop in the morning!
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