Jakarta

I wasn’t eagerly anticipating our visit to Jakarta, I was expecting a sprawling urban mass with terrible traffic and a high level of pollution.  That’s kind of what it was like, but it had a bit of charm too.  We stayed in the Jalan Jaksa area, which was back packer central.  It was a cool place to stay with loads of cheap restaurants and Guesthouses, it was also very central, with most of the main sights within a short walking distance.

After being spoilt with modern cities with good roads and public transport infrastructure it was cool coming to somewhere completely different.  The traffic was totally mental, everybody was driving very quickly and very aggressively.  It can take ages to cross the road, and there aren’t any pedestrian crossings.  You have to cross lane by lane, it can be pretty scary at times when you’re stuck in the middle of the road for a while with cars and motor bikes whizzing by you in both directions.

We saw the main sights in a day, the only one worth mentioning was the National Museum.  It had a vast collection and was very informative.  It was also a great place to go to escape the afternoon sun and we ended up spending a couple of hours there. 

The hospitality in Indonesia was amazing, in fact it could be almost overwhelming at times.  We got chatting to a local guy over a Shisha in Jalan Jaksa.  He was recommending some places for us and he ended up inviting us to stay with him and his family.  I wish we took him up on his offer, but his hometown was too much of a detour for us.  The people in Indonesia are incredibly friendly, when you’re waiting at a train station or on a bus, people instantly try and start up a conversation sometimes with limited English and limited success but they always try.  We had numerous offers of people saying they’d show us around.  We also made about a dozen random photo friends.  Every man and his dog wanted a photo taken with us, it felt like being a minor celebrity.  It’s not that uncommon in Asia for people wanting to get a photo with you, but Indonesia was something else.