Jakarta, Indonesia <<Photos>>
The topic of several of my "war stories", but it is here that my absolutely favourite hotel in the world is - thank goodness for the Shangri-La hotel and it's restaurant, lovely staff, bar and pool.
<<Photos>>
'Twas while in Jakarta that I split my head open, I escaped before the rioting came, I also escaped a trip in a nice police car with a police man with a revolver, gold tooth and sunglasses after my taxi got a flat tyre.
Indonesia has a massive population, just over 200 million when I last heard, so what you notice is people, throngs of people. They seem happy and you always get a smile. It is hard at first to accept that the kids selling things, anything on the streets really need to be there - but money is short and the country poor. You are told that past governments sold the staple corn oil to anyone but the locals for foreign currency, so the locals are hungry.
The country is in fact hundreds of islands, with dense concentrations of people in the cities. The major resource that Indonesia has is it's people. It is nothing to set twenty people to do a task manually when it might be handled by two in Europe with a basic computer.
The transport system is, bluntly, a mess. Never have I seen the need for a mass transport system more than in Jakarta.
The Indonesian Highway Code comprises two rules.
Rule 1: "If the front of your car is in front of someone else's, you have right of way".
Rule 2: " Use your horn often, particularly when carrying European or American passengers."
During my first trip, the kind Concierge at the Shangri-La Hotel gave me a card and wrote a "league table" of taxi companies in order of desirability.
1. Silver Bird - which are basically limousines.
2. Blue Bird - Same company as Silver Bird. More basic cars.
3. Gamya - green taxis, with a yellow roof. OK.
... down to :
6. President Taxis. Yellow and Red. Use at your peril.
Part of the "game" is to try to ensure that you are not ripped off by the cab drivers. Remember that the roads are overcrowded, very busy and occasionally closed for no apparent reason. When this happens, you are taken via office block car parks and the driver pays the "parking" fee as he goes through. This occasionally gives rise to an opportunity for a rip-off attempt, you need to know roughly where your destination is.
The first time I was in Jakarta, I needed to get from the hotel to an office in the Stock Exchange building. I was taken in a cab and the driver stopped in to ask directions from a security guy at the front of an office. He pointed vaguely over his shoulder and the cab driver returned and took me around the road system once more until we arrived at the grand office block next to the one where he had asked directions - I could have walked in less than two minutes !
At the time this is absolutely infuriating and you are feeling very angry. When you work out your expense claims at the end of the week, you calm down some and laugh - the cost of that cab ride, including the extended diversion was only about 60 pence.
All is not bad in Jakarta, however...
There was a great Safari Park a bus trip away from the city (can't remember the name, something like the Timar Wildlife Park) - sadly I subsequently heard that the economic problems have forced its closure - where the animals actually moved and roared rather than just sleep. Shame was, I hit my head on a the concrete roof of an African style hut in the petting zoo ("picture with tiger cub or orangutan only $10", and had my head bandaged for two days - it was very hard explaining the bandages to the clients I was training! The antibiotics I was given by the hotel doctor wiped me out, so I was feeling lousy and in bed by 6:30pm that birthday.
Lunch at a tea plantation was a worthwhile distraction.
The Hard Rock Cafe is worth a look, but I always wonder if any one actually buys a blow pipe and its darts from the hawker outside to take home.
Buying my Seiko Kinetic watch for IDR 1,047,000. No great shakes as a watch, but it is the only thing that I have ever purchased for myself costing a million of anything! I expected that the exchange rate would mean that this watch would cost me around £60 (saving me about the same on even duty free prices), but the poor Rupiah took another dive and the watch cost me only £42. An ironic postscript to this is that when I needed to get the watch fixed, the repair cost me more than the watch originally did.
The various monuments around the city are indeed fine, my personal choices being the "Pizza Man", "Welcome" and National Monuments of what The Lonely Planet Guide describes as "inspired tastelessness - among Soekarno's great legacies are his heroes-of-socialism structures.".
Everyone has said that I must get to Bali at the weekends - I only wish I had managed it!
<<Photos>>
'Twas while in Jakarta that I split my head open, I escaped before the rioting came, I also escaped a trip in a nice police car with a police man with a revolver, gold tooth and sunglasses after my taxi got a flat tyre.
Indonesia has a massive population, just over 200 million when I last heard, so what you notice is people, throngs of people. They seem happy and you always get a smile. It is hard at first to accept that the kids selling things, anything on the streets really need to be there - but money is short and the country poor. You are told that past governments sold the staple corn oil to anyone but the locals for foreign currency, so the locals are hungry.
The country is in fact hundreds of islands, with dense concentrations of people in the cities. The major resource that Indonesia has is it's people. It is nothing to set twenty people to do a task manually when it might be handled by two in Europe with a basic computer.
The transport system is, bluntly, a mess. Never have I seen the need for a mass transport system more than in Jakarta.
The Indonesian Highway Code comprises two rules.
Rule 1: "If the front of your car is in front of someone else's, you have right of way".
Rule 2: " Use your horn often, particularly when carrying European or American passengers."
During my first trip, the kind Concierge at the Shangri-La Hotel gave me a card and wrote a "league table" of taxi companies in order of desirability.
1. Silver Bird - which are basically limousines.
2. Blue Bird - Same company as Silver Bird. More basic cars.
3. Gamya - green taxis, with a yellow roof. OK.
... down to :
6. President Taxis. Yellow and Red. Use at your peril.
Part of the "game" is to try to ensure that you are not ripped off by the cab drivers. Remember that the roads are overcrowded, very busy and occasionally closed for no apparent reason. When this happens, you are taken via office block car parks and the driver pays the "parking" fee as he goes through. This occasionally gives rise to an opportunity for a rip-off attempt, you need to know roughly where your destination is.
The first time I was in Jakarta, I needed to get from the hotel to an office in the Stock Exchange building. I was taken in a cab and the driver stopped in to ask directions from a security guy at the front of an office. He pointed vaguely over his shoulder and the cab driver returned and took me around the road system once more until we arrived at the grand office block next to the one where he had asked directions - I could have walked in less than two minutes !
At the time this is absolutely infuriating and you are feeling very angry. When you work out your expense claims at the end of the week, you calm down some and laugh - the cost of that cab ride, including the extended diversion was only about 60 pence.
All is not bad in Jakarta, however...
There was a great Safari Park a bus trip away from the city (can't remember the name, something like the Timar Wildlife Park) - sadly I subsequently heard that the economic problems have forced its closure - where the animals actually moved and roared rather than just sleep. Shame was, I hit my head on a the concrete roof of an African style hut in the petting zoo ("picture with tiger cub or orangutan only $10", and had my head bandaged for two days - it was very hard explaining the bandages to the clients I was training! The antibiotics I was given by the hotel doctor wiped me out, so I was feeling lousy and in bed by 6:30pm that birthday.
Lunch at a tea plantation was a worthwhile distraction.
The Hard Rock Cafe is worth a look, but I always wonder if any one actually buys a blow pipe and its darts from the hawker outside to take home.
Buying my Seiko Kinetic watch for IDR 1,047,000. No great shakes as a watch, but it is the only thing that I have ever purchased for myself costing a million of anything! I expected that the exchange rate would mean that this watch would cost me around £60 (saving me about the same on even duty free prices), but the poor Rupiah took another dive and the watch cost me only £42. An ironic postscript to this is that when I needed to get the watch fixed, the repair cost me more than the watch originally did.
The various monuments around the city are indeed fine, my personal choices being the "Pizza Man", "Welcome" and National Monuments of what The Lonely Planet Guide describes as "inspired tastelessness - among Soekarno's great legacies are his heroes-of-socialism structures.".
Everyone has said that I must get to Bali at the weekends - I only wish I had managed it!
(20 Nov 2013)