Jakarta – 31st July to 3rd August

A sprawling metropolis

My bus from Palembang was another over 24hr job – although this one included dinner and getting the car ferry from Sumatra to Java. That crossing felt like it took forever, and the little coffee shop didn’t have tea… It was tough but we made it.

Once in Jakarta I realised the scale of the city. It’s got a huge population but is incredibly low rise, instead sprawling out in all directions seemingly forever. If it could sprawl out into the sea I’m sure it would. Endless bikes and endless traffic – it felt much more like usual SEA chaos than Sumatra which was relatively rural. 

After checking into the hostel and playing some pool, I took myself to the Indonesian national museum which was fantastic. Up there with the best museum so far. It had all sorts of cool artefacts and history from all of the different cultures/tribes from across the Indonesian archipelago. It went into the history of Indonesia’s seafaring – where they were one of the first peoples to use outrigged boats (essentially stabilisers of each side) which were really common to see around Indonesia. The museum went on and on – it was a bit overwhelming. In one area they had an art gallery exhibition which was great. I also learnt the national motto for Indonesia which is ‘unity in diversity’ with each of Indonesia’s tribes represented as a feather on their national emblem – a cool eagle thingy. My favourite room was a huge gallery with one whole wall covered by a hand painted map of Indonesia – the cherry on top was the sea sounds and understated but epic music playing.

A few cool artefacts:

Mayasa

Lumbung

Outside the museum was their national monument – which was a giant spike. Not much to say about that.

Near my hostel I also found a lovely rice porridge cart, or congee warung as it’s known in Indonesia (congee being the rice porridge and warung meaning street food or small restaurant), which I went back to everyday I was there.

The length of my stay in Jakarta was being determined by the arrival of a new bank card as mine needed replacing (I peeled the back off and it stopped working – whoops).

I was playing a fair bit of pool in the hostel with one guy called Bailey from New Zealand. And one evening we got most of the hostel playing in doubles which was a fun night. The hostel also had a lovely rooftop for yoga which was nice, and a really good kitchen area where people would always be around. I spent a fair bit of time painting – especially during the hottest hours.

Finally my card arrived, and I booked my bus to leave. I overheard a couple of lads chatting to some people and heard they were from Kingston – I almost went over but decided against it as I was just leaving anyway.

I booked my grab to the bus stop and Jakarta’s scale bit me. Well that and my grab driver was useless at following his map. In all fairness jakarta’s roads are very confusing, but he must have added on 45 mins by getting lost repeatedly. Eventually I got the bus stop but it was far far too late. I spoke to the bus guy and he said if you want the 6am bus tomorrow there is no extra charge. So I found a local place to sleep which was cheap especially given it was a whole apartment. But what it had in size it lacked in everything else. I showered but I didn’t feel particularly clean afterwards – but hey it was only one night. And I got my super early bus the next day – time to leave the cities for sure.