Our first stop after leaving Europe is... Jakarta!! We booked our flights to Bali with Garuda Indonesia airlines and they had a free stopover, so it seemed too good an opportunity to pass up. Incidentally, Garuda was awesome and it was a really easy, drama free flight.
Phil and I have a serious soft spot for Jakarta. In 2008, I went over to do an internship for 3 months. Phil joined me for a couple of weeks at the end... and proposed at the airport (awwww... romantic). We also spent a week of our honeymoon in Jakarta a year later, but haven't been back since.
I love spending a few days in Jakarta - even though it's busy, noisy, polluted and has some of the worst traffic jams ever. I find the size of the city (freaking ginormous) and the chaos really energising, the people are so friendly, the food is great and I love that you can find village life hidden in back streets all over the city - like the kampung (village-like area) below.
Jakarta's traffic jams - and it wasn't even raining...
A kampung in the middle of the city, complete with a herd of goats. I took this pic from exactly the same spot as the photo above, just facing another direction...
I was also curious to see what has changed in the last 6 years. The answer is... not much! Well not much that I could see in the few days we were there anyway. We revisited some of our favourite places. First up, Cafe Batavia in Kota, the old town of Jakarta. The area is looking as crumbly as it did on our last trip if not more so.
Cafe Batavia - possibly the only spot in Kota that doesn't look about ready to fall down! I love the old wooden shutters and panelling here. It feels like you've stepped into the 1920s!
On the food theme, we also had afternoon tea at The Dharmawangsa, a beautiful hotel where we toasted our engagement with martinis named after James Bond movies some seven years ago.
Still a killer afternoon tea served in the majestic library. Here are the Indonesian desserts plus a raisin scone...
And the rest... one afternoon tea is plenty to share
We couldn't quite manage the James Bond martinis, so Phil ordered a coffee. It was delicious, so I ordered one and then he ordered another. Then when it came time to pay up, we discovered that the coffee was... $10 a cup!!! Ooops.
It's pretty funny - I always thought that people whose travel anecdotes include complaining about paying $10 for a coffee were suckers who sit down at St Mark's square in Venice or in a cafe on the Champs Élysées and are then shocked when the bill arrived... I'd think, duh, just check the menu before you order... So, I guess the lesson is, check the menu before you order!!!!
I thought accidentally ordering $30 worth of coffee would bring out the GOMP for sure. But he just said 'well, it was the finest single origin Aceh coffee'.
I swear that's exactly what he said. I may not have mentioned it, but he's been getting reaalllly into coffee this trip, making delicious cold brew coffee since July and even getting a hand grinder delivered to Baden Baden so we could make our own from scratch!!
Meanwhile, I was still muttering about $10 coffee two hours later...
What else? Despite Jakarta being possibly the world's worst city for pedestrians, we did quite a lot of walking around. We checked out a couple of the big shopping malls, saw a movie (Transporter Refueled - it earned every one of its 16% on rotten tomatoes), and just randomly wandered about:
Yup, that's a ping pong lounge...
But what about the diet??
Berliner burgers?? Why not...
The 3 Buns Burger Bar. Run by the same guys who have Potato Head Beach Club in Bali. I had a super spicy mango and chilli margarita...
We had a really fun, relaxed and nostalgia-heavy time in Jakarta and revisited a few favourites while also trying out a few new places.
Next stop on the itinerary... Bali. We're in gorgeous Amed this week in East Bali. I'll post one pic below, details to follow:
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
No comments:
Post a Comment