Day 5: Jogjakarta-Jakarta-Singapore

We had an early morning flight to catch from Jogja, and we had arranged for transportation from our hotel the previous night, so we had ample time to wait for our flight when we arrived at the airport. While packing in the hotel we realized that we still had a quarter of Jameson's left, and were wondering whether we should just leave it there, since carrying the bottle would be quite cumbersome what with all the shopping. But our resourceful minds prevailed, and we emptied a mineral water bottle and filled it up with the whiskey... waste not, want not!

We arrived back in Jakarta at around 9am. After dumping our backpacks at the airport baggage room, we took the good old Damri bus back downtown. Our flight back was at 10pm, so we had more than 12 hours to kill with no idea of what to do. We figured we'll check out the old town of Batavia, now called Kota, which was supposed to have some old building preserved from the Dutch era. I wasn't really that interested in Dutch architecture (the Stadthuys in Melaka is pretty representative of the standard Dutch building - all right-angles, monotonous and purely functional) but there wasn't anthing better to do anyway. We first considered taking a train from Gambir to Kota, since we were at the station anyway, but got defeated by the countless ticket counters and confusing directions from people on where to get our tickets. Back outside, we settled on taking a cab to Kota.

The old town wasn't any great shakes - our first sight upon getting there was some guy pissing against a tree, which kind of set the mood for the day. We spent an hour walking around the Jakarta museum. The first floor contained some relics from the old Hindu/Buddhist empires dug up around the area, which was faintly interesting, but the second floor consisted only of Dutch furniture and porcelain, which was frankly puzzling. We wandered around a bit after that before settling down for some excellent nasi padang for brunch, after which we resumed our wandering.
A drawbridge in the old city.

Our last stop in the old city was the old lighthouse, from the top of which one can get a view of the Jakarta skyline and shoreline. Of course, that's shoreline in theory - where one expects to see sun,sand and the sea, be prepared to see instead ships, smog and sewage.


It was barely 1pm after we completed our old city walk, so after some discussion (and browsing through a Jakarta Post newspaper we filched from the plane to see if there was anything on we could go for) we decided to head back downtown. Along the way I fiddled in my bag for my bottle of water and took a swig before realizing I had swigged from the bottle with the whiskey inside... cue merriment from Mags and teary-eyed choking from me. So, boys and girls, travel tip #8173: always make sure that you pour your whiskey into a bottle that's of different shape and size than your mineral water bottle if you're planning to put them both together into your backpack.

We alighted at the Gajah Mada shopping complex, which was something like Bukit Bintang Plaza in its layout. They had a cineplex on the top floor, so we thought we'd try catching Iron Man. However, it turned out that the cineplex had only two screens, and it was packed with teenagers - Mags and I looked to be the oldest people around, by a mile - so naturally when our turn came at the ticket counter we found out the screening was sold out. But we also found out that the movie tickets were dirt cheap too... something like S$2.

Since there wasn't really much else to do, we took a cab to another shopping complex - Cititel, which was about halfway between downtown and the airport, so would be convenient enough for us to find our way back. When we got there our taxi guy kept the meter running even though we'd stopped, so while Mags was fiddling around for money to pay the guy the meter went up another 1000Rp, so Mags had to dig around for more change. I was afraid we'd be stuck in the cab for eternity, with the meter going up everytime Mags looked for change, forcing Mags to look for more change, causing the meter to go up again... until we go broke, or the taxi breaks down, or the nuclear fusions on the sun cease and we enter into a permanent ice age. Fortunately Mags was fast enough this time, and we successfuly exited the cab. In any case, metered taxis were pretty cheap as a mode of transport around Jakarta, and we still had tons of rupiahs to get rid of before getting back to Singapore, which was why we decided on cabbing around.

Cititel was a more modern shopping mall, something like JB's City Square or KL's 10,000 malls... interestingly Bread Talk was kind of a big thing here, with a huge 10-foot sign at the side of the mall announcing their existence in the mall to all and sundry. We headed up to the cineplex first, only to find out that they were showing solely Indon movies. I was actually quite keen to catch one of their horror flicks, but Mags didn't understand Malay and I doubt they would have any subtitles, so we finally gave up on the idea of watching a movie in Jakarta. However, the mall was bigger than the Gajah Mada one, so there was more stuff for us to do. I got ensconced in a cybercafe while Mags went shopping, and he came across a Polo shop with some good deals. We had noticed previously that Polo attire was dirt cheap in Indonesia - and this was in an airport shop, so it was hard to believe they weren't authentic. A shirt with a US$75 tag would be selling for about S$30. And in this shop that Mags came across they had a 2-for-1 deal, so even cheaper! The attire was all locally manufactured, so Polo probably had some agreement with the government where they got the cheap labour in return for selling their stuff at a subsidised rate in the country.

Our shopping done, we headed towards the airport via cab, with enough time to spare to play a couple of games of chess on Mags' new board (Mags 2 me 0, needless to say) and grab some chow. After meal after meal of nasi goreng, nasi ayam and nasi padang, I was frankly relieved to find a Koufu and had some Japanese food for variety, and like every other meal I had in Indonesia, it turned out that they don't mess around with their spices even when it came to fusion food - the curry katsu I had was delightfully, ear-burningly spicy.

And so we got on to our late night flight and arrived in Singapore way after midnight. For a long weekend trip it was pretty eventful, since we'd stuffed in so much stuff int our itinerary. Jakarta turned out pretty much like what everyone said it'd be - boring by day, happening by night. But in any case the focus of our trip was Central Java, and it was definitely worth the visit. My trip highlights:

- exploring the beautiful and majestic Borobudur
- sipping whisky outside the chalet in Kaliurang in the cool and quiet night
- shopping in Jogjakarta
- the Ramayana ballet

Cost is always a plus point for travelling in Indonesia. Our plane tickets were about S$350 each for both SG-Jakarta and Jakarta-Jogja flights combined, and the rest of our expenditure during our time there came to about that same amount as well, so total expenditure per person comes to only about S$700. Not many people travel to Java for sight-seeing, and speaking Malay is a plus when it comes to negotiating prices (interestingly, many locals figured right off that I was Malaysian, sometimes even when I don't speak Malay. I could never figure out how, unless they were quite attuned to the Malaysian accent from my conversation with Mags, or unless there was a vast underground network keeping tabs on me. But of course, only paranoid people think that, and I'm not paranoid, hahahahahahaha! Haha. Heh. Hm.)

And finally, it helped to have a good travel companion, with similar interests, outlooks, and tendencies to rationally-planned idiocy... here's to you, Mags.