Trip to Jakarta, Indonesia

Trip to Jakarta, Indonesia: Part 2

Stale news: People from gov.sg are skyving at work! Latest Searchword from gov.sg: Ken Lee. LOLOLOLOL!!!

Anyways, I just got back from Jakarta. Was away for almost a week, which explains the lack of updates since 12 March. The recent one on Ken Lee was written by my boyfriend, while I was still having fun in Indonesia visiting their tea plantation in Puncak. It's a two hours drive from Jakarta. And since my father can never get around their chaotic road condition (which is btw, even worse than Kuala Lumpur but not as chaotic as India), we rented a car with a driver. This was on our third day in Indonesia.

The tea plantation in Puncak.

The photos of the tea plantation was taken from Rindu Alam Restaurant. While at the restaurant, I even had the chance to record a video of their staff catching fish from their man-made pond. The weather was cold. And at one point, the whole mountain was blanketed with thick white mist.

While in Puncak, we visited the Taman Bunga Nusantara in Cipanas. For Rp 2,000 (around S$0.30) one can take a ride around the park to view the many different species of flowers native to a country. Actually, it's just like the Singapore Botanical Gardens. What makes it different is the train ride around the park with a prerecorded commentary in Bahasa Indonesia.


The one above is actually a rabbit. It's called Kelinci in Bahasa Indonesia.








The photo above is the recreation of the French Renaissance, with a fountain in the middle of the garden.

You can tell that the people of Indonesia really take pride in their art. From the batik printing, to creating a beautiful garden.

After the visit to Puncak, we travelled all the way down the mountain to Bogur's Factory Outlets, selling mostly fake goods. Maybe it's their culture to be chaotic, because anywhere you go in Indonesia, there's chaos everywhere! From the toilets to the shopping mall, to the mosques and even the roads!

When you travel into Jakarta's CBD area, you will notice skyscrapers with magnificent architecture. Most of the buildings I saw and love, I captured it in video. So the photos below of the skyscrapers are what I found on the internet. Just to show you what amazing buildings Jakarta has.

The BNI building.

Menara Standard Chartered.

Anyways, I think labour in Indonesia is so damn cheap, that you have jobs for every kind of things. I went to Pasaraya Grande (Blok M), and found that the foodcourt has waiters and waitresses. It feels like a restaurant (where they will serve you the bill at the end and you don't even have to walk to the cashier to pay for your meals... all done by the waiter themselves) except... it's only a foodcourt! They even have someone to serve the lift for you! Really feels like you're shopping at Harrods!

And if you sit around at the cafe long enough to people watch, you'll notice that most who owns luxury cars (like the ones you normally see on Singapore's roads) has their own private chauffeurs. Sometimes you'll notice that a family has two to three maids. I heard from my uncle that there are places where lifts are manually operated by hand! Has in these people are hired solely to ferry you up the buildings using only a pulley and a rope. Sometimes when you see/hear these kinds of things still existing in an modern country like Indonesia... you can't help but feel sad for them. They will work for the most back breaking jobs just to earn a few extra dollars. Some are so desperate they don't mind sending their young girls to foreign lands to work as maids.

The economic gap is so huge on one side of the road you will see rows and rows of bungalows of the elites, and the other side of the road houses the poor. There are also so many pushcarts peppered in every street and corner of Jakarta selling foods like baso, mee rebus, goreng pisang, etc.

Photo taken from my previous visit to Indonesia in December 2007.

Their coins feels like arcade coins because they are worthless, not even worth 1 cent!

On our 4th day, I had the opportunity to visit the National Museum of Indonesia. The entry fee is the cheapest I've ever had to fork out to visit a museum; at Rp750! That is less than 12 cents! It houses exhibits that dated at least 600 year ago! The country's influences comes from the Dutch, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. The museum also has a room filled with gold and gem stone exhibits. Golden keris, golden shield, golden fork and spoon, golden water scoop (gayung), golden bowls, golden button coins, golden accessories, golden chastity belts fitted with a golden locker!!! Mostly used only by the rich. And even after 600 over years, the gem stones still shines!!

I think the exhibit that most caught the attention of my cousin and me is the wooden idols with really huge dicks. The funny thing was, the dicks were so detailed, and it's not just a protruding stick. But with details!! This statue, from what I was told were a symbol to fend off evil and bring good harvest for the season, or something along the line. There's even a huge dick carved from stone and a 'vagina' that looked like a flower pot. So you're suppose to insert the dick stone into the 'vagina' performed in a ceremony for great harvesting season. Too bad cameras are not allowed. Otherwise I would have published them here.

I have a lot to say about my trip to Indonesia. But I will continue with the rest tomorrow!