We
weren't too disappointed to be flying out of Malaysia as its
Asia-light brand of culture and jungle-light national park just
didn't compare to what we had previously experienced both during this
trip and our previous trip to South East Asia. Monique summed up her
disinterest in the country by dubbing it “Meh-laysia”
Our
first impression of Indonesia was pretty good as a fast-food chain had a veggie burger available for Monique and the bus from the
airport to central Jakarta came complete with wi-fi (although I wasn't able
to make use of it before discovering that I was connected to the
wi-fi on a different bus that had been parked up next to us).
Unfortunately this good impression was spoiled by a taxi driver who
couldn't find our hotel (or at least pretended that he couldn't find
it) and repeatedly got out of the taxi to ask for directions whilst
leaving the meter running, and was then very angry when we refused to
pay the full amount on the meter.
Jakarta, Indonesia's capital,
is a massive city with over 28 million inhabitants. Unfortunately it has very
little in the way of sights (in contrast to the rest of Indonesia
which is chock-full of interesting sights) so we stayed for only one
night before moving onwards. Before leaving we had time for another
run-in with a taxi driver who conveniently couldn't find his way
around the city and wanted us to pay for his ineptitude, and then to
enjoy the Medan Merdaka – a huge area of grass right in the center
of the city with the Monas Tower.
As Ramadan had just ended it was a national holiday so lots of families
were out enjoying the open space. We decided to join in the many
people flying kites and bought one of our own (insisting on a
patterned one and refusing one with Christiano Ronaldo's face on it).
Our history with kites is one of failure; Winnie the Pooh has been
landed on his head multiple times in Cannon Hill Park without getting above head-height, and purchasing
a more serious kite was a serious waste of money. Initial signs
suggested that this would be another kite-related failure to add to
our c.v. As we struggled to get the kite above the height of the
trees where it could catch the breeze. The solution: ask a small
child to assist us in our endeavour. The result: the combined
efforts of the entire family of said small child managed to get the
kite flying to a point where I could take over and take the glory.
They even gave us an extra spindle of kite string so we could fly it
twice as high. The whole experience – the interaction with the
family and then flying the kite – was really fun and by far the
highlight of our time in Jakarta.
With
our previous kite-related failures left firmly behind us we headed
East of Jakarta by minibus to Bandung.
No comments:
Post a Comment