On the road in the Indonesian urban jungle - Jakarta

Coming from India, we landed in Jakarta - as a stopover to see the Orangutans in Borneo. We changed this flight very late in the planning, and since we didn't want to redo the whole Indonesia thing, we now had a one and a half day stay at a hotel near the airport. We thought for a long time whether there should be a complete day of rest, but well, we couldn't manage that ...

In the end, we decided to venture into the hustle and bustle where we were already. First, we took the hotel shuttle bus back to the airport, then with a connecting train to the airport train station, and finally with the train to the city - not really fast, but a taxi usually takes about 2 hours.

The train passed by - for our standards - very poor-looking residential areas, lots of garbage, and children playing on the tracks. Arriving at our destination train station and getting off, we found ourselves in exactly the same type of neighborhood. We walked for a good hour with more or less good feelings through narrow alleyways without sidewalks, with many people, even more mopeds and cars, stinking channels, and a lot of dirt and stench. Of course, we were the only European-looking people here - although we didn't feel threatened, we didn't take wild photos (which wouldn't have been possible anyway, as the alleys were too narrow).

Even after reaching a major road, our impression of the city did not improve. Pedestrians became rarer, while cars and mopeds increased. The sidewalks here were mostly unusable because there were either street stalls or motorcycles and cars parked there, so we still had to walk on the road. Crossing a street was a survival exercise because motorized traffic seemed to have no traffic rules: no matter whether the traffic light was red or green, people still drove. Pedestrian crossings were just props, no one stopped there, you had to maneuver around the cars and motorcycles and hope to arrive safely on the other side. The houses were almost all dirty to totally filthy, and if you actually saw a pretty building from a distance, it turned out to be in a state of decay when you got closer.

We would have liked to visit the National Monument with its observation deck, but unfortunately, it was cordoned off, probably because of an ASEAN conference taking place here.

We would have liked to cover the long distances between the 'sights' with the hop-on-hop-off bus, which was supposed to be free, but we couldn't find a stop for it and we didn't see the bus either, so we had to walk all the distances. In the end, we walked 16km (measured by Google) in heat (the weather report said 35°C) and dust, and we were quite happy when we reached the train station again.

Finally, we had some difficulties finding the shuttle back to the hotel at the airport, but eventually, we sat in it, dusty, tired, and somewhat lame, and were glad when we finally reached our hotel room...

So far, we haven't been too Asia-friendly, and Jakarta hasn't convinced us otherwise. If we ever pass through here again (which will happen twice on our current trip), we will probably prefer to stay in the hotel ...