We had an early morning flight from Singapore to Jakarta and in many ways you'd struggle to find two more opposite places. The shine and swagger gone, in their place grime and chaos. But it was undaunting and somehow strangely comforting. We found our way to the local bus stand and waited with the locals for the bus headed to Gambir in the central hub. We both dozed off during the ride and were jolted awake as the bus driver slammed on his brakes, the reason unknown but it wasn't a great way to first lay eyes on downtown.
From the bus station, we grabbed a rickshaw and despite our efforts to haggle the drivers, who had all gathered round us, wouldn't budge on the price. We had no idea where we had to go and so we relented, cue the palls of raucous laughter. That properly pissed us off and ensured we wouldn't be getting any more rickshaws.
We got to the hotel and dumped our stuff, the local area was run down, the pavements, where in existence were treacherous with no two flag stones level and huge muck filled holes lying in wait for the unwary.
Crossing the roads was good fun, every vehicle imaginable aimed for the same gaps we pedestrians went for, we had to be nimble and pick our moves with cautious speed. But this was nothing new, we've seen these roads before and after a couple of goes, the locals were following our lead.
It must happen to everyone who is away for an extended period of time, when this happened to us, we're not too sure, but to rock up somewhere absolutely alien and not feel flustered or anxious about getting lost or suffering from culture shock is just awesome.
We found a canteen-style restaurant down one of the side streets and joined the throng already digging in to delicious looking plates of food. The waitresses seemed to push each other forward to serve us, we assumed it was due to a lack of English skills but who knows? We gave our best smiles and tried to appear as friendly as possible in order that just one of them would take our order. One girl stepped up to the plate and as we asked what things were, she gave us the Bahasa name for it, leaving us none the wiser but that was our problem. Jan by sign language and charades explained she was vegetarian and the the waitress pointed to a particular dish on the menu, I took a punt at another item and we waited for the food to arrive. Mine turned out to be a whole fried fish in a spicy and slightly sour sauce, it was very, very good indeed. Jan had fried noodles with chicken and shrimps, a staple for all vegetarians in Asia.
There are a few sights to be seen in the Gambir area, plenty of statues and monuments, museums and galleries.
The vast Istiqlal Mosque stands proud in the heart of the area, the mosque was completed in 1978 and has the capacity to hold 120,000 people, there was an event going on and we weren't able to go in but the enormity of the building was quite phenomenal. Opposite the mosque is Jakarta cathedral its cross shape structure was finished in 1922. When being built the regions geologic instability was taken into account, the ornate roof is constructed of wood rather than concrete and the three white gothic spires were latticed to reduce bulk.
The national monument stands at the centre of a vast town square, allegedly the largest in Asia. The 132 metre high tower is visible from miles around and sits above the national history museum. The museum was a bit of a damp squib, consisting simply of a model after model of scenes depicting events in the nations history. We skipped through the museum and headed to the lift that would take us to the top of the tower for spectacular views across the city. We joined the queue behind what seemed like 1,000 school kids all screeching with excitement. The lift took maybe 6 people at a time and took 8 minutes to go up and come back down again. Because of the zig-zag queuing system, we were surrounded and it turned into a 2 hour waiting line from hell. As we got closer to the lift, we could feel the tension rising, family groups would try to squeeze past, where there really was no room to move, but what people didnt realise was we're English, we are queuing CHAMPIONS and "YOU. SHALL. NOT. PASS!"
We got to the top and lo! The weather closed in, the rain blackened the sky and reduced visibility to no further than the edge of the square. The thunder cracked and the lightning struck, but for all that waiting, we were not rushing back down. After half an hour or so the weather cleared a little and we were able to get a few reasonable photos.
We weren't sure what to expect of Jakarta, maybe a bit more lush, more exotic, more...'islandy', but Java is vast and is no more 'islandy' than Australia, so silly us.
We're headed on to Bandung for volcanoes, hot springs and paddy fields.