After experiencing travelling by myself, it was time to fly over to Indonesia to the island of Java to meet Rachel. It was a joy to meet a friend from home and catch up with the news. Also luckily for me Rachel had booked us into the Crowne Plaza which meant I had a night of pure luxury. Bliss.

Jakarta is a massive sprawling capital and it is not easy to travel around without some form of public transport. We only stayed the night before heading off travelling. However, we did return for a night at the end of the trip so I will include those details now.

Known as the 'Big Durian' there is no centre, so we had to choose specific things to go and see. There are also no real attractions besides museums, meaning the shopping malls were the highest things to do on our list. We headed to an area where you could buy native products and see them being made. There were some amazing wood carvings and statues made out of twine. The prices were also quite amazing!! This area was beside the coast so we headed to the marina to dip a toe in the Java sea. The water did not look inviting though but at least we saw it. The port for Java must have been massive as the horizon was full of ships.

Tootaling back inland we headed to another mall area where there was an entire floor of native products. The batiques (material with designs on created by wax) were stunning but I did manage to restrain. Finally lunch called so we headed off to find in a true Wellsie and Semmens style, a Maccers. We somehow got caught in a massive shopping complex and lost all sense of direction and Maccers smelling power, especially when we turned right and walked for 20 minutes where if we had turned left there was one a 100 yards away!

Evening brought on a packing frenzy where I tried to depart as much of my stuff on to Rcahel to lighten my load! To help we had a bottle of wine. This followed by a few cocktails at the Hard Rock Cafe and before we knew it the night and sanity had gone.

The next day Rachel sadly departed, leaving me with a few hours to kill. I decided to see if I could procure a cheap laptop so went to a mall especially for electronics. There was just floor after floor of shops all selling computers or cameras. There were massive gaming shops, with people sat there playing computer games for hours. It was insane. Daunted by the whole experience and completely confused by choice, I left empty handed but with a happier wallet.