Jakarta: a whole new world

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After retrieving Sara -- who had not yet really gone to sleep... it was a wild last night in Singapore, I guess! -- we grabbed a quick breakfast before heading to Singapore International Airport.  All the way to the airport, I was so loving the idea of being on a plane, rather than a bus, or train, or chartered van.  Hooray!

I don't know why there is a competition being HKIA and Singapore International .  No contest... HKIA is SO much better.  But enough with the nerdy-speak.

We were whisked away to our flight in Singpore-style efficiency, in the air exactly on-schedule.  The plane was half-empty, so we slept the whole way, spread out in luxury.

Back on land and we were in Indonesia!  Sweet, man!  First things first: buy Visa.  Bless Liz for carrying US cash... word to the unwise: have atleast $25 USD to buy this Visa on arrival.   Otherwise, you will be charged an obscene rate to use your credit card.  Through customs (more stamps!), we collected our baggage and turned into the Jakarta sunlight outside the airport.  We were immediately inundated with people offering us rides to downtown.   "250,000... 175,000... 150,000".  Having no idea what they were talking about, we re-grouped, read the Lonely Planet and decided to take a metered cab, Bluebird brand only in Jakarta, instead of going with the no-name dudes haggling us.

An hour later, we arrived at the hotel in downtown Jakarta.  The hotel was okay and after quickly settling in, we ran into our tour leader, Udie.  Udie is a native, born in Jakarta and now lives in Bali.  I'm pretty excited about having him as our guide because it will be great to see Indonesia through his eyes.  He seems very different from Jane, but different in a good way.  He suggested to Liz and I -- "If you're up for some adventure," he said.   Puh-lease!  Does he know who he's talking to?  :) -- that we hit up the local mall/ market, which was bound to be a hub-bub of wonderfulness given that it was a Saturday afternoon.  He pointed us toward the local transportation, the BusWay, and we quickly got going.

The BusWay is basically like Toronto's streetcar, in that it is like a big bus car, but it has its own designated lane on the road.  Jakarta doesn't have a metro system that we could find, so this was it!  Now, if we thought we were the lone white faces in Thailand, we were sorely mistaken as we were quite literally the only white faces we saw all day, especially riding this very LOCAL transportation.  I had a bit of an unpleasant experience with a man getting quite a bit too close to me during the ride and we were definitely stared at like I have never been everywhere we went.  Everyone, from young kids to old men, would openly stare wherever we went.  It was a little disconcerting.   But we find that most people are just curious, as Indonesia has seen a marked decrease in the number of foreign tourists, due to the natural devastations of late and political difficulties.   As we walk down the street, almost everyone says, "Hello!", or "Where are you going?"  EVERYONE wants to know where we are going and we think that this question is akin to "How's it going?" at home... a rhetorical greeting.  But we're still not sure, so we usually answer, "Just walking!"

At the end of the Bus-Way route, we followed the crowds through the mall, which is also connected to an endless maze of open-air market stalls.  It was fairly crowded, but not too bad and Liz and I had a blast buying incredibly cheap clothes.  We're finding our even modest attire to be far too revealing for Indonesia, where my t-shirts are the bare minimum to be decently covered.  We have needed to purchase longer sleeve shirts to cover up and a few more t-shirts as well because for the next 2 weeks, no tanks allowed!  Shoulders and knees must be covered at all times. 

We were brave for lunch and found a food stall and randomly picked things off the menu.  It was delicious and amounted to about $1 CDN, including a fresh fruit shake.  Ridiculously cheap, so we overtipped, because they charged us too little for what we ate.  It's become our new rule.  Still have no idea what we ate, but I definitely managed to get the entire meal all over my shirt, which means I was down 1 t-shirt.  arg.... good things shirts cost about $2 a pop here.  I also purchased another skirt (I love it!) and Liz bought some new pants.  Excellent shopping to be had in Jakarta.

When we had our fill, we once again boarded the Bus-Way and I had no feel-up problems this time around -- hooray! Near our hotel, we found a Starbucks and Liz was having a craving so we stopped.  For the price of one Starbucks Frappucino, I had bought a skirt... lol!  By the way, the currency here is nuts.  $1 CDN gets you about 7500 Rupiahs.  So our lunch was 10,000 rupiahs, the Bus-Way cost 3,000 and an average Intrepid outing costs 100,000.  Cool, eh?

After our little outing, we headed back to the hotel and collected Rachel before heading out for a little sight-seeing.  There really isn't too much to see in Jakarta, so we were pretty confident that we could cover the major sights, comprising most of Soeharto's phallic monuments.   It's quite true that the man -- besides being an awful dictator -- had a thing for large and ugly monuments.  He must have been compensating for something...

Anyway, we walked to the first monument and took some photos, but we weren't able to climb to the top because there was a 2-hour wait and we only had about an hour before our meeting with our group.  We then walked in the direction of the Palace... not too much to see unfortunately.   Word of advice: sights in Jakarta are really not that great.  Better to spend your time shopping  :)

But here's where my story gets a little interesting ... and a little scary.    So, we were about to leave the National Monument area and head back to our hotel when a man starts calling out to us, "Not that way, go this way."  We ignored him because it was obviously the way out and continued walking toward the street.  We had to stop and wait for a clearing in the traffic and during that time, the little man approached us again, this time he noticed my Canadian flag and said, "Ah, Canada.  Jean Chretien!"  We were surprised to have this little Indonesian man knowing the name of our former PM, so we turned to find out what his deal was.  He explained that he works for the Jakarta tourism office, but before this, he was the "VIP Manager" at Jakarta's mosque -- the second largest mosque in the world.  He prattled on about having escorted Bill Clinton, Jean Chretien, Tony Blair and Nelson Mandela around the mosque.  He showed us the pins they had presented him with.  We weren't too sure about this guy, but he offered to show us the way to the mosque since he was going there anywhere.  We decided that we didn't have much to lose and followed him to the huge structure.  Our walking escort soon turned into an impromptu tour, as he proudly told us about the mosque's history and explained the traditions of the Muslim faith.  He made idle chit-chat with us, asking us about our travels, where we were staying, how long we were staying in Jakarta, etc as we toured the mosque, in almost its entirety.  He showed us points of interest (including a Catholic Basilica built practically in the mosque's backyard, a symbol of the faith's supposed peaceful coexistance in Jakarta) and was generally very informative.  We were pretty pleased with ourselves... having winded up on the Jean Chretien tour!

Then, the little man brought us around a corner where there were some benches and asked us to sit down.  "Now is the point in the tour where we ask you to sit because your legs must be tired," he said.  He then reached into his bag and pulled out some packets of postcards, saying, "The tourism office gives tourists a gift when they come to Jakarta," and he handed me a good 30 postcards and then 30 to Liz and then thirty to Rachel.  "And now you will pay me for them," he said.  We had been had!  He tried to tell us that the money was going to help the tsunami victims in Sumatra but when I asked him for his business card, he said it was in his office.  Right... We were now very scared because we were alone in this deserted hallway with this man who was now demanding money from us.  And in a mosque, none the less!  Not sure what to do, we insisted that he take back the postcards, which then made him angry and he said, "But you will pay me for my tour!"  Now, at this point, we had never agreed to a tour of any kind, but we had been following him around for close to an hour.  We didn't know exactly if this required us to pay him or what, but the only thing I did know is that we had to get out of that mosque ASAP.

I insisted that we would discuss payment when we got back down to the mosque entryway and he agreed.  On the walk back, there was no more idle chat and if I ever walked even a pace quicker than him ahead, he called me back.  We all kept our distance and clung tightly to our purses.  When we finally arrived at the door, I lept to retrieve our shoes and was horrified to see the "security" men that our "guide" had acknowledged on the way in -- these of course were not security men, but actual Java police, complete with guns and other scary things.  I was really scared now because we maybe had a chance against our little tour man, but not these men. 

Thinking fast, I confronted the little man, while a little old woman waited to get into the mosque.  She almost seemed to be cheering me on as I insisted that we would not be paying him because we had not agreed and told him that we didn't have any money anyway.  My thought was that he wouldn't make a scene in front of this old woman.  He still demanded we pay him $15 CDN each -- a HUGE fortune here -- and I refused repeatedly, while the woman and the guards looked on.  Finally, he told us to "go" and we didn't need to be told twice, basically running down the road and out of the mosque.  When we were halfway down the road, the "security" dudes started blowing a whistle and calling to us while followign us down the road and we definitely broke out into a run.  It was easily the scariest moment of my life so far.   I'm pretty sure they were just trying to scare us after we didn't pay them and it worked!  We hopped in a cab as soon as we could find one and I didn't rest easy until we were back at the hotel safe and sound and  we had told the hotel's security and front desk about our situation -- remember, the little tour man knew where we were staying!

Take this lesson: do not follow people anywhere in Jakarta, especially if they seem to know the Javanese police personally.

Phew.... so the night was a little less adventurous.  We met the new people joining our group of 6.  New additions to Team Von Trapp are Jeff and Tonya from Rochester and Paulina and Brian from Holland.  We were sort of disappointed because we are now only 10 people, instead of the 12 of before and our new additions are not exactly in our age bracket.  Paulina and Brian are actually on their honeymoon and they had arrived in Jakarta a few days before and were feeling very under-the-weather and weren't sure if they would continue on the trip with us.  Oh well, looks like the 6 original TVT crew is staying in-tact, which is fine with me because these guys are fantastic.

The 6 of us and Udie grabbed some fantastic street food for dinner.  We had chicken satay, with peanut sauce and strawberry shakes... all for under $2 CDN... what a deal!  It was pretty fun chowing down in the middle of the street, although I am getting used to it, I admit. 

After dinner, we did some Internet and then headed to a bar and just as we were about to leave, a girl approached us and, gesturing toward the Canadian flag on my purse said, "You're Canadian?  I am too.  I'm Jen."  It's funny how a little fabric flag can have such an impact.  She sat down with us and we chatted for a bit, which was nice but we soon bade her safe travels, because we had an early morning the next day!