After a brief overnight stay in Sandakan I headed to the airport to fly to Jakarta via KL. Nice easy travel day despite its length and it went with few hitches other than me not realising the hour time difference between Malaysia and Indonesia and therefore my flight being an hour longer than expected!
Driving through Jakarta at night and it feels like a very dark and dingy city which is huge. I was very glad to get through all the traffic and was met by Roberta, Lesley and Ben in a car park of an apartment block in the posh end of the city. The 'hostel' is actually someone's 3 bed apartment and it's very nice. It's easy to see why the others have stayed when there's a swimming pool and WIFI.
Jakarta is not a walkable city so I took a taxi to Merdeka Square. Here there is the National Monument which is a 132m tall, allegedly marble tower with a sculpture of a flame on top which is covered in 35kg of gold leaf. There is a view platform at the top which provides views over the city. I felt like I was the main attraction here though as the tallest person around and everyone wanted their photo taken with me, even the off duty police/army (they looked official!). It was a very odd experience but everyone was very friendly.
The other attraction in the area is the largest mosque in South East Asia. It definitely isn't the prettiest from the outside but I headed towards it to take a look. I wasn't successful as I couldn't figure out how to cross the road! There was so much traffic and there was a protest going on so there were lots of police vans around. Jakarta is definitely lacking attractions so we are headed by train to Bandung tomorrow which is another city but with countryside a little more accessible.
No comments:
Post a Comment