Day 6: Jakarta

Day 6:   Jakarta

Quote of the Day: 

I stuck around St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain

Weather: Warm, we’re in a/c for most of the day and night

Observations of Singapore: a quaint small city with excellent services, clean, safe, multi-cultural, benign, lots of inexpensive restaurants. One great art show, lots of tourists are shopping or doing pretty mundane site visits. Fear of coronavirus growing, maybe 50% of locals/tourists and more of service people are wearing masks.

Quicky observation of Jakarta: pretty soon the capital of Indonesia will be underwater a significan portion of the time and have to be moved. Coronavirus doesn’t seem to be a big issue as few people are wearing masks. And at 6 times the size of Singapore, it is a bubbly traffic-constrained city. Many motorcycles.

THB cannot read these numbers

During the day natural light is enough to see the check-in and check-out forms. Nobody took our temps when we checked in

One of the rolls had a sausage in the middle

Our hotel as seen from mall across the street

Breakfast and lunch at the hotel. In between we hit the mall across the street and DB has a major success: two non-threatening scissors to get her capability back for needlepointing. THB finds hard candy suck-upons in the market near the scissors store.

Breakfast: yogurt with granola, bowl of fruit, basket of bread, two americanos and one pot of tea, $33. Lunch: shared kale and lettuce (looks like the kitchen held the kale), margherita pizza for DB and half a small half chicken with rice and green beans for THB, share a bottle of water, $50 (no pics).

We pack as if one our backs will need to be checked….tbd. Turns out we’re waved through, okay to carry on all our bags. DB’s new scissors pass the test.

The afternoon includes a private museum visit, a car tour of Jakarta (in slow motion, this town is pretty much gridlocked all the time) and then a tour and dinner at a form immigration building still owned by the government and rented out to an eclectic owner.

What a shock: there’s a Yayoi Kusuma Infinity exhibit (most of the rest of exhibit space is empty) and you are limited to two people at a time for 30 seconds. Double good luck: there is almost nobody around so we take as many turns as we want.

The other exhibit on this floor is for kids of all ages: you put on drop cloth cover-ups and pick up long-handled brushers and add your own paint to the layers in place. Very special!

Our guide (he works at the hotel)

  

The upper floor has a lot of THB and DB faves:

Entang Wiharso

Cai Guo-Quang

Anselm Keifer

Lee Ufan 

Lee Ufan

Anthony Gormley

Pics from around town:

The visit to the immigration building is bizarre: lots of paintings and decorations from many different time periods. 

Large tall tower; intriguing 

Then dinner is served (there are two other couple eating at same time in a place that holds 100s…it is very early for dinner) and we have a pair of cocktails before the pre-ordered meal. Just before the meal is served, a pair of fan dancers (sisters, sisters) come out and entice the other two couples to join them. THB and DB resist.

Satay on sugar cane

Dessert if full of green sludge, never to blend in to the coconut milk and ice

It came up from the deep

The meal is not very good, THB can’t finish anything he starts. Dessert is bizarre (see pic). Two cocktails and a glass of wine and a brewski comes to about $33; THB has no idea what the total is for the meal is since it is embedded in the overall tour costs. Our hotel guide says goodbye and we continue on the Jakarta by car tour with the driver. Both end up with $15 tips, or 200,000 rupiahs where tips are not expected.

The tour ends at the airport, we are 4.5 hours early for our 12:30am flight and that enough time for THB to a) finish up this post and b) notice that his brand new Dell is no longer charging. Hmmmmm…could be last post until we turn Valentine’s Day.