Travels of THB: Days 5: Singapore to Jakarta

Days 5: Singapore to Jakarta

Taken from the plane on the way to Jakarta airport, it's a swamp down there

Quote of the Day:

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

Weather: Sunny and warm, feels 10-15 degrees hotter than the mid-80s

This bush has very delicate blooms, it is seen all over downtown

Dept of the reach of the NYT: For well over a year THB has been struggling without success to get the right number of NYT papers delivered to our building in E-ville; somedays one short, some days two short. It is amazing to THB how much time he has put into solving this intractable problem, it is hard to imagine fighting this hard for a product! Well, for the last 3 days the International NYT has been delivered to our room; today….nada! Can it really be the same carrier as the one serving 1500 Park Ave? Did the NYT send the Fullerton a “Do no distribute” note just for THB’s room?

A good night’s sleep and yet a short visit to the FC, a meet-up with CYS and SAS at breakfast (they are doing a ½ day garden tour this morning). THB and DB are debating how much time to spend in the sun. After an amount of packing to get everything organized, we decide to walk to Sabar Menanti II (closed on Monday, today is Thursday) and as we walk the sun is beating down and the breeze has ceased.

Longtoo

Mom and nephew; she handles the register and phone, he is the maitre d and has been to SF many times

Good news: Sabar is open, the nephew of the 4^th generation to run the restaurant, helps us with our ordering while his mother handles the register. It turns out he knows a lot about the history of the restaurant: yes, Tony Bourdain did eat there; Sabar I closed when his generation did not want to take over both places; his 81 year old father showed up (not to work though he looked in great shape) and got on his i-phone. One order of longtoo, a plate of veggies and rice, and a bottle of water and a can of iced tea, $10. The noodle dish Tony raved about is sold out by 9am with people buying their lunch on the way to work.

After lunch we decide to do another repeat: a 2^nd visit to Disturbed Narratives at the Parkview Museum. THB chats up the security guard/gift shop cashier and general holder of much knowledge about the place. It was started by a Hong Kong collector and some of the pieces are from his collection. After he passed away his kids now run the place. There’s one curator, Hungarian, who arranges a show every 3 months or so (they close for a month or so between shows to tear down the old and put up the new). Here are some more gems:

Hermann Nitsch

Olga Tobreluts; scene from video

Large photograph

Rosemarie Trockel, photograph

Peter Martensen

This paining and closeup could be Martensen

Eric Manigaud; radiography of priest

Back to the hotel; walk part way back then decide to taxi the rest of the way, $5. Finish packing, check-out and enjoy a scoop of chocolate ice cream in the lobby, $17.

Dept of Research: THB reads an article from the NYT pub’d in2017 that Inodnesians are the least likely to do much walking, and in Jakarta it is taken to an extreme because their sidewalks are in terrible shape and motorcycles ride up on the sidewalks and cars are parked on them.

The limo is on time to take us the 20 minutes to the airport and again there is a greeter to escort us to the Garuda Airlines check-in desk. Damn, one of our bags is over the weight limit so we have to check. That means that most of our rupiah, all of THB’s clothes and keys are going in the hold.

And, it turned out our first “arranger” who greeted us at the jetway (these guys are airport employees) had somehow let the sim card retailer give us a sim card for Singapore and Malaysia. Whoa, we aren’t going to Malaysia. The new arranger gets us to the booth where we bought the original and the clerk on duty sets up the phone to be a wifi hot spot so now DB can use that app to get to Skype for making calls and sending and receiving texts.

The airport is using new technology to make a copy of your passport and thumb prints: doesn’t work for DB and does for THB. Hmmmm….off to the Garuda lounge. Another cosmic joke: There are separate entrances for Garuda and Singapore Airlines and then you are in one large lounge they co-share.

To get to the gate we walked for 15 minutes (see research note above; social engineering for Indonesians?) and then the plane taxis for another 15-20 minutes. No wonder that the flight is 1 hour 26 minutes instead of the 1 hour 50 minutes quoted on our itinerary. And the TSA security equivalent is not centralized, there’s one set up for each flight and that’s where both of DB’s needle-point scissors are confiscated. We’ll be looking for replacements tomorrow morning in Jakarta. And, if we had known that we would have to check a bag then the scissors could have been put n the bag.

Get off the plane and another 15 minute walk to Immigration and baggage claim (more social engineering?) and THB's bag is one of the first off the plane. Ease our way through and then DB leaves THB at the curb while looking for our connection to the hotel. Shi is found and when they return it turns out THB has been waiting right near the taxi.

Dept of Foreign Currency: THB ordered rupiahs before leaving E-ville. A brick of bills was returned. The rupiah is worthless. Okay, not exactly. It is .000073 of a dollar. 100,000 rupiah is worth $7.33. THB did not get any bills over 100,000 and some as small as 2,000.

Though we had pre-paid for the taxi ride, we're not sure what the meter read: 245K rupial, 2.45 millian rupiah? In any case, we had already paid. Turns out that room is $275 a night (we’re only here for one night) and that is 3.75 MILLION rupiah room. Even more amazing: THB has almost 3 time that in rupiah, meaning we have around $10 million in cash on us…can that be right?

It takes about 40 minutes to get to the hotel. It’s around 6 or 7pm (Jakarta is an hour earlier than Singapore, we’ve headed east). Traffic heading out of town is fierce (we each mentally add another hour to get to airport tomorrow night). As we near town, there’s a side road heading inn our direction in total gridlock. For miles! You can't even tell how many lanes there are; it's a mess, andma.

(We each mentally add yet another hour to get to airport tomorrow night).

All the cars entering the hotel drop off zone are searched by security, including using that selfie stick thing to look under the cars. Everybody going into the hotel goes through and airport style scanner. ed. note: the stock exchange down the street had been bombed a few years ago and all the local businesses have beefed up security.

Art in drive-thru area in front of lobby

Scanner

The Alila SCBD is one of the new hip hotels meaning the reception area is so dark that we ask the check-in clerk to please turn on the lights and she pulls our her smart phone and turns on the flashlight app.

Desk tucked away

There are no hooks or rods for towels in sink area....very bizarre

The shower toggles between rainshower and hand-held, and you can't tell where to make the switch

After going up to room (an eclectic layout with a huge bathroom that wraps around to the desk area), realizing turning on the lights is baffling, and hooking up the CPAP requires unplugging the phone (hmmmm…) and when phone is plugged in it isn't obvious how to call the front desk. The elevators work like SA's and DA's in Portland: you put your key to a "reader" and then punch in the floor you want to got to...if you can read the numbers below the reader given the dim lighting. Sooooo, THB cannot even work the elevator!!!! THB will be studying Braille soon.

Kimchee beef dog

We go back downstairs to LeBerger., one of three restaurants in hotel. (Up top is Hakassan a well known Chinese chain with very good food and very loud.) DB has burger and fries, THB has a kimchee hot dog with several other things piled on top, two chopped salads (nice) and two glasses of wine and a local brewski. THB isn’t really sure, it might be around $60 (somewhere between $10 and 4 million rupiah).

Pics from around Singapore: