An afternoon in Jakarta

I was going to be on time to the airport for once, until my phone fell under the bed as I rolled onto it to hug Renée goodbye. Took 15 minutes to find it (thanks Bryan sorry for waking you up!), which resulted in me getting to the airport 47 minutes before my flight departure - 2 minutes to spare before they shut down check-in! Yeah yeah I need to change my travel habits I know.

So now it's onward to Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia! I realized it was going to be more difficult in this country right as I got off the plane - I didn't speak a word of Indonesian, and not many people speak English here.

The journey to my hostel was slightly intimidating. Mostly because I was the only idiot in this country wearing shorts. And since I decided to take the shuttle bus and walk instead of taxi, it got some attention.

There are a LOT of people in this city. And, unfortunately, an equal amount of trash on the ground. This is Kota train station, where I got off the bus to walk:

On my walk over to the hostel, I had the pleasure of learning the local road crossing etiquette - walk into oncoming traffic. I don't mean stand and wait to strategically weave through oncoming traffic. I mean walk into oncoming traffic, you know, like, Mulan's blindfolded-grandma-walking-into-the-street-holding-the-lucky-cricket style. It's like a deadly game of chicken - who will stop last? I have a video to prove it...does this thing allow video posts?

Oh look it does! Yeah. It probably didn't look as scary as it did in real life. What's more scary is that I'm now used to it and can't think of a more efficient (and fatal) way of crossing a street (jk). Probably not the best habit to bring back to the US though.

Anyway, after all this craziness, I finally found my hostel. And it was literally a little piece of air conditioned heaven. The room was beautiful, had personal curtains, and everything smelled like lavender! After 5 days of sharing a room with 3-20 other people, I just wanted to curl up in my little alcove forever. So I did just that, and grabbed a Jakarta guidebook to educate myself on this city.

Pretty soon into the guidebook I read about the Indonesian puppet show tradition, and saw that a nearby puppet museum has shows on Sundays. And it's Sunday! A quick Google search told me I had an hour left before it closed, so I grabbed my bag and got on my way. So much for curling up in my alcove forever.

The puppets were really cool but unfortunately there were barely any English translations. The ones that were translated really didn't make sense. From what I gathered, they played puppet shows during special occasions, and also told folk tales with them.

Turns out the museum is actually on a pretty historic old city square built by the Dutch during the colonial days! There were a LOT of people, and trash, so as I starvingly walked through the street food stands, I did not feel brave enough to try any of the delicious looking noodles. But soon as I saw a sit-down shop I immediately, well, sat down.

I didn't understand anything on the menu, so I randomly picked something that looked delicious, called "bakso urat telor". Definitely don't regret this choice - it had this meat-wrapped egg that was amazing!

This is such a long post I'll try to wrap it up. After food I befriended a nice German family and an Indonesian shopkeeper. They told me since yesterday was the last day of Ramadan, everyone would be trying to leave Jakarta to go home - basically I will have no chance of getting a train ticket out of here for days! Oh no I had planned to train out to Yogyakarta tomorrow!

So I hurried to the Kota train station to try to get a ticket, and encountered this ticket line:

I made it out on the other side alive, but with no ticket...

I thought I'd be hanging out in Jakarta for a while, but luckily the nice guy at the hostel helped me pull some strings and got me the last ticket out of Jakarta for tomorrow evening! Wahoo!

Oh and also I got myself two pairs of cute shoes for less than $3 each!

Okay I will actually go curl up in my alcove for the rest of the evening. Night!