We found a dirty cheap flights to Jakarta and so we decided to take an extempore excursion to the capital of Indonesia. Why not, beaches of Bali could wait anyway.
Some background - it's quite mind-blowing to think about Indonesia as a country - it sounds like some small patch of islands in the middle of an ocean somewhere far away. This couldn't be far from the truth - Indonesia is actually the 4th largest country in the world (in terms of population), with some 250 million people inhabitants - Jakarta, the capital being the home to 20+ million people. To put this into context - there are over 10 times more people within a square km than in Helsinki.
Some background - it's quite mind-blowing to think about Indonesia as a country - it sounds like some small patch of islands in the middle of an ocean somewhere far away. This couldn't be far from the truth - Indonesia is actually the 4th largest country in the world (in terms of population), with some 250 million people inhabitants - Jakarta, the capital being the home to 20+ million people. To put this into context - there are over 10 times more people within a square km than in Helsinki.
Arriving to Jakarta after spending time in Thailand reveals the shocking differences between the culture, norms and way of life. Jakarta is extremely heavily muslim (vs. mainly buddhist thais), dirty (vs. thais being known for their virtue of cleanliness), and more domestic tourist-oriented.
It was pretty devastating to see the river right next to our hotel getting more and more floating junk every day. Someone clearly had attempted to burn the garbage away (indian style), but wet stuff doesn't burn off that easily (as one might expect).
Maybe the taxis understand scuba hand signs?
Also, frequent visits to the local international hospital set the tempo for the daily agenda - it's not too easy to get around Jakarta :
Due to the high population / car density in jakarta, traffic is a total mess. Just to give an idea about what it's like, our return trip from medical centre less than 10 km away from our hotel took about 1,5 hours. On an amusing note - It's quite fun to pay almost 100 000 for a taxi trip :) Love the denomination.
Overall, there aren't that many stories to be told about this detour, as we mostly hanged out in our hotel/shopping mall combo, watched some movies and got a short introduction to the local food culture.
Overall, there aren't that many stories to be told about this detour, as we mostly hanged out in our hotel/shopping mall combo, watched some movies and got a short introduction to the local food culture.
>> More than happy to move on to Indonesians tourist paradise, Bali!
Ei kommentteja:
Lähetä kommentti