Jakarta.

Well might as well continue ye old blurbs. My first time here, first impression was the sheer size/mass of the city. sure there are large cities, more populated cities, but, flying in at 10:30pm, the first thing that comes into view is a vast expanse of street lights as far as the eye can see. bright orange of the main highways, and the flourescent white of the smaller roads. all neatly arrange, not in a grid, but still evenly spaced throughout.

you land, and get a map, and you realize jakarta stretched even farther south than what you could've seen through the light smog before. going into the city you can only feel the mass of people that must live there. it was night but there were still people thronging around. it's not pretty. you have dirty looking houses right next to 5-star hotels, certainly not quite like KL, which looks pretty, has the twin towers, and all that, but in comparison it's just a pretty backwater city compared to the metropolis that jakarta is. dawn came and the light did nothing to dispel my initial impressions. people thronged about, going through their daily business. cars and those annoying little japanese motorcycles teemed, and siting in a taxi and navigating the streets was like wading neck deep in one of those ball-filled rooms as a kid. only much less fun and much more dangerous. still a strange common law of the masses prevailed and served to ensure order among the disorder, which is so unlike Penang in that you get lulled into a false sense of security by the seeming laid-back nature of the place, only to see crazed people driving through the streets as if they are blind and immortal.

now on to more personal blurbs & (only) complaint. flew in hoping to have a nice rest at the 4 (or was it 3? i'd give it none) star Aston Atrium hotel. paid 150k rupiah for an airport pickup, after hearing stories of being ripped off etc. the hotelbooking through the internet went smoothly. polite cordial people. how wrong. i come in and they sent the guy to the wrong terminal. and forgot to give him his handphone (was that a lie i wonder). so i have to take a taxi to the other terminal. guess what? all the official taxis are gone and i get ripped off anyway. 50k rupiah (5 usd) to go from one terminal to the other (no you can not walk). alone and wondering if this guy's gonna take me to some dark alleway and cavity search me.

get to the hotel at almost midnight even though i arrived and was waiting for the taxi by 10:30. check-in guy was cordial as was the hotel driver, so no worries yet. get to the room and the shower is broken and spewing forth rusted brown water. room was a mess, with trash still in the room, tv remote not working, and that dirty feel that seems more in place in a cheap whorehouse hotel than in a "deluxe" room on the top floor of a 3 (or 4) star hotel. went back to reception, see another guy, perhaps the night manager. complain. get complainly blown off, no offer to change room, just a cold statement that they'll "send someone tomorrow" to fix it. and i'm supposed to shower in shit-brown water? by now it's 3am, and i'm sick and tired of this crap, so with the damage done through the internet booking anyway, i sleep and with the intention of checking out the next day.

woke up, checked out. checked in to the Mandarin Oriental. of course the price at 119++usd was almost 3 times the price of the former, but anything for a decent night's sleep. go in, someone opened the door for me(!) someone helped take my bags(!) check-in was hassle free, and someone even took my bags to my room for me(!) not that i'm unfamiliar with such, but after the first hotel this was paradise. room (as you see below) was perfect. deluxe room, beautiful bathroom with white(!!) water. and the most incredibly comfortable down bedding i've ever been in the same room with, much less slept on. maybe it was the trials of the previous day, but for the next two days, whenever i (or any of my friends who visited me) lay on that bed, none of us wanted to get up. planned to visit a couple museums and monuments... didn't get to... because of the bed. and you know what? i'm not regretting it one bit, that bed was so comfortable. i guess you get what you pay for.

well enough blurbing. only a few pics here though. what with the hotel crap and also with air asia not able to do flights to singapore (thus nullifying my final flight back to the malaysian peninsula), i sorta didn't have much time to sightsee =P