What's New? - Page 116 of 156 - theonearmedcrab.com

10. the journey

Blog entries

getting out of the hotel in Banjaran with our luggage

When I read about the Malabar Tea Estate, a plantation outside the town of Pengalengan, south of sprawling Bandung, I wanted to go. They have a guest house, so would be nice to stay there for a few days. And getting there, for us public transport experts, should be a piece of cake.

Talking to the hotel owner in Cimaja, we would require two bus changes, and her estimate of the time it would take was a little more than mine, so we decided to leave early. Next morning, 7.30 we waved down an Anghot (local slang for Bemo, which is a minibus – remember?) to the bus station in Palabuhanratu. We were lucky, because the bus, half full only, was about to depart. Only to linger around outside the bus station to pick up more passengers. You see, the schedule says he needs to depart the station at 8 am, but it says nothing about thereafter. However, comfortable enough seats, and air-conditioned. Not a big deal.

A little over two hours later we changed, in Sukabumi, to a bus to Bandung, that would drop us off at a place called Cimahi, from where busses to Pengalengan would depart. Now were are talking business: luxury, Exekutive class, real soft seats. And we were lucky, because the bus, despite being almost empty, was about to depart…. We spent the next hour crawling slowly through the streets of Sukabumi, in the hope of more passengers. But never mind: comfortable seats, air-conditioner, not a big deal. That’s part of the travel experience. And that the Exekutive bus kept on picking up, and dropping off passengers along the way, that too.

At about two in the afternoon we were near Cimahi. And so were a whole lot of other cars and trucks and minibuses and motorbikes. Cimahi really is the outskirts of Bandung, the place we had tried to avoid because of its horrendous traffic. In the next hour we progressed – no kidding – about one kilometer, half of it thanks to the bus driver bribing a guard to open a gate which allowed us to bypass the main road for a bit, only to push ourselves back into the traffic jam once again 500 m further down. By now everybody in the bus knew we had to go to Pengalengan. Another bus passenger, a young girl, said she also needed to go there – or so we understood -, and we got off with her, to change to a waiting minibus. How long to Pengalengan? “One hour”. Piece of cake.

countryside: rice padis and houses

The girl spent the next hour calling and texting, and then wrote down a list of destinations we needed to go to, to change to further minibuses. It turned out that she was in fact not going all the way to Pengalengan, but to Cimahi. Which was not where we had been dropped by the bus driver, the bus was never going to go there in the first place. And one hour, that was to Cimahi only. Anyhow, she was extremely nice, of course, sorting all of this out for us, she then even paid our ticket for us, despite our protestations, and she put us on the next minibus. Asking around, how long to Pengalengan? “Two hours”. Right.

After another hour, and another change, we began to realize that we would not make it anymore, to Pengalengan. After dark, the minibuses that plow up and down between towns stop operating, and in any case, you don’t want to be on these roads, after dark. So we asked around among the passengers about hotel options. A little difficult, as nobody spoke English, but then a young man and his girlfriend joined the bemo, and confidently asked, in English, what we needed. Ahh, how lucky we were! Only to learn that with this one sentence he had exhausted his English language capacity. His girlfriend did a little better, managed to ask “What is your name?” and “Are you on holiday?”, but that was it. With hands and feet, and phrasebook, we succeeded in getting our point across to the other passengers, who then informed the driver, who, after everybody left at the end of the route, dropped us at an hotel in a small town called Banjaran.

breakfast in Banjaran

To cut an already long story short, the hotel was pretty basic, even to our standards. Next day, we chartered a whole minibus, no doubt paying way over the odds (I estimate approximately 100 single trips), and instructed the driver to bring us directly to the Malabar Tea Estate, what he did in a little over an hour. Not so difficult, after all.

postscript: I checked the distances, and Pelabuhan Ratu to Banjaran is 150 km, according to Googlemaps, of which the last part – our close to three hour minibus experience – was no less than 25 km, less than 10 km per hour! On to Malabar Tea Estate is another 30 km, which with a dedicated bemo still took us more than an hour!

next: the Malabar Tea Estate

09. Pelabuhanratu

Blog entries

fish drying in the Palabuhanratu harbour

An attractive fishing town on the South coast of Java, with a colourful harbour full of large and small boats, and an active fish market.

On the southern side of Java, south of Bogor, is the fishing town of Pelabuhanratu. We took a bus to get there, fairly comfortable, air-conditioned, that’s all OK. It is just that there are no traces anymore of these impressive four-to-eight lane roads we saw in Jakarta. Two lanes, potholed, is all we get, which needs to be shared with frequently overtaking traffic from the opposite direction, and with motorbikes. Along this road we also begin to appreciate how densely populated Java actually is. Whatever there is in terms of countryside – rice paddies on the hills, some patches of coffee, and not particularly well organized rubber trees, not particularly attractive altogether -, is mostly shielded from view by buildup construction on both sides, mainly shops and small businesses.

boats stacked in the small harbour

some of the fishing vessels are well equipped, with life boats and all

not all the boats will be going far, soon

what I would call a fishing contraption

The main thing in Pelabuhanratu is its fishing harbour and the market. A whole range of vessels are moored, or just stacked, in the small secluded port: a colourful, if somewhat chaotic state of affairs. Some of the bigger boats are clearly seaworthy, but from many of the smaller ones I have so my doubts, and the outrigger canoes surely don’t go far offshore, I may hope. Pelabuhanratu is also the place where Nyai Loro Kidul, the Queen of the Southern Sea, a creature that in popular Javanese mythology rises from the sea to take fishermen and visitors, occasionally features – not surprising if these people do get too far away in their contraptions.

Talking about contraptions, some distance offshore are moored a whole range of bamboo platforms, with small huts on top. These are also fishing structures, with nets underneath that are being lowered at night, in the hope that small fish and shrimps that don’t know better are being trapped, and can be retrieved the next morning. Apparently, catches are pretty meager from this process, but people keep on using them, staying offshore for a night, or so – despite the threat of Nyai Loro Kidul.

fuel containers waiting to be taken onboard

sharks for sale

dried fish neatly packaged

fishing traps

The fish market shows that catch from the boats is more impressive. Huge tuna and blue marlin, eel, even small sharks, the variety for sale is endless. We were late, most of the fish had already been sold, but there was still enough to keep us entertained for a while (seasoned readers know my obsessions with markets). Furthermore, lunch at one of the seafood restaurants along the beach kept us busy a little longer (seasoned readers are equally aware of this returning subject).

ever narrower dykes between the padis…

fishing on the beach

with a minimal catch, but never mind

We had found a nice little hotel in the nearby village of Cimani, which rented out bungalows situated in between the rice paddies, beautiful setting and a short but challenging walk from the sea – challenging as in ever narrower earth dikes in between the paddies, at places a real balancing act. At the pebbly shore, more fishermen. Don’t these people do anything else?

next: a chaotic full day’s journey east

08. Bogor

Blog entries

one of the mant tropical flowers in Bogor Botanical Gardens

one of the many tropical flowers in Bogor Botanical Gardens

Bogor is home to the more than 200 year old brilliant Botanical Gardens, a spectacle of trees, plants and flowers, especially its orchids. Getting there is a whole different story.

Bogor is less than an hour’s drive from Jakarta – if there is no traffic, which almost never happens. With traffic, for instance on Sunday mornings when all of upper-middle class Jakarta takes off for a day in Bogor, it easily becomes a three hour ordeal. We could have rented a car, of course, the easy solution, and become part of the ordeal, but to defy the notion of using public transport so early in the game, would be tantamount to admitting defeat even before the battle had begun. So we enquired about public transport, to learn that busses leave from a bus station on the outskirts of Jakarta, almost halfway Bogor, whilst Express trains – according to our hotel receptionist – depart from the centrally located Gambir station every hour.

in the train station it tells you NOT to hang out of the train, and NOT to get on the roof; in fact, along some of the platforms metal frames with barbed wire are placed to avoid people climbing on top of the train – perhaps these do get busy on weekdays

benches on the stations are a really simple affair, just some track welded toghether

That sounded attractive. Only to be told at the Gambir station that Express trains don’t run anymore, already for a year or two, and Ekonomi trains depart from another station. Most guidebooks and internet sources speak horrors of the Ekonomi trains, overcrowded and full of criminals, but how busy can a commuter train – because that’s what they are – be on a Sunday morning? Not. In the end the whole exercise, two short taxi rides and a train trip to Bogor, was completed in well under two hours, and we had our first experience of the Indonesian train system under our belt.

Bogor is famous for its Botanical Gardens, started by Sir Stamford Raffles in the time the treacherous English had conquered the Dutch Indies during the French occupation of The Netherlands, and they were greatly expanded by the Dutch – after they had somehow convinced the English to surrender the Indies again – to include a research center in 1817. This is where many of the successfully introduced commercial cash crops were first tested, to see if they would prosper in the Indonesian climate and soil.

view of some of the ponds in the Botanical Gardens, and some of the original stone paths

I thought I had made up this word, until I saw this! It exists!

I could posts 100’s of flower photos; this is one of the brilliantly flowering orchids

The Garden comprises a huge area, with various special collections: there is a Mexican garden, an aquatic plants collection, a palm tree collection with over 400 species. There is a palace, a tennis court – who on earth would want to play tennis here? -, a restaurant. And best of all, there is the orchidarium (a word I thought I had dreamt up myself, but later saw confirmed as actually existing). One section is inside, in a dedicated building where several types of orchids grow in pots, displaying superbly beautiful flowers. The other part is outside, where a lonely gardener lovingly nurtures the orchids that have been relegated to this section because their flowers are much smaller, much less expressive. To the extent that we would probably have left soon after entering this part, but for the same old gardener who, for the next hour or so, took us, full of pride, from one hidden little flower to the next. And then on to the medicinal plant section, also his baby – including a stone path designed to stimulate reflexes under the soles of your feet, a painful experience!

I didn’t know that wandering through a Botanical Garden could be so much fun. And I am sure we didn’t see half of it, yet.

next: to Java’s south coast, Pelabuhanratu

the specially designed path to stimulate reflexes under the soles of your feet, and the old gardener helping some haphazard tourist along

07. Batavia

Blog entries

Dutch clock near Kota station, close to the heart of the old Batavia

The Kota neighbourhood of Jakarta was were the centre of the old Batavia was, and it shows. Even the harbour of Sunda Kelapa fits in the image of the colonial past.

the old Batavia town hall, now a museum

Batavia doesn’t exist anymore, of course. The former Dutch colonial capital became Jakarta at Indonesian Independence. But in the Kota neighbourhood the old Batavia is still visible, albeit in the form of mostly dilapidated buildings. Some are no more than a roofless shell, others are about to reach that state, but obviously there has been some restoration going on. The museum-turned old town hall, dating from 1627, stands splendidly at one side of the old cobblestone square. At another, housed in a well-maintained old colonial house, is the wajang museum, showing a wide variety of puppets used in the traditional Indonesian shadow puppet play.

puppets in the Wajang Museum

another typical Wajang puppet

another colonial building at the cobblestone square in Kota, old Batavia

Other buildings, in various stages of need for repair, nevertheless help to imagine how it must have been, so many hundreds of years ago, and the creation of a pedestrian zone for once keeps the cars and busses away. Saturday afternoon is busy, mostly with young people, artists selling their handicraft, entrepreneurs renting out fancy-coloured bicycles – how Dutch can you get? – and there is a really nice atmosphere. Perhaps this should be made the centre of Jakarta again!

the only Dutch draw bridge left in Jakarta, the Chicken market Bridge in Kota

jolly-coloured bicycle rental, complete with coloured hat or helmet: you cannot get more Dutch, neither colonial!

Pasar Ikan, the fish market in Sunda Kelapa

the tall ships, Makassar schooners, although without sail these days, in the Sunda Kelapa harbour

more ships, stacked along the quay of the harbour

at the back, there are many a ship waiting for space at the quay; business is obviously booming

dock worker giving detailed hand instructions during the loading

A little further on is the fish market, in a low key neighbourhood with narrow alleys, and the original harbor of Batavia, Sunda Kelapa. Along the quay a string of wooden ships are moored, not alongside but with the bow to the quay, as to fit as many as possible. And still, there is not enough space: when we take a boat ride with an old gentleman in a canoe, there turn out to be many more ships behind the ones moored. Loading is going on not stop, trucks driving on and off, cranes moving pellets, and harbor workers carrying boxes onboard, balancing on the narrow planks. Only the sails are lacking, these boats are powered by engines, but one can imagine Batavia harbour as is was.

We’re back in business. Where Jakarta was somewhat disappointing in general, this area is the place to be, full of character, full of life, and slightly less full of cars.

next: we’re off to Bogor

neatly stacked cement bags ready te be taken on board

06. Jakarta

Blog entries

the view from Monas, the national monument celebrating Indonesia’s freedom

A modern city, more big than beautiful, with in the centre some traces of the old colonial past left, including a somewhat hidden cemetery

I don’t like Jakarta. I didn’t like it some years ago, and I still don’t like it. The problem with Jakarta is that it lacks a soul. The city is huge, it takes well over an hour with a taxi to get from the airport to our hotel in Thamrin, the neighbourhood considered by most to represent the city center. Smart choice, so we don’t rely on taxis that get stuck in traffic; no, we can walk everywhere! Right! Jakarta is not a pedestrian-friendly town. Every street seems to have a minimum of four-lanes, and often twice as many, which are car-clogged at every reasonable hour of the day. The space in between the cars is taken up by thousands of motorbikes, who move far more agile then the cars, of course. Which makes crossing the street a hazardous adventure, to say the least. In fact, there are some purposely-installed traffic lights for pedestrians, but those are totally ignored by motorists and bikers alike. Mostly, there are no pavements in Jakarta, and in the few places there are, they are either being repaired, or they are in dire need of repair. Or they are used by cars as parking space. Any trees along any pavement have been maintained by the average-height Indonesian gardener without stairs, which means that the average-height Westerner needs to crawl on his knees to avoid the branches. The biggest draw-back for pedestrians, however, is the sheer size of town, walking one block is always much further than you thought it would be. And then there is the noise, always present around you, of all those cars. (To be fair, I have been told by an Indonesian friend here that there are also perfectly quiet neighbourhoods, with little traffic, and that every second Sunday is car-free in Central Jakarta, it is just that we haven’t experienced that yet – and that it is difficult to imagine.)

MONAS, or Monument Nasional, in marble bronze and gold

another view from MONAS, towards the biggest mosque of Jakarta, and reputedly of South East Asia; note the size of the old Dutch cathedral, just behind it to the right

the marble needs to be scrubbed, of course

What about the sights? Any exploration of Central Jakarta starts at Medan Merdeka, the park that surrounds the Monas, short for Monument Nasional. The park is huge, like so much else in Jakarta, but not particularly nice. Admittedly, it is towards the end of the dry season, the grass is brown and dry, but there is also little variation in the vegetation. Broad tarmac strips lead from four different directions to the monument in the centre. Benches are hard to find. Just not a very attractive place to come and recover from the madness on the streets. The Monas itself is another case of big – a marble pillar of 137 m high with a golden flame on top – and not particularly beautiful. A lift takes you to just below the top, to a square viewing platform, but the view is somewhat limited by the air pollution. What you can see, is mostly big, ugly buildings in all four directions.

the old White House, the Dutch Administration’s building, now the Ministry of Finance

there is a trace of colonial, an old canon at the Pancasila Building, also Dutch-built

the Imanuel Church, formerly Willemskerk

I was keen to find some authentic leftovers of the Dutch colonial area, and in Central Jakarta there are a few, but much less than I had hoped. Most of the old stuff has been pulled down – or collapsed spontaneously from lack of maintenance – and has been replaced by modern construction, again not very attractive. There is the odd palace, the cathedral, the ministry of finance building (which used to be the Governor’s Administrations Office, build in 1809), but all are isolated remnants bordered by four-to-eight lane car-clogged avenues. The nicest, perhaps, is the old Willemskerk, now re-christened Emmanuel Church, a largely wooden, round church. Among the church treasures is a silver dish from 1649, just to give you some perspective, although the present church dates from 1893. And, apparently, still has a lively congregation, with services in Dutch, English and Korean, as well as Bahasa Indonesia.

tombs at the old Dutch cemetery; these ones are still untouched

and 18th Century headstones, broken in places, but about to be repaired

and more headstones, dug up – I wonder if they remember where to put them back

On the other side of the Medan Merdeka, hidden behind some smaller streets, is an old Dutch cemetery. Would this be the place to find some genuine colonial traces? Cemeteries are, especially in large chaotic cities, often oases of peace, away from the noise. Not so the Kebon Jahe Cemetery, as this one is called. Workmen are busy lifting tombs and headstones, and re-building the graves of those buried here – mostly Dutch, some Brits and the odd American. Many dates go back to the 16^th and 17^th Century, many of the deceased were colonial office bearers of some importance. Curious, to say the least, that local forces not only maintain, but improve the last resting place of their former oppressors. But the result is that for some time to come there will be colonial traces left, even though not really genuine anymore.

next: old Jakarta, which used to be called Batavia

perhaps the saddest grave in the cemetery, `here rest our child’; a stark reminder that colonial life was not all as romantic and exciting as we sometimes imagine

05. the arrival

Locations

food stall on the move in Jakarta

We made it, just in case you were wondering. Twenty-one hours door-to-door, of which fourteen in a plane. And Indonesia is still as we left it, six years ago, full of people smiling, friendly, helpful; this is what we had come to appreciate so much in the year we lived here. When pulling your suitcase towards a taxi, a passer-by – total stranger – wishes you a good trip. Arriving at a station, somebody is already pointing you to where the ticket office is. Getting out of a bus, people ask you where you want to go, and walk you in the right direction. Without wanting to sell you something, just because they are friendly, helpful. Perhaps the only ulterior motive is to practice their English. Or Dutch, which, surprisingly, is also spoken by quite a few, even younger people. We need to adjust to this again.

another colourfull food stall, along one of the main roads

this is a special kind of stall, with a selection of sauces and sambals

There are not many tourists in Jakarta, our first destination. So we stand out, also because we are considerably taller than the average Indonesian. Some try to sneak a photo of the foreigner, with their telephones. Others are bolder, and ask to be photographed with you.

In downtown Jakarta, like in all other Indonesian towns, there are food stalls everywhere: the Warung Padangs, small vitrines where you select a few dishes to accompany your white rice, which you then eat at a plastic table in front of the stall. Some of the street corners are full of sate stalls, generally not more than a shelf and a charcoal grill, which roasts the most delicious tiny brochettes with chicken or lamb meat. We are going to enjoy this! And I am not sure whether we are going to lose weight.

a local petrol station, to supply the motorbikes

another petrol station

For those who have been following my blogs on earlier occasions, there is one serious downside, this time around. We have only managed to find tonic sporadically, and no gin, and this is Jakarta! I am afraid it is going to be the odd beer and fresh fruit juice, this time around. Maybe we do lose some weight, after all…

next: a bit more on Jakarta

Bajaj’s in downtown Jakarta, crossing a flooded street

04. the pre-departure blues

Blog entries

a demonstration in Jakarta, from earlier times in Indonesia – colourful, and nothing to do with the theme of this entry, but it is time for photographs!

Three days to go, and everything is ready. Rather unusual: on previous occasions there were always so many last minute things to do, to organize, to arrange. Suspend subscriptions, you don’t want to find three months worth of newspapers on your doormat when you come back. Make sure all the bills have been paid: you don’t want a stack of bailiff notices that got lost in between those newspapers, either, when you come back. House fortified, doors and windows locked; new, sophisticated alarm system that was installed some weeks ago, initiated and tested. It works! Neighbours angry because of the noise.

Two days to go, all done except for a few small things. Packing my suitcase. The backpack has been discarded a few years ago, pulling a suitcase with wheels trumps carrying, and in most places, these days, you can roll your way from bus station to tuk-tuk or taxi (or bemo or opelet or mikrolet or pete-pete, or becak, bajaj or ojek – remember?), and into the hotel. If not, there is always somebody eager to help. I am off to a bookshop to buy one more book on Indonesia: I happen to find a whole stack of interesting books, instead, and come back with six. Now I don’t know anymore what to take, I cannot bring them all, the travel library is already significant, another word for heavy.

Last day, we are leaving tonight. Finish the contents of the fridge, empty the freezer. Throw the last rubbish away. Back up the computer, transfer relevant files to the netbook we take. Repack the suitcase, and discard half of the travel library again. Pack an extra, empty bag, in case we buy things during our trip. We always buy things during our trip, including an extra bag to carry them.

Trying to check in online: it doesn’t work, despite the airline email inviting me to do so. Trying to buy a train ticket online, to get to the airport. Doesn’t work either. I call the railways, a friendly lady tells me “the system doesn’t respond”. An omen? Harbinger of things to come? Nah…

next: arrival in Jakarta

03. the transport

Blog entries

You know us as independent travelers, not the pre-booked tour-type. So the only thing we have arranged so far is our flight into, and out of, Jakarta – the start and the end of our trip. In between, we’ll see how we get from place to place. We have always operated based on the concept that the way to get somewhere is often just as much fun as the final destination itself (although there have been exceptions…), and, within limits, slow travel is to be preferred over fast travel. Seeing the country side change, eating lunch at a small roadside café, meeting the people along the way, it is all part of the ultimate travel experience.

However, the sheer size of Indonesia, and the fact that it is a multi-island nation, means that we almost certainly will have to fly, at times. There are plenty of local, often low-cost, airlines operating, although I recall from an earlier spell in Indonesia that their collective safety record is not to write home about. But inter-island transport can also be done by ferry; the most extensive network in Indonesia is operated by Pelni, the state-owned, and by far the biggest, shipping line. Pelni operates some 30 different ships, each for between 500-1500 passengers, each ship traveling an individual fortnightly or monthly schedule calling at a variety of ports across a variety of islands. The schedules and routes for the ships change every year. Time tables are a close-kept secret. Planning your trip is thus somewhat difficult. I have been reading up on Pelni, to find out what the experiences of other travelers have been, and let’s put it this way: customer orientation does not appear to be Pelni’s forte. However, they do seem to have reasonably comfortable 1^st to 4^th class cabins, no doubt far superior to Economy class, which apparently boils down to renting a mattress and finding your own space to put it down somewhere. Plan is to do at least one Pelni crossing, for the experience!

the most recent Pelni route map on Internet is from 2006…

Of course there are lots of other boats, too, as inter-island option – although here the safety record is perhaps even more doubtful – or on the islands itself. Think of hopping from tropical paradise snorkel island to tropical paradise beach island around Sulawesi, or of going up and down crocodile-infested jungle rivers in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo. There are speedboats, longbots – a kind of river ferry carrying everything you can imagine, since rivers are the highways in Kalimantan -, and there are even klotoks – a houseboat type for visiting coastal National Parks.

However, the vast majority of travel will be overland. Java apparently has a somewhat comfortable and well-connected railway network, which we will almost certainly test. There are buses, too, everywhere, from the luxury touring car-type with freezing airco and blasting music in between major towns to the battered old contraptions that service smaller towns, the local people and their livestock, and everything else. Minibuses go by the name of bemo, also sometimes called opelet or mikrolet or pete-pete, and then there is also a choice of becak (bicycle rickshaws), bajaj (motorized rickshaws) and ojek (single-passenger motorbike taxis). The dokar is a horse-drawn cart, and so is the andung, the dilman and the bendi, all in some form or another part of the public transport network.

The temptation will present itself to occasionally rent a car, just to do away with the overwhelming array of types of transport and their confusing names, and the no doubt testing task of negotiating individual fares. Trading in a bit of the slow travel for speed, a bit of the local colour for efficiency. Come to think of it, 90 days isn’t all that much….

next: the pre-departure blues

02. the plan

Blog entries

Where do you start, exploring Indonesia? Anything between 10,000 and 40,000 islands, depending on what source you trust most, 17508 being the number most often quoted (which, incidentally, doesn’t make it the most numerous island country, by far not; Canada, Sweden and Finland have all at least 10 times more islands each!). The name Indonesia, derived from Indus and the Greek word nesos, meaning island, was adopted at independence; not much different from the more poetic-sounding Insulinde or Insulindia used by some during the Dutch colonial period – insula being the Latin equivalent for island.

Our 60 day visa can be extended in country, for 30 days (and more if necessary). So we leave end of September, and come back on Christmas day. 90 days in country, exactly. We fly to Jakarta, and spend a month or so between visiting temples and climbing volcanoes on Java. We try to be in time for the bull race festival in Pulau Madura, an island off Surabaya, end October, before moving to Makassar on Sulawesi. Here we travel the island from SW to NE, all the way to Manado, by way of tribal architecture in Mamasa and Tanah Toraja and snorkeling in the Togian Islands and perhaps Bunaken. Another month later we transfer to Balikpapan on Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo, for some river exploration and jungle trekking to Dayak long houses, for some bird watching, and for the Orang Utangs. A rather varied program, and all of that within the same country.

As always, we have booked our ticket – to and from Jakarta in this case -, and nothing else, and the above outline is a target; we’ll see whether we make it, or whether we get distracted on the way. Watch this space.

next entry: the transport

01. the idea

Blog entries

Indonesia has always fascinated me. Partly this it because of my Dutch origin, and my interest in recent history – not necessarily a pretty combination. Dutch literature, much of it related to the colonial Dutch Indies, certainly triggered interest, too. But mainly it is just the thrill of an island nation, so vast, with so many different cultures, habits, languages, and even religions (despite the dominance of Islam).

For almost my entire working life I have tried to get a job there, first kind of casually with my first employer, then somewhat more focused with the second – both being international organizations with operations in Indonesia. When that failed, I resigned and I landed a job with another international organization, in Banda Aceh, at the westernmost edge of this gigantic archipelago. Unfortunately, this was a one year contract only, and turned out to require close to seven days a week work, so although the job was great, we didn’t get to see much of the country outside Aceh – apart from a week in Flores, and another week traveling part of Sumatra. But we did experience Indonesia, if only a tiny little part of its people, its culture, its food, its hospitality, its resilience. And we liked what we saw. So we vowed to come back, one day, for a proper exploration of this country.

That day has arrived. We have a plan (next entry).

Nederlands	French	German
Italian	Spanish	Russian
Chinese	Portugese	Indonesian

first-hand travel experiences and impressions of travel destinations

10. the journey

09. Pelabuhanratu

An attractive fishing town on the South coast of Java, with a colourful harbour full of large and small boats, and an active fish market.

08. Bogor

Bogor is home to the more than 200 year old brilliant Botanical Gardens, a spectacle of trees, plants and flowers, especially its orchids. Getting there is a whole different story.

07. Batavia

The Kota neighbourhood of Jakarta was were the centre of the old Batavia was, and it shows. Even the harbour of Sunda Kelapa fits in the image of the colonial past.

06. Jakarta

A modern city, more big than beautiful, with in the centre some traces of the old colonial past left, including a somewhat hidden cemetery

05. the arrival

04. the pre-departure blues

03. the transport

02. the plan

01. the idea

Recent Posts

Translate

The Categories

Share this:

An attractive fishing town on the South coast of Java, with a colourful harbour full of large and small boats, and an active fish market.

Share this:

Bogor is home to the more than 200 year old brilliant Botanical Gardens, a spectacle of trees, plants and flowers, especially its orchids. Getting there is a whole different story.

Share this:

The Kota neighbourhood of Jakarta was were the centre of the old Batavia was, and it shows. Even the harbour of Sunda Kelapa fits in the image of the colonial past.

Share this:

A modern city, more big than beautiful, with in the centre some traces of the old colonial past left, including a somewhat hidden cemetery

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Recent Posts

Translate

The Categories