Jakarta, Indonesia – Diving into The Big Durian Part 2

I awoke on Day 3 having arranged to meet some Indonesian friends and to go and visit the Taman Mini Indonesia park with them.

I had met them when they had come down to Perth about a year earlier to do some training where I work for and I had kept in contact with a couple of them since.

Paying a return visit to see them was one of the reasons I chose Jakarta to begin my trip to Europe, as well as being able to get a really cheap business class flight to Europe through a trick with one airline’s frequent flyer program.

Mini Indonesia park is quite a way out of Jakarta so it wasn’t a case of simply hopping on a train or ojek to get there. Instead one of the ladies kindly agreed to come and meet me at the nearby Kemayoran train station and help me navigate the train system out to one of the outer train stations.

From here we hopped off and walked a bit until we got into the back of a sort of van/taxi to take us to an office building where the group worked and where I would meet up with two others. One of them had very helpfully brought along a vehicle so that we could all drive in comfort out to the park.

Roughly 30inutes later had us arriving and meeting up with the final member of the group after which we first had lunch at a restaurant indulging in some traditional Indonesian dishes, before then proceeding to look around the park. This first consisted of hopping on a cable car ride which took us from one side of the park to the other and back again to get a good bird’s eye view of most of the park.

We then got back in a car which made it much easier to cover the sizeable park that’s designed to lay out examples of the many traditional styles of building and costumes from the various provinces comprising Indonesia. As we walked around members of the group were able to tell me a little about their particular local cultures.

There were also several museums at the park that we were able to visit and explore including a science and history museum.

The visit to the park took most of the day and we didn’t leave the park until after 5pm and from there we headed back towards the city. As it was the birthday of one of the ladies on the following day, we decided on the way back to stop at a restaurant near where she lived and we had dinner, giving me another chance to sample some different Indonesian cuisine.

From there I was dropped back to the train station and was seen off by one of the ladies to make sure I got on the right train in the right direction (which always helps :-) ) and then it was back to the hotel.

For my final day in Jakarta I did my packing up and went for a swim in the hotel pool before deciding I might go and check out the Ancol area of Jakarta.

Ancol is currently the largest integrated tourism area in South East Asia and holds several attractions for locals and visitors alike including a water park (Atlantis), a theme park (Dunia Fantasi) and an Ocean Eco Park. On the way there I got caught in one of Jakarta’s traffic jams and then the weather started to turn a bit average, so I didn’t have a long time to spend there, but its the type of place you could spend the whole day with a family.

I did take a ride on the cable car over the whole area which gives a pretty good idea of the size and lay out of the attractions and had something to eat there as there are several restaurants and eating establishments.

To give myself plenty of time before my flight out that night I went to the bus station at Ancol and managed to work out which bus was generally heading close to my hotel. After boarding this it took only 25 minutes or so to get to the stop near where I was staying (using a combination of trains and taxis it took me over an hour to get there) and this was in peak hour traffic, so if possible I definitely recommend using the buses in Jakarta!

From there I revisited a local street market at Pasar Baru to have a bit more of look around to see what was on offer, bought a few DVDs and then walked back to my hotel. After taking another swim in the pool whilst watching a thunder storm going on in the distance it was time to grab my bags and a taxi and head to the airport.

So that was my experience of Jakarta, an interesting, vibrant, pulsating and chaotic city. I continued to find the Indonesian people to be friendly and helpful, the food options were wide ranging and interesting and I’m sure if shopping was more my thing to do on trips I would have found many malls and other outlets to explore as well.

If you would like to get a slightly different experience to places like Bali I would recommend you consider including a visit to Jakarta.

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