Jakarta!

From Sydney I flew on to the massive Indonesian capitol of Jakarta. 

Big, trafficky cities are definitely not the reason to come to Indonesia. My reason was that I have two friends who happen to live in Jakarta right now. The first I reunited with is F, an Indonesian woman who was an exchange student at my high school, 23 years ago. I haven't seen her since then, but we got along famously and had such a good time catching up and learning about each other's lives on her home island of Java.

She gave me the very typical Jakarta dinner experience of going to a restaurant at the mall for oxtail soup.

And she let me tag along as she lived her Jakarta life for a few days, including sitting in insane traffic for hours at a time while running errands around the city.

I kind of want to do a photo study of the high-rise apartments in Jakarta, but this is the only picture I actually have so far:

I also took a walk through the city streets for about an hour, which I can't completely recommend due to noise and heat and smog and dangerous traffic and broken sidewalks. BUT I was needing and wanting to feel like I was really out in the city, and it did accomplish that. One of the bonuses is that no one just takes a walk for pleasure in Jakarta (since it's not a very pleasurable place for that particular activity) so people's reactions--from surprise to confusion to ignoring me--were fun to experience. (So far my observation is that things move very SLOWLY in Indonesia, so you have to have a ton of patience, but people are very mellow and kind in general, so it's a pleasant atmosphere to be in while you're practicing your patience.)

And there were a few unexpected moments of beauty, like this street-side, used-tire garden.

Plus kids at the end of their school day (check out the smile on the little kid squatting, the one on the right) were a bright spot.

And then, since I love collecting pictures of funny or bizarre signage, check out this one, posted next to a toilet in an apartment building:

As I mentioned, F was the first of two friends I visited in Jakarta...so stay tuned for the next update!