My Take on Jakarta

First impressions are often the longest-lasting ones, don’t you think?

Just 2 days in Jakarta and these are my observations:

- The main airport building is very old – it looks like a bigger version of the airport in Bali if you have been there. Quite gloomy and sad.
- Traffic is horrendous. Drivers can turn a 2-lane highway into 4 lanes, or more, depending on how they squeeze. Because of that, there are massive traffic jams everywhere. You’ve got to have guts of steel to drive in Jakarta. Never shall I complain about KL city traffic again or the drivers again.
- The Toyota Innova is called “Kijang”. Other commonly-used cars are Suzuki Swift and Toyota Vios & Alphard.
- I can’t differentiate between the Indon Chinese and the Indon Malays. Even the Indon Chinese have relatively darker complexion than the Malaysian Chinese.
- It is a regulation that vehicles entering malls, office buildings, hotels need to be checked, but the intensity of which it is done ranges. At the hotel where I stayed (Ritz Carlton), the check was very intensive. Afterall, it is diagonally opposite JW Marriott, which was bombed. At Plaza Indonesia, a shopping mall, they only performed a cursory glance-over. Serves what purpose, I don’t know.
- There are metal detectors doors everywhere but again, even if it beeped, they never bothered to stop you.
- There are Krispy Crème doughnuts here though locals flock to J.Co (by the way, the J.Co fad in KL has died. There is barely a queue at the Pavillion outlet).
- Indonesia cuisine is absolutely delicious though the names sound dodgy eg. Sup Buntut (- clear oxtail soup) and Mee Tek-Tek!
- Service in restaurants is worse here than in KL. Thought it could not get any worse, eh?
- I was browsing in a supermarket last night with my colleague who needed to pick something up. Noticed that a bottle of Palmolive body wash costs RM35 equivalent! Plus you cannot find liquid detergent over here. Everyone seems to use only powder detergent. You can’t find Strepsils either.
- The weather is extremely humid, which I found rather strange. Afterall, how much more humid can it get than in KL, which is located in the valley?
- The sun is up, and I mean really high up in the sky, by 5-ish in the morning but it gets dark by 6pm. As a result, I woke up at 5:30 this morning.

The high point of the trip was definitely the Indonesian food. Even for breakfast, I opted for Mee Bandung instead of making a beeline for the American breakfast buffet spread like I usually do in Singapore. Too bad I didn’t bring my camera hence no photos.