Jakarta: most populous city in the world

Friday, we left Brunei for Indonesia. A final example of how few tourists Brunei has… we had the same immigration officer check us out of the country as we had check us in. She remembered us and, because there was no crowd, we had a nice chat as she processed our exit stamp. 

Our flight to Indonesia took us to Jakarta, the most populous urban area in the world, larger than Tokyo or New Delhi, with a 2025 population of over 41 million people. (New York City is #22 with 14 million). It took us over an hour and a half to go the 16 miles from the airport to our downtown hotel in the middle of the day. We had a nice hotel with an excellent breakfast, but it had no internet connection! That’s why this post and the Brunei post are delayed.  

As Jakarta is not only populous but geographically large, we rode the elevated subway to one of its highlights, Glodok, the Chinatown neighborhood that has been settled for centuries. 

Brunei had great infrastructure and sidewalks. Jakarta: the opposite end of the spectrum. Electric wiring was of the overhead spaghetti wire type. Construction everywhere blocking access. When we left the train station, barricades prevented us from walking directly to Glodok, we had to detour in the opposite direction and then go almost a km to find a way to cross the street. 

Once we were headed in the right direction, sidewalks looked like this.

We finally made it to the Glodok area, but we’ve experienced better stall-type shopping in Mexico. 

We did not stay long. I found a bus stop closer than the train station stop we had used to get there. The bus took us to the National Monument about two km from our hotel. However, we could not cut thru the National Monument park because, even though it was a Saturday, the entrances were closed. This park area was 1 km square and we needed to get to the exact opposite side, so we walked around the park. At least this sidewalk was open and clear, just no gates into the park.

We finally found a gate on the other side of the park, so I took a picture of the famous national statue. This 132-meter Monumen Nasional was nicknamed “Sukarno’s Final Erection,” a reference to the former president who ordered its construction decades ago. Sukarno was removed from power by a coup in 1967 and, at the end of his tenure as president, was very unpopular and corrupt.

I mentioned our hotel and the weather everywhere in SE Asia. We had a really nice swimming pool that we used after being out in the heat. Although we saw people in the pool at other times, when we were there, we were the only swimmers... our own private pool.

Breakfast wasn’t the only meal good at our hotel, we also ate dinner here as it was just too darn hot to walk and find a place to eat. So, here’s some local food we ate:

Indonesian fish cake grilled in banana leaves

Indonesian satay, very tender meat

Phillip went with lumpia, inside was chicken and veggies

Today (Monday), we rode a train from Jakarta to Cirebon, Indonesia, a much smaller city. I haven't processed the scenery pictures yet, wanting to catch up on the posting instead. Because internet access is not guaranteed, I'll try to take advantage of it while I have it!

Brunei, the richest little country you've never heard of

On Tuesday, after five nights in Manila, we flew to our second stop, Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll just refer to our destination as Brunei. We didn’t leave the capital city because just about everything to see in the country, which wasn’t much, was there. Brunei is very wealthy, with oil/gas reserves and production serving to make the Sultan of Brunei the richest monarch in the world. During the 1980s, he was the richest man in the world. Even considering his 1700-room mansion and fleet of Rolls Royces, the Sultan shares wealth with his people, providing universal free health care and free education thru college, as well as maintaining the roads and infrastructure in excellent repair. No income tax, no sales tax, no property tax.

Brunei is a Muslim country, so it has many mosques. We saw a huge gold mosque from the taxi as we were leaving the airport for our hotel. Another huge white mosque was near our hotel and had a fixture, called the Frame Brunei, in a park, thru which people took pictures of the mosque. 

We went to the most visited location in the city, the Brunei Regalia Museum. It showcased gifts from heads of state that have been given to the Sultan since his coronation in 1961. Photography was limited in the museum, but we were able to photograph the Sultan’s Silver Jubilee chariot that he rode in for the ceremony. 

Brunei is quite hot and humid, with temperatures in the 90s and a heat index over 102 every day. There is no public transportation system because the locals all have cars and tourism is very minimal. This is a typical street in the middle of the work day. 

Another sight was Kampong Ayer, the world’s largest stilt village. We had to take a water taxi across the Brunei River (cost: 1 Brunei dollar, about $0.78 US). Our water taxi driver offered to take us up the river to see probiscis monkeys, about an hour total time for the trip, for 30 Brunei dollars ($23.50 US). Since the formal monkey tours started at $98 US per person and I had not booked one, we went with the water taxi driver tour. 

The proboscis monkeys are small, light brown monkeys with an unusually long nose. A shy creature, it lives in mangrove forests and eats mangrove leaves. 

We saw a family of them, including an adult whose nose we saw, but that one stayed farther away, mostly with its back to us, so I only got pictures of the young ones with smaller noses. 

While we were walking earlier, we saw murals decorating a construction fence. One of the pictures was of the local monkeys, so here’s a cartoon version what they looked like.

After visiting the probiscis monkeys, our water taxi driver took us to our original destination, Kampong Ayer. It began to rain, so we walked on the boardwalk to the Cultural Gallery to see the exhibit covering the history of the stilt village. Over 1000 years old, the village features over 4000 structures, homes, schools, mosques, and a fire station. 38 km of boardwalks connect the structures. The Cultural Gallery had a viewing tower from which we could get a good picture.  

We didn't venture on into the stilt village because of the rain. The "sidewalks" were narrow wooden boardwalks and they had become a bit slippery. When we got into the water taxi, the signage at the dock warned of crocodiles. Not wanting to become their lunch if we lost our footing, we crossed back to the main city on another water taxi.

We ate local food at a restaurant across the street from our hotel. The waitress said her favorite was bakso biasa (translates to “basic noodle soup”). I ordered it, very tasty broth. The meatballs had a springy texture that I wasn’t used to, but they were beef. 

Phillip had nasi goreng ayam, chicken fried rice, which he said was good. 

We added Brunei to the list of countries we are glad we visited, but to which we probably won’t return. The people were friendly, but few spoke more than a couple of words of English. We certainly felt safe. The Sultan decreed Sharia Law about ten years ago, so crime is non-existent in the country. The local women wore head scarves with regular Western-style clothes. I saw several local women driving cars, so the country is not completely fundamental. Foreign female visitors are not required to wear a headscarf or cover their knees, but I wore a long skirt while there just to be polite. It isn’t the religion that will keep us from returning. We won’t go back because we visited all the main sights of the country.  

Traveling again, back to SE Asia

Time for more travel! Phillip and I are in the Philippines, the first stop on our 2-1/2-month adventure back to Southeast Asia. We will visit seven countries, two of which, Brunei and Malaysia, will be our first time to see. We were on the island of Bali when we visited Indonesia during 2023. This time, we will be on Java. Our favorites, Hoi An and Hanoi, Vietnam, and Chiang Mai Thailand are also on the itinerary. 

Phillip on the flight to Manila

We left DFW Airport on Wednesday, April 15, flying to San Franscisco then changing planes and continuing on to Manila, almost 19 hours of flight time. We are in the Makati neighborhood of Manila, home of shopping malls and parks and parks within shopping malls.

statues in a park in the middle of a shopping mall

Makati has a more developed street infrastructure than most other parts Manila, with pedestrian overpasses and underpasses at the major intersections.

escalator back to street level from a pedestrian underpass

ceiling mural in pedestrian walkway

not all the escalators were operational! 

Weekend markets and festivals are quite popular here. We walked to the Salcedo Weekend Market. We were still full from our hotel's breakfast, so we didn't buy any of the vendor meals, but I did get some fresh jackfruit to eat later. 

vendor stalls at Salcedo Market

Two blocks from the market, we can across a pet festival at Ayala Triangle Park (Ayala is the largest chain of malls in Manila). Rows of vendors selling pet products and treats. People brought their dogs to this festival. 

pet festival

These activities during our first days have been low key because we've been overcoming the jet lag. Manila time is 13 hours ahead of DFW time, so our bodies had to make about a 180 degree change in sleep time. Tomorrow, we fly to Brunei for a 3-night stay. It is a small country, so just one stop there before we move on to Indonesia. 

Athens: final city on this adventure

Phillip and I arrived in Athens, Greece, two days ago. Athens is the final city to visit on our adventure that began on April 11 with our departure from home.  Athens is preparing us for summer in Texas; the high temperature here yesterday and today: 104 degrees. Although Athens has a lot of sights to see, we returned to our air-conditioned hotel room by 1 pm because it is just too hot and the streets are too crowded to be out and about. The main item to see, but not via a tour inside, was the Acropolis, a UNESCO World Heritage site. We walked about three blocks south from our hotel and began to see the Acropolis over the buildings and trees.

north side of the Acropolis and Parthenon

Before arriving at steps that would take us closer to the Acropolis, we came to the ruins of Hadrian's Library.

Hadrian's Library, built AD 132

The Acropolis is a complex of buildings, including the Parthenon, on a high plateau. The word "acropolis" means "highest city," and different buildings have existed on the mountain since even before the Greeks erected the famous ones that we celebrate today. As we walked closer, we encountered something we've found all around the Balkans... stairs. 

We had excellent views of Athens as we climbed our way up and around the mountain, including a view of a fortress in the distance on another hill.

Phillip and I got as close as we could to the structures on the Acropolis, but that meant also going down the mountain on the east side. 

Phillip letting faster travelers go ahead of us on the stairs down

The access on the east side put us close to the Acropolis's structures. 

The entrance to visit the Acropolis was on the south side. A few thousand of our closest friends were there, waiting in lines. We did not get a ticket to wait a few hours in the sun to walk inside and wander around in the sun. We were happy to take photos from outside and below the Acropolis. 

We continued around the exterior and found Areopagus Hill, free access up a metal staircase to an area to get pictures of the Acropolis and the structures on it, such as the Parthenon. The Parthenon (constructed during the 5th century BC) is a temple dedicated to Athena, goddess of wisdom and war and namesake of Athens.

view of Acropolis from Areopagus Hill

We could also see more ruins in the distance. 

We walked the entire circumference of the Acropolis, sometime close to the mountain, sometimes a distance away. It wasn't terribly hot yet, so we continued exploring Athens. Heading for the Olympic stadium, we walked thru a park, missing the park exit that I'd planned to take. The exit we did take put us on the street at the back entrance of the presidential palace just as the ceremonial guards were moving on the sidewalk. From a shaded low wall, we watched for about fifteen minutes:

These two guards were monitored by a real guard in camo clothes across the street. 

The uniformed guards completed their choreographed steps which included a return to their guard posts.

We later saw six ceremonial soldiers making the same exaggerated leg movements at the Greek Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, but since we had seen it while sitting in the shade at the palace, we didn't stand in the sun to watch them. With these guards in the shade at their guard post, we continued on to the Panathenaic Stadium, the site of the first modern Olympic games in 1896. 

During this Balkans trip, we walked down the 1984 Olympic bobsled run. On previous adventures, we went to the 1972 Munich Olympic venues, and we've been to the Lausanne, Switzerland, Olympic Museum. 

Today, we walked to other ancient Greek locations. We saw a structure in the distance from Areopagus Hill, so we found it today, the Temple of Hephaestus. 

Temple of Hephaestus

We passed the ruins of the wells that were below the Acropolis, with archeologists currently working there.

archaeologists at work

As in other cities, specifically Sofia, Bulgaria, and its Roman ruins, ancient ruins were unearthed when the subway and modern buildings were built. 

ancient Greek ruins at an office building

Since this is my last post for this trip, a few Greek food pictures and a story. 

On our first evening in Athens, we were looking for a grocery store to buy snacks and wine for our hotel room. While out, we stopped for dinner at a sidewalk restaurant on a minor street. Our waitress only spoke a few words of English, but she chattered to us in Greek as if we understood. We each ended up with this delicious plate of gyro pork on top of pita bread with the tzatziki sauce, tomatoes and onions to make our gyros. And French fries! Our second night, we went to a different restaurant, and I got a Greek salad, since we were in Greece...

Tonight, we returned to the same gyro restaurant as our first night and the waitress remembered us. She again spoke extensively to us in Greek, and we just smiled and nodded. Instead of the huge plate of food, we each ordered just the gyro sandwich, which was still too much food. I ordered wine, asking for red wine, but the waitress apparently said the white wine was better or maybe white went better with the gyro. In any event, I ended up with delightful white wine, in a chilled blue metal cup which she showed me to pour into the shot glass to drink. I've never been served or consumed wine from a tin cup and shot glass before.

Tomorrow, we fly home with a four-hour flight to London followed by a ten-hour flight to DFW. We are scheduled to arrive around 8:30 pm. Our bodies will think it is 4:30 am, so our goal is to stay awake as much as we can on the flight so we sleep at home as late as we can. I expect a few days of off-schedule sleep as we overcome the jet lag. 

Phillip and I have enjoyed this trip. At 2-1/2 months, it has been our longest. I was concerned before we left about not scheduling and booking hotels beyond Italy, but everything worked out well. We had internet at each hotel, and I always had cellular internet access as a back-up so I could book one city ahead as we traveled. A few tips about traveling in the Balkans:

-When traveling by bus, verify the bus drop-off point as well as the pick-up point (refers to our 2-mile hike to town for our first Shkodar, Albania stay)

-Paper ticket is the rule for bus travel. We always got a paper bus ticket because we bought them at the bus station, usually the day before we needed them. We saw other travelers who only had an on-line ticket then had to pay again to get a paper ticket before they could get on the bus.
-Spelling of city names changes. Shkoder is the same as Shkodar, Shkodra, and Skodra. 
-Public restrooms, especially at bus and train stations, will charge for use, from a high of 1.2 euros ($1.40) in Italy to 0.30 euro ($0.35) in Kosovo. The average charge is the equivalent of US fifty cents. They could be called toilets, toluates, or WCs (water closet, most common designation) but all use the standard male and female figures to differentiate them. 
-Beer is cheaper than water. In Italy, wine is cheaper than water.
-Espresso is the standard coffee. "Americano" coffee if offered is probably espresso and water. Brewed coffee as we know it is a rarity.

- Check suitcase wheels regularly. I did, so we had no problems during this trip, but we have gotten trash in the wheels on previous trips. I'll still need new handle-side wheels when we return as the cobblestones have done a number of the plastic wheel mounts. 
- Google maps are 2-D. The world is 3-D. I noticed this time that Google sometimes indicated, in itsy bitsy print, that my trip had an elevation change of X feet. This notation, however, only appeared when I input a walk up a mountain to a fortress. It did not tell me that we would be rolling our suitcases up a hill or carrying them up flights of stairs. 
And my final tip, one from every other trip as well:

-Nice people are everywhere. Talk to people, smile with them, and you will get so much happiness in return and will learn so much. In Trieste, Italy, I took a picture for a woman of her and her companions on the boardwalk. She was from Novi Sad, just north of Belgrade. We struck up a conversation and when she heard that we were going to visit Belgrade, she invited us to visit her in Novi Sad. Unfortunately, we didn't make it to Novi Sad, but it was a nice offer. Conversing with our hotel clerks was wonderful. Two separate times, the clerk gave us treats for our trip. Another time the clerk gave us extra cokta (more than the hotel's standard offering for its guests). We didn't chat with them for the treats, but to be friendly and learn from them. From the Sarajevan hotel clerk we learned that Sarajevans wish the city would require that the war's bullet holes be patched in the residential areas. They understand the war remnants left in the central city but would rather that the neighborhoods be allowed to move on after twenty years. The young Egyptian couple on the Kotor boat tour were very nice with a modern outlook on life. The Greek waitress (I think she and her husband owned the restaurant) was full of joy when we returned to her restaurant and it didn't matter that we couldn't speak the same language, she was just bubbly and happy. 

We look forward to our next adventures! We have five cruises booked and will begin planning our next land travel. Perhaps a return to SE Asia, perhaps Africa and a photo safari. We'll see!

 

More Balkan Food and our Albanian Cooking Class

I've been collecting food pictures for a second food-centric post and now is the time as Phillip and I finally were able to attend a cooking class yesterday. My earlier food post covered eating and drinking in our first four countries (Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia & Herzegovina), so I'll be starting this one with Serbian food. One of the common and tastiest foods was this simple tomato salad. The tomatoes throughout the Balkans tasted like the ones I grew, real tomatoes, not the cardboard ones from the grocery store. The cheese on the tomatoes was not as tangy as feta but had more flavor and texture than cream cheese. No dressing, just some green onions more as a garnish. 

Serbians know how to perfectly cook beef liver as well. We think this was sauteed in salted butter for exactly the right length of time. Delicious (for those who like liver!)

I've shown cevapi, the minced meat uncased sausages in the previous food post, but in Bulgaria, we had the minced meat formed into patties. This was pork, with a different seasoning than cevapi, no cumin flavor in the background. It was served with perfectly crisped sweet potato fries and tzatziki (yogurt, grated cucumber, dill) sauce.

Also in Sofia, we stopped at a cafeteria for lunch. Phillip had a chicken stew and I had Bulgarian moussaka, made with potatoes instead of eggplant but still with the traditional bechamel-type sauce. I ordered beet salad to go with it. The beet salad was grated raw beets so I did need to add some oil and vinegar to make it an actual salad. 

On to Skopje, North Macedonia, and back to cevapi. Throughout the Balkans, the cevapi was served with the red avjar sauce and with chopped onions.  

and beans and sausage for Phillip:

We didn't spend much time in Prizren, Kosovo, and one of the days we were there was a national holiday, so we were limited to restaurants in the more touristy area. Phillip had pizza, which was just like pizza anywhere. Prizren had restaurants that claimed to serve Mexican food, so I tried their chicken fajitas. It was strips of grilled chicken, onions, and peppers, but they missed on the fajita seasoning. Also, two of those bowl of sauce were mayonnaise-based sauces and the red one was pureed avjar, not salsa. Edible, but certainly not Mexican!

In Montenegro, we had the best desserts in Podgorica, for free. We ate dinner in our hotel because the view from the terrace was so good. We struck up a conversation with the waiter on our arrival day as we were eating early and were his only customers. He had spent several years as a waiter on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship so we had a great time talking with him. He noticed me writing in my journal because I had to move it when he brought my beer. On our final evening, he brought a lady over to speak with us. She was the hotel's general manager. Nice conversation with her, then she left to attend to business and our waiter brought us complimentary desserts from her, apple pie and chocolate cake. Phillip like the chocolate cake, but the apple pie was the standout for me. The texture of the crust was between a flaky American pie crust and the inside of a croissant. The apples were soft but not mushy, flavored with a bit of cardamom along with cinnamon.  

In Kotor, we had just one meal that was something different from grilled chicken or a green salad and that was when we made a meal of the appetizer plate. Prosciutto was outstanding as was the tomato. The highlights, however, were the cheeses, especially that scoop of what looks like butter. It was a buttery cream cheese that was delicious on the freshly baked bread.

Moving on to Budva, we again had great hotel food. Phillip ordered chicken and roasted potatoes and got half a chicken! Tender and juicy, bigger than a Cornish game hen, but small enough that he was able to eat it all without having eaten too much food.

Those roasted potatoes that came with his chicken were my favorite so he shared them with me that day. The next time we ate there, I had a caprese roll and a side order of those roasted potatoes. The potatoes were baby Yukon gold (or their version of that), boiled then deep fried with a sweet paprika coating. Crunch exterior, soft inside, perfectly seasoned. And my caprese roll looks like a flour tortilla around tomato and basil. It was not a tortilla; it was a sheet of mozzarella cheese encasing the tomatoes and basil with a balsamic glaze drizzled over the insides before they rolled it.

Now to Albania, the country we are in currently. In Shkoder, we went several times to a restaurant recommended by our hotel staff. Excellent beans and sausage for Phillip, but I ordered the traditional platter consisting of a cabbage roll, a layered pastry-like something (my least favorite on the plate), a stuffed pepper, a stuffed eggplant (my favorite), roasted potatoes and mixed roasted vegetables. The center held a bowl of cheesy, avjar-flavored spread that went well with the veggies. 

Another day in Shkoder, we ordered a platter that we shared because it was so much food. Five kinds of meat: sliced smoked sausage, cevapi, a patty of seasoned ground meat, three pieces of grilled chicken, and grilled hot dogs (that tasted just like American hot dogs), cheese, and an entire plate of French fries. Note the black dog to the right of the French fries. He was a good boy who just laid beside the table and thumped his tail on the ground when we spoke to him. He got a few of those hot dogs after we ate our fill of the food. 

Here in Tirana, we ate once at our hotel but were not a fan of the food as it seemed greasy. I found a restaurant about a kilometer away that had good reviews, and it lived up to the reviews. Phillip, now a connoisseur of Balkan baked beans, enjoyed their version, made with large lima beans and chunks of sausage. 

I ordered a pepper casserole and a pickled cabbage salad. Delicious, but not what I was expecting. The cabbage was a cross between fresh cabbage and sauerkraut (I like both those things). I thought the pepper casserole was red peppers and cheese, until we went to our cooking class yesterday and I learned how the sauce is made. No cheese. More on that when I walk thru the class. The casserole was also delicious.

We looked on-line for a cooking class in each city we visited. I did not find one until here in Tirana, learning to cook three Albanian dishes, a traditional main dish, their version of burek, and a dessert. Eleven students with the others from the Netherlands, Sweden, Scotland, and England. Sindhi, our instructor, spoke excellent English and ensured that all the students were hands-on during the class. She provided unlimited home-made wine (her father makes it at his home in southern Albanian). 

We started preparing the main dish, tave kosi, first as it had to cook longest in the oven. Phillip was on meat-chopping duty. Boiled beef, which he is carrying to be covered with sauce. I was on sauce duty, and here's where I learned how to make that traditional sauce that covered the peppers and that will cover this meat. Butter and flour to make a roux, add water from boiling the beef. Add yogurt followed by eggs for thickening it even more. Seasoned with paprika and garlic powder. We whisked the sauce until it came to a boil and thickened, then it was ladled onto the meat in those ceramic dishes, fully covering the meat pieces. As it cooked in the oven, the sauce got even thicker, so it seemed like cheese when finished! One of the students was vegetarian, so we also made a meatless version with red peppers and a different sauce. Phillip got to stir the sauteing peppers. 

With the tave kosi in the oven, we worked on the Albanian burek. It did not use filo dough, rather we made the dough ourselves, so it was thicker than filo. 

The filling was spinach and cheese. We chopped and cooked the water out of the spinach before adding a feta-type cheese to fill the burek. This is a pie-shaped burek, with the filling between two layers of the dough we made. Phillip is crimping the edges before it went in the oven to bake.

We also made Albanian cookies. Not a lot of sugar in the dough because they were drenched with a cinnamon sugar water solution after baking.

The tave kosi came out of the oven to cool while the burek baked.

When the burek came out of the oven, Sindhi sprinkled each with a bit of water then covered them with a towel to soften the crust.

And our food was all finished, so it was time to eat the fruit of our labors! The tave kosi, with its yogurt-bechamel type sauce, tasted like it was covered with a cheesy sauce. The bowl with red-colored food in it to the left is the vegetarian main dish, red bell peppers in a sauce. All delicious, especially with the wine! 

Phillip and I had a great time with a wonderful instructor and really pleasant classmates. We will make the tave kosi at home, but I think I'll find out how to make the northern Balkans burek with the filo dough, as we like that better than Albanian burek.