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!