{"id":472,"date":"2014-11-16T16:26:29","date_gmt":"2014-11-16T16:26:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.conedm.nl\/denald\/?p=472"},"modified":"2014-11-17T01:49:16","modified_gmt":"2014-11-17T01:49:16","slug":"one-week-in-java-day-1-jakarta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.conedm.nl\/denald\/2014\/11\/one-week-in-java-day-1-jakarta\/","title":{"rendered":"One week in Java (Day 1: Jakarta)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2014 I spent a considerable amount of my time in Indonesia, in Java and Bali to be more precise. Lately I got the question from a friend which things to visit if he\u00a0would spend a week in Java. The most obviously answer would of course be “That’s wayyy too short”, but it made me think how I would spend\u00a0a week now that I have had so many wonderful experiences. I will write down in 7 episodes how I would spend such a week.<\/p>\n

Day 1: Jakarta<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jakarta is a ‘must see’ \u00a0although probably\u00a0not everyone’s piece of cake. Be prepared for a continuous flow of cars\u00a0and\u00a0motor cycles, day and night. When you have bad luck you end up in one of its\u00a0terrible traffic jams (not exclusively something that might happen to you in Jakarta, as we will discover along the\u00a0journey). The air can be\u00a0heavy polluted, garbage seems to be\u00a0everywhere. But nevertheless Jakarta contains a lot of interesting experiences that you simply can not experience anywhere else in Java.<\/p>\n

Public transportion is never an expensive thing in Indonesia, but in Jakarta they made it extra attractive with a free Jakarta City Tour<\/a>. This tour will take you in a double deck bus along the most remarkable sites and buildings\u00a0of the Jakarta\u00a0centre, like the Monas (the national monument built in the 1960’s) and the presidential residence. It will take you an hour to finish the full tour and you can drop out\u00a0in between when you think you found something interesting along its route. The tour guides on the bus are very friendly and speak\u00a0English excellent.<\/p>\n

\"jakarta<\/a>

Deny in front of the City Tour bus.<\/p><\/div>\n

After the bus tour\u00a0visit the Monas, the Mo<\/strong>nument Nas<\/strong>ional<\/a>. You can go with a small elevator to the golden top and from there you will have an overview of modern Jakarta with its countless sky scrapers. Be aware though that the Monument is a very popular attraction, so there might be a long waiting line\u00a0before you can go to the top. The Monas also contains an underground informative information centre where the history of Indonesia is displayed in countless three-dimensional scenes behind glass. You get a fast update on how Indonesia became the Republic it is nowadays.<\/p>\n

\"Monas<\/a>

Monas in the late afternoon<\/p><\/div>\n

Then visit the National Museum<\/a>. The Museum is a two-part building: one is a reminiscent of the Dutch colonial days, the other part is multi store modern building. The impressive thing of the Museum is that you get a real good overview on the complexity of all the different cultures of Indonesia. For me it was an eye-opener because here I learned that Indonesia is such a diverse multi-cultural and multi-racial country (which obviously brings a lot of challenges in keeping its\u00a0unity). There is\u00a0a lot to see about the different races, clothing, religions, music, house constructions\u00a0from its habitants.<\/p>\n

\"jakarta<\/a>

The National Museum – Jakarta<\/p><\/div>\n

Now that it is\u00a0afternoon visit the ‘Old City’ (Kota Tua in Bahasa Indonesia), the part of Jakarta that reminds most of its colonial past, when the Dutch were in charge for circa 500 years. In those days Jakarta was called Batavia (and Batavia refers to ‘Batavians’ one of the original tribes that lived in the Netherlands some 2000 years ago). Many of the interesting places are centred around the square where the so called Gourverneurskantoor (Office of the Governor) is situated. In front of the building you can even rent bikes and discover the surroundings on a\u00a0bike. You\u00a0will \u00a0surely be noticed by the local people, but be careful: pedestrians and bikers are somewhere at the bottom of the Indonesian traffic hierarchy chain! You can visit the Gouverneurskantoor, it contains a nice museum that gives you an \u00a0impression how the colonial Dutch decorated their office.<\/p>\n

\"jakarta<\/a>

Rented a bike, put on the heads and posed in front of the old Governmental Office.<\/p><\/div>\n

So when you have had enough for the day and you want to relax a little bit among the local Jakarta people, return to the Monas park, sit down in the grass and order a typical Betawi (name of the local Jakarta people)\u00a0meal: Kerak Telor<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/span>. In the park at night there is an abundant choice of souvenirs that are being sold by local Jakarta people.<\/p>\n

\"jakarta<\/a>

My part time job as Kerak Telor chef and sales man.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"jakarta<\/a>

Lot of activities in the night time around the Monas.<\/p><\/div>\n

This ends our first day in Java and Jakarta! On the second day we will explore more of Jakarta.<\/p>\n

-Den Haag, November 16 2014-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2014 I spent a considerable amount of my time in Indonesia, in Java and Bali to be more precise. Lately I got the question from a friend which things to visit if he\u00a0would spend a week in Java. The… (READ MORE)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[26,37,57,24,36,52,53,55,47,51,56,54],"class_list":["post-472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travelling","tag-bulan-madu","tag-catatan-perjalanan","tag-city-tour","tag-honeymoon","tag-indonesia","tag-jakarta","tag-java","tag-kerak-telor","tag-kuliner","tag-monas","tag-national-museum","tag-travelling-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.conedm.nl\/denald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.conedm.nl\/denald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.conedm.nl\/denald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.conedm.nl\/denald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.conedm.nl\/denald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/www.conedm.nl\/denald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":503,"href":"http:\/\/www.conedm.nl\/denald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions\/503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.conedm.nl\/denald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.conedm.nl\/denald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.conedm.nl\/denald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.conedm.nl\/denald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}