Welcome to Indonesia

---

I completely missed out the flight to Jakarta, which was a bit of a non event....but the arrival into indonesia was one that could have been smoother! On arrival to indonesia they give you a 30 day visa....and like the rest of asia want to see proof of onward travel (ie a plane ticket). We hadnt shown anyone any proof of onward travel in any other country.......but we showed our ticket to a moody official...leaving bali on the 16th of november from bali. The guy was seriously annoyed and said 'this is very bad', and kept shaking his head, as this is longer than 30 days. We told him of our intent to change the ticket to an earlier date so that we dont overstay our really warm welcome, but he said no.....this is not good. He made us walk back 200m to a desk that deals with all the airlines, and we explained our problem. As it was midnight.....we couldnt change our tickets, so he walked us back down and to the officials and made us go back to he same moody guy. He kept saying this was very bad. Then they let us through anyway. Ed, the guy we had met in the airport the other side didnt have an onward ticket, and they didnt even quiz him on this, which kinda takes the p*ss!!

We arrived in Jakarta past midnight, and checked into a hotel for the night. The next day we set off for the traveler bit........and was surprised how long it took to get there. Jakarta is huge ( 6 lanes of traffic on one side of the road). We checked into the hostel, and immediately looked at ways to get out of this place.

Hot, dirty, and full of cars! I would write more, but i havent got many (or any) positive things to say about this place, except for maybe the people were quite friendly in the traveler bit. Id have missed this out if id had known!

Next stop.....Bali!

---