Another Capital City - Jakarta

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Today we were collected by the taxi at 9am to take us to Denpasar Airport. We are flying from Bali today to Jakarta where Louise and I will spend some time exploring the citi before going home. At the airport we both had some foot reflexology in one of the massage booths. This wasn't the most pleasant of experiences as it was very firm and felt more like every sensitive area on my feet was being given a once over with a garden roller. It actually left my foot tingling after for a while. Certainly not the best of treatments I have experienced on this treat. We arrived at our swanky apartment in Jakarta (the capital of Indonesia at mid afternoon) (wiki on Jakarta) the apartment is really plush and we are very high up so get great city views. The view straight down to the pool from the short rise balancing definitely isn't for the faint hearted!

We got some facts on nearby restraints and shopping centres so went out for an explore. Unfortunately it seems we are both somewhat of a novelty her and we drew a lot of long glancing looks from traffics and passers by, instantly we felt uneasy with this. If that wasn't enough the children playing in the river started to run up to us and ask us for money so we picked up the pace as we were afraid we might get robbed. Once in the shopping centre (complete with armed guards and security scanners at the entrance) it was quite pleasant. We had a look around the market but couldn't find anything to eat. Not many menus were printed in English either. Initial thoughts are that Jakarta definitely isn't set up for the backpacker / traveller. When we left the supermarket (after buying numerous ponds beauty products for a fraction of the price) we tried to get a taxi. It's only a 5 minute walk back to the hotel but it just didn't feel safe and I was worried about Louise. Eventually we got a taxi and it's quite sad as children will bang on the windows when in traffic and beg for money, or in one case food. That night we stayed in the apartment, got dressed up and had a nice meal in the restaurant.

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