Upgrading

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The dreaded day of departure has come, and as ususal much too soon. I unwillingly get up around eleven thirty to pack my things and check out from the hotel. After saying goodbye to the staff I leave directly for the airport. The check in procedure is a mess, and more than once do I need to be pointed in the right direction to find small little teller's offices where I am supposed to pay the departure tax (10 USD) etc. I buy some famed Timorese coffee for my mother and before I know it I am on the Merpati flight back to Denpasar. Arriving at Ngurah Rai those maddening chimes in the waiting hall once again make me realize that Bali and I seem to be a bit out of sync. My itinerary from this point on is not really that clear, in fact it is based on the availability of flights out of Bali. My main plan was to catch a flight to Labuanbajo and then continue from there to Rinca island, but the flights are fully booked for weeks. Perhaps that is just as well, peak season and all. I collect time tables from four or five airlines and skim through the lists for weird out of the way places but nothing really catches my eye, there are mainly flights to Surabaya and Yogyakarta and the capital.

As I don't really want to stay another night here I decide to head on towards Jakarta where the flight selections ought to be better and where I also have my friends to meet. I shop some Balinese coffee for my mother and then grab one of the last three seats on the next Garuda flight and off we go. I am seated next to a stylish young lady with sunglasses and a pink iPod and realize that switching Dili for Jakarta may become a small culture shock. Otherwise the flight is uninteresting, and soon I am standing in the arrival hall of Soekarno Hatta. First task will be finding a suitable hotel, and since my friends are kind of spread out around town I decide to move around town and begin by a place in the central to northeast sector. The booking service attendant suggests the four star Acacia not too far from Gambir (main railway station) and the MONAS monument. Priced at 300.000 IDR it comes cheaper than that awful place I stayed at in Bali, the discounted rate is indeed very good. I ask the man about how best to get there, and he recommends the airport shuttle bus to Gambir station so I decide to give it a try.

Standing outside the terminal in the early evening I am approached by all sorts of shady taxi touts offering rides to town for amounts up to 200.000, but my aim is set for the 10.000 bus. It seems I am not the only one to have figured this out. The shuttle buses don't leave for town very frequently, the waiting time is at least 40 minutes and by the time the bus arrives at the terminal a major rush takes place. Elbows out and time to start pushing. I have never seen anything like it, not even in China. I do manage to battle my way onboard and when the driver is convinced he cannot squeeze another single soul aboard off we go. Cruising along the big tollroad towards downtown I am staring out the window at the gigantic beehive which is supposed to resemble a city. I read somewhere that Bangkok is busier than Jakarta, but I find that very hard to swallow. Every street I can see is jampacked with vehicles and I wonder how on Earth I will be able to cross these roads. The bus makes a stop along the road and some young boys squeeze inside touting newspapers and fruits. Then they elegantly jump off as the bus starts speeding away again. The trip downtown takes around 50 minutes and as we drive into the crowded square outside Gambir station a lot of taxi drivers, minibus drivers, bajaj drivers and ojek drivers start tugging and pulling at all the passengers, myself included.

Not really knowing how far the remaining leg to the hotel will be I convince myself that since I saved a lot on the bus ride I can splash out a bit on a cab just to get out of this mess. A driver offers to take me there for 20.000 and I agree (I later did this trip with a metered cab and the fare was pretty much the same, 22.000 or so). As we speed off towards the hotel I am sitting staring out left and right at all the big buildings and the broad streets and avenues feeling very small and helpless. It has been a long time since I was so overwhelmed by a new city. Thank god I have friends here! Arriving at the classy Acacia I feel like a bum, but it is nice to be able to converse with people in English again. I'm further calmed by the room, which is superb and silent with a great view of the maddening traffic on jalan Kramat Raya down below. Overcoming this challenge will be the task of tomorrow, for now though I have earned myself a good night's sleep in an oversized bed!

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Photos

Merpati lunchtime again
Note how the chocolaty jelly blurb has been replaced by a pink strawberry blurb, and it is just as horrible.

My room at the Acacia
I can get used to this!