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Published: January 31st 2010
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Melaka was my last stop in Malaysia, and from there I took a bus to Singapore. I stayed in Singapore for a few days before flying to Jakarta and after Jakarta I came back to Singapore again. I'm still in Singapore now and since my Indonesian adventure is already over, I'll start with that!
Jakarta
I went to Jakarta to spend some time visiting friends and to scan (very prematurely) the city to see if I would be interested in investing some money in a business (with the sadly low interest rates these days, it's hardly worth putting money in a savings account!).
I met my friend Aghy in Holland when he was staying there with his sister Nita, my then girlfriend. He and his family showed me around some places in Jakarta and I enjoyed experiencing the city from a not so touristy angle and to "hang out with the locals".
One of the places we went to was the Rambutan garden that they had. Rambutan is a fruit that, from the inside and the taste, is similar to a lychee, but from the outside it is red and has some hairy spikes (that are not hard). The
garden was about a 1,5 hour drive outside Jakarta, in Bogor. It also grew some other fruit, like banana and some other fruit that I can't remember the name of. The entire family came along for the trip and I was treated as a VIP!
Another friend I met in Jakarta was Jilly. I met her the last time I was in Indonesia (which was in May 2008) but only shortly. We stayed in touch by chatting online a couple of times, and because I knew she is a singer, I thought I'd visit a performance of her and her band. Live bands are very popular in Asia at club venues and in malls. Most of them play covers of local and international (English) songs, but there are some really good performers, entertainers and skilled musicians among them and I think Jilly is one of them. Check her out on the video!
On one Saturday the band played at a huge mall called "LaPiazza" and I took my camera along to take a couple of shots.
Bali
On
my failed attempt to climb Mount Kinabalu (Malaysia) in December, I met Tamara and some of her friends traveling with her. During my stay in Jakarta,
I got word from her that she and her friend were going to stay in Bali for a few days and she invited me over. Tamara and her friend Olga are both flight attendants from Slovenia and they can fly anywhere in the world for prices so cheap, you just keep on traveling. To give you an example, Tamara was flying from Slovenia to Bali, and from Bali to Los Angeles to visit her boyfriend, and then back to Slovenia in just 2 weeks! That's around the world in 2 weeks and almost as many air miles as I am doing in 6 (or 7 or maybe 8) months!
Since I liked a short getaway from Jakarta and flights to Bali were cheap, I got myself a ticket and stayed for 2 days.
I had been to Bali before on my last trip to Indonesia and had found it a little crowded in the touristy places like Kuta and Ubud, but I still liked it. We stayed in Kuta and had a good share of the nightlife there. On the second day we hired a car with a driver that took us around to some nice places in Bali.
Some places I had seen already, but others were new to me. We saw some nice rice paddies, a volcano lake, Ubud's Monkey Forest and a museum (Ubud is THE art center of Bali, and probably of entire Indonesia as well). By the end of the day we were just in time to see the sunset over Ulu Watu temple, all the way south in Bali. A perfect ending of this short trip before going back to the hustle and bustle of Jakarta again.
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