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Published: January 14th 2007
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Well it’s a New Year, and Happy New year to everybody who has been reading adventures.
My next new adventure started for me on Thursday morning when my boss, Scott, called me at work and said we are going to Jakarta, Indonesia tomorrow for a Marriott hotel project. Our company has a deal with Marriott/Ritz hotels to do the fire/life safety inspections before they can be opened for business; well Scott is training me so I can go to these places and do the inspections.
As we are flying to Jakarta we have to change planes in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, we have about a 3 hour layover, and we find this nice executive lounge were you pay $40 and you get food, drinks, shower, internet, and TV, so it is a very good deal. As we are enjoying a nice cold beer from the tap Scott tells me about the hotel we will be staying at when we arrive in Jakarta, it is the JW Marriott that was car bombed, twice.
Once we arrive at Jakarta, the hotel has a car waiting for us, to get up to the hotel the vehicle/passengers must go through a series of
Photo 1
JW Marriott hotel room three check points: Check Point Alpha, the car stops in front of a big heavy metal swing gate with four armed guards, the drive opens the trunk and hood, one guard goes around and opens each door and check the area with a bomb sniffing device, another checks under the car, once all is clear you proceed to Check Point Bravo, I think this is more of a holding pin deal, but it has two guards and another swing gate. Finally, Check Point Charlie, passengers get out of the car put their bags on a table to be searched, and you walk through a metal detector, and into your nice relaxing hotel. It was like this at the Marriott we were working at, and I also noticed it at most of the big hotels.
Saturday was our day to do the inspection at the Marriott, we arrive on the 6th their first guest arrive on the 15th they still have over a months worth of work to do. We only did one partial test, and it was on smoke evacuation on two floors, the hotel has 13 floors only two were complete, it worked but the voice evacuation failed.
We ended up giving them a punch list about five pages long, one of the items was having an emergency exit door welded shut. O.S.H.A. would have a field day here, a full blown constructions site, no hardhats; I’m not going to mention steel toe shoes because most of the workers were either wearing flip-flops or were barefooted. I watched a man saw a piece of veneer, using a dry-wall saw, holding the veneer steady with his bare feet. Electrical cables spliced together and leaving the wires exposed.
Later that night Scott and I decided to go for a drink at a local bar, I cannot say that I’m a world traveler (yet, give me a few more countries….lol), but I have been to some different places, well here in Jakarta I received so many “Thumbs-Up” on my big nose, I found this to be amusing. Now to get personal, I had to use the toilet at the bar so I did my business, washed & air dried my hands, but I still had to blow my nose (start of my cold), so I go into the stall going to get some toilet paper, but to my surprise were
the toilet paper should have been there was a small shower head on a 4’ cord, wish I’d have gotten a picture of that.
Sunday was an official sick day for me, stayed in bed all day and slept. Monday I fly back to Seoul, I will arrive Tuesday morning. I will be making more of these work trips to other areas like Bali, Fiji, India and some in China.
Here are my, all be it very brief and limited visit, impression of Jakarta, it seems like a poor country, even right outside a four-star hotel, motorcycles/scooters out number cars 10-15 to 1 easily, and the drive were ever, although, unlike Koreans they do at least were helmets. Jakarta is not very clean, lots and lots of nice four-star hotels, but I have no idea what the tourist draw is to Jakarta.
This I found these next two things rather odd, first, as I was seated in an “Emergency Exit” row on my flight out of Jakarta, well there two seats in the exit path, and the stewardess told me I could not store anything under the seats since it was an exit row, and finally the
Photo 5
Note the flip-flops on the worker plane was playing Christmas music, Jakarta has the largest Muslim population in the world.
Sorry for not taking more pictures, but Sunday was my down day and….I was down.
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Aunt Janet
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Jakarta Trip
Hi Kiddo, It seems strange that your idea of Jakarta, does not match your pictures. The city looks so updated. Beautiful buildings, your hotel room looks better than the one Tammy and I stayed at in NY City. Other than being sick, I hope you enjoyed the trip. At least you get to expierence all these cultures. Love ya....keep on trucking....