Indonesia - Days 1 and 2

I got to Jakarta on Christmas eve. My First reactions were that this place is so similar to india. In particular, Chennai! There were so many of these guys waiting right outside the airport offering me a wide variety of services! Lol. But then living in Chennai for years helped me tackle that. Be careful of the taxi dudes. Try to get a bluebird taxi! Those guys are the best of the lot!

The immigration process was awesome. Almost flawless! Had to pay 25USD for the visa on arrival. But that gets you to be treated like a VIP. And you can skip the general line and finish the entire process in less than 5 mins. It took me that much time to walk from the plane to the baggage collection area! And the baggage collection area! Pathetic! The system is so screwed up! No one speaks English near the area. They have more than one airlines luggage coming on the same belt. Took me half an hour to get my bag.

The cab to Jalan Jaksa ( the place I was to stay) cost me 130,000 IDR. Jalan Jaksa is the area you can find the cheap backpackers place. You can find a room for up to 3 people to stay for about 10 dollars a night. But I wouldn't advise the area/place to girls traveling alone. Stayed at a backpackers hostel called Djodys. Good for guys who just want a place to crash.

Dint wanna waste time after getting there. So went to a club called stadium. Man, was it HUGE. And I mean it. A huge disco joint. The music was amazing, the crowd wild. However, not my kinda place. Dark corners, plenty of girls! What not. Anyways entry costs around 100,000 IDR and includes a beer.

Woke up in the morning to meet an Indonesian friend of mine at the nearby Burger King. Another thing that's awesome about the country is that they have hot sauce everywhere! Nice change from Philippines! He he.

After that we went shopping in the evening to a mall called Mannggahan. This is a chain of malls. One of them is dedicated to computer stuff. Managed to find a nice dude called Vishnu there. Selling aim cards. He cut a sim card to get it to fit my iPhone 4 and also got me a scheme to use Internet on it upto a limit of 5gb. That cost me around 130,000 IDR. Well that's what I'm using to type this post out now! It's not easy to find a sim for the iPhone 4 here or someone who understands English. Vishnu does both! Ping me if you want his contact details.

Anyhow, we had dinner at Komalas! Yumm. And then got to the railway station to catch our train for Yogyakarta. Am on the train now! If you take a train here. Do take the executive class as it's the best way to handle the long distance travel. The train costed us around 30USD per person and it's an 8 hour journey. I should be in Yogyakarta ( pronounced Jogjakarta or jogja in short ).

The train actually has some cute girls as ticket collectors and attendants! Imagine a train in India having women attendants! Lol. Can't really think of how that would turn out! :)

The train actually has a pantry car which allows people to smoke! The washrooms are pretty decent. The trains however don't have sleeper berths though they do have comfortable reclining chairs. Indian trains score on this front! But am glad there's a power socket that allows me to juice up my iPhone!

Well that's all for now folks. Will continue to update my journey! With pics in the next post. For now - bring a translator and a calculator if you plan on visiting Indonesia! And I'm here for the next 10 days. So keep following for love updates.