Apr. 18-19, 1978 - Indonesia

Jakarta is hot and DIRTY.  Fortunately the Australian Embassy will give us a visa in a day so we went to the Garuda office and booked the next flight out tomorrow.  It leaves at 7pm. 

We napped during the hottest part of the day – this is as hot as Bangkok but maybe that’s because big cities always seem hotter.  We’re right on the equator: sunrise 6am, sunset 6pm.  In the evening we went to find dinner at a restaurant recommended by by friends but it wasn’t open so we found our own, the Roda – worth going back to.  I had fried mee (Chinese noodles) and Bryan had chicken curry, hot and spicy.

We had only brought out a little bit of money because of the pickpocket stories we had heard.  The cokes were more expensive than we thought so we had to be careful about what we had for dinner.  Bryan’s chicken curry was 300 rps plus a bit extra for rice.  Bryan ate both pieces of chicken and was satisfied, except when the bill came it was for chicken curry – 600 rps.  “Oh yessir, one piece 300, 2 piece 600.”  Fortunately we had it with 55 rps to spare (12 cents).  Another case of paying for only what you eat – will we ever learn?

To kill time the next morning until it was time to pick up the visa at 2:00 we took a bus to fisherman’s wharf – we sweated unbelievable amounts and smelled the fish and looked at the tourist and marine supply stalls.  After taking more buses we ended at a shopping center and saw a fine selection of Indonesian products. – hand painted batik fabrics were selling at $100 a piece. however.  We fell in love with the ratan work.

At two exactly we picked up our visas for Australia and then went to our hotel for the bags and then by taxi to the airport.  We hoped to get stand-by for a 4:30 flight but that had been canceled so we are waiting for the 7:00 flight.  Good ol’Garuda.  We had been warned.

Garuda was late but we arrived in Bali to find a bus waiting for us.  We had reserved our room at the Legian Beach Hotel recommended by friends in Jakarta.  We got a big air conditioned room with a 4-poster double bed and ratan furniture for $18.  Heaven.