Tag Archives: Indonesia

Infrastructure envy

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Train from BNI City to Jakarta international airport. This photo is owned by callmecreation.com and can be found on Instagram

*Life took over so this post is several months late*

I had major infrastructure envy when I was leaving Jakarta to go back to Manila in July.

Let me start off with this: I technically stayed there for 48 hours since my MNL-JKT-MNL flights were red-eye trips. Getting a taxi during rush hour in Jakarta is a pain when using ride hailing apps. It’s more painful when hailing ordinary taxis off the streets because they don’t speak nor understand English. I was at the mercy of the hotel staff, who also could barely speak English, to get me a taxi to take me to BNI City to take the express train to the airport.

To my pleasant surprise, their terminal looked like a mall

This photo is owned by callmecreation.com and can be found on @callmecreation on Instagram

Waiting for the train is not a miserable experience too. It’s airconditioned, not crowded, and it’s clean. Although it’s tough to pay for tickets because cash is seldom used.

This photo is owned by callmecreation.com and can be found on Instagram

I paid a peso equivalent of P250+ for this:

This photo is owned by callmecreation.com and can be found on Instagram

The train is fast (less than an hour to the airport), clean and not crowded. It took only three stops to get to the airport at around 8 pm.

And damn it, their airport has skytrains to connect T1, T2, and T3.

This photo is owned by callmecreation.com and can be found on Instagram

This photo is owned by callmecreation.com and can be found on Instagram

This photo is owned by callmecreation.com and can be found on Instagram

I wanted to cry all the way from Jakarta to Manila. I blame the stupid masses for voting for useless politicians who are just looking after their self-interest. I blame the 16m people who voted for a narcissistic president. I blame myself for pinning my hopes on a country that I believed would change. Here we are, Jakarta and Philippines are often compared due to the similarities in demographics, economic growth, geography, and level of corruption. And yet they have better infra than we do. Fuck it. All the Philippine government is doing is tooting its own horn and patting itself on the back.

Why can’t we have nicer things here in the Philippines?

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I cry for my country. I am almost giving up.

Massage via GoLife, Go-Jek’s all-around service provider on a motorbike

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Yes, I know. I am pathetic. So after the training session with colleagues, I went straight to my hotel room to catch some Zzzzzzzs. But then the little laminated card on my table beckoned…advertising a 60 min Javanese massage for IDR 295,000 (PHP 1,074). I was almost tempted. So I asked Durian Writer if the price was reasonable.

He said it was too expensive when I can have a 90 min massage via Go-Jek’s GoLife app for half the price.

I downloaded the app. But then Durian Writer said I should start the process of verification as soon as possible because it takes a while before a user can get cleared.

The app requires a person to upload an ID or passport, then a selfie with the ID/passport. Then GoLife backend will clear…it may take an hour or 24 hrs…

I was getting impatient so I went out and tried to look for alternative massage places. There was one at the back of my hotel.

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Their receptionists were a bit dense, unfortunately. One of them said their available therapists are male and it would only start at 7:30 pm. The females are available at 11 pm (they close at 12 am). Would I be booking the male therapists? Errr…

So I walked away and tried searching on Google Map the nearest massage place again. This time it pointed me to one in Sarinah. I went in search for it but there was nothing! I couldn’t find it! I got hungry and ended up at KFC. Durian Writer gave a remark that was close to a curse for eating KFC.

I resigned and went back to my room. Then I checked GoLife. Hurray! I was cleared, or I thought I was cleared. Everything was in Bahasa so I was just guessing. I tried booking and was able to proceed so I guess I got cleared.

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I have no idea what the app was telling me but I just assumed that TUNAI means cash. I double-checked with Google Translate, so yeah, it means cash.

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So there, a therapist responded to my request. I had to tell her though that I am a foreigner and that I do not speak Bahasa.

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Durian Writer told me to correct my therapist that I am not a pak (sir) but rather I am a wanita (woman).

Her massage was strong to the point of being painful–the good painful. Similar to the Chinese reflexology massages I had in Singapore and Taiwan. 90 minutes of that. For half the price that the hotel is offering.

So yeah, GoLife makes it easier for you in Indonesia. As Durian Writer said, he doesn’t need to hire a maid in Indonesia (he has just transferred to Malang in East Java); all he needs to do is book a cleaning service via GoLife.

Artsy fartsy place to stay in Jakarta that will not break the bank

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This photo is owned by callmecreation.com and can be found on @callmecreation on Instagram

I was supposed to book something else in Jakarta, I think it was near Grand Indonesia.

But then my boss recommended this and I saw it was a lot cheaper, at around PHP 2,370 a night. There was no question about it so I booked it. It was in front of Sarinah, Jakarta’s first department store, ergo, I will not run out of food options.

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Durian Writer told me to take a selfie infront of it because it was the scene of the Jakarta bombings a few years back.

Anyway, Artotel in Thamrin is comfortable enough, the room was much bigger than anything else I book in Singapore, and has decent Internet connection (around 20+ Mbps). It poses as an art gallery/hotel and it has murals done by up and coming local artists.

Looks like it’s tilting but it’s actually level. This photo is owned by callmecreation.com and can be found on @callmecreation on Instagram

This photo is owned by callmecreation.com and can be found on @callmecreation on Instagram

The food though is… Any breakfast buffet without bacon in my book is a fail. That’s it. Since everything in Jakarta is halal, I couldn’t expect to have babi/baboy which is why my diet the past three days consisted of ayam (chicken) and veggies.

This photo is owned by callmecreation.com and can be found on @callmecreation on Instagram

The food I had the past three days lacked the umami flavor that I favor so much. Yes, Indonesian food is spicy because they love putting so much crushed chili but I found myself always reaching for the soy sauce and black pepper.

Nasi padang. This photo is owned by callmecreation.com and can be found on @callmecreation on Instagram

The style of nasi padang is to serve everything on the table. But of course my colleagues and I did not eat everything. You only get charged for the ones you pick/touch. So I think they make money off people who have bigger eyes than their stomachs as they would be dipping into every dish on the table “just to try”. They will end up paying for everything.

I just ate beef rendang, jackfruit curry (like ginataang langka), and a vegetable dish that is a bunch of leaves that was blanched and it tasted like lagundi leaves. I liked the rendang.

The other day we ate near Sarinah and I ordered gado-gado (because this dish has been advertised to me by Durian Writer so many times) and satay, just to compare the Singaporean one. My colleague boasted that Indonesian satay is the best (of course you should love thy own) but unfortunately I liked the Singaporean version grilled near Lau Pasat every night. The Indonesian satay is covered in so much yellow sauce that didn’t help in flavoring the meat itself (which is, of course, ayam) I liked the gado-gado, which is a dish composed of kropek, fried tofu, veggies, sambal and some stuff I no longer remember.

This photo is owned by callmecreation.com and can be found on @callmecreation on Instagram

I had this blueberry vanilla milkshake when we were in Markette in Grand Indonesia for a meeting.

All in all, my travel food is not a success. I may have better luck the next time around.

Communication gone really wrong: How to get out of the Soekarno Hatta International Airport, where no ones speaks English, at 1 freaking am

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This photo is owned by callmecreation.com

This was my first time in Jakarta. I cannot pinpoint any reason why it took me a long time to visit Indonesia. Maybe I associate it closely with work. Or maybe because of my experience below (which I half-expected already).

Anyway, because I have no idea how to navigate in Jakarta, a friend told me to just book Blue Bird taxi to bring me to my hotel, Artotel Thamrin, safely. I saw a Blue Bird ad at the airport and learned that it had an app so I quickly downloaded it and proceeded to book my taxi online.

The problem is it could not pinpoint my pickup point since I was under the train tracks or some kind of structure. The GPS was out of whack. So I had to ask a lot of people (airport personnel, guards, airport police) if the pickup point was correct. But they could not understand me. No one speaks English nor understand it. And they kept pointing me to different directions 😭.

All they understood was Blue Bird. Then pointed to me to these queue of taxis.

This photo is owned by callmecreation.com

So I had to call Durian Writer to ask if Blue Bird is a generic name for taxi as well (kinda like Colgate and then there’s colgate). He said no. (Oh btw, I called him up at halfway past midnight for some SOS). He talked to one of the guards via my phone to give him instructions in Bahasa to direct me where a Blue Bird taxi can pick me up.

But the guy kept pointing me to this. He just kept on saying “Blue Bird, Blue Bird.”

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I was already going in circles for an hour. I went up because Durian Writer said maybe the pick up point for Blue Bird may be at the 2nd level.

I was really tired. I wanted to cry. No one understood me. I asked Durian Writer if I can just hop on in one of the taxis queuing. But you know, we were both Filipino reporters and know that it was a terrible idea to do that in Manila so we both thought we’d rather err on the side of caution. Stick to Blue Bird. But no one could properly point me or instruct me how to get a Blue Bird taxi.

Then an idea struck Durian Writer: Take a picture of where I was. I did. It was the photo above, showing the monitor for the taxi queue. Then he said look for a kiosk where they issue taxi queue slips.

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Then he said look for Blue Bird. I did. I clicked on the touchscreen and ordered a Blue Bird. And took my queue ticket.

And my taxi came a few minutes later.

We took the expressway, traffic was not so bad, about 45 mins to Thamrin. I had Google Map with me to make sure the driver is not taking me anywhere I shouldn’t be (horror stories of rogue Manila airport taxis kept popping in my head). I had to pay for about IDR 17,000 tollway fee and my taxi fare or about IDR 127,000 plus booking fee I think.

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Total was between IDR 150,000-IDR 200,000 (PHP 540-PHP 720). I no longer remember the exact amount because my brain was no longer functioning.

I got to check in my hotel at 2:30 am. Slept at 3 am. And I had an appointment at 9 am.

It was a miserable experience. The airport could have had some kind of instructions how to get taxis plastered at the exit for foreigners who are new to Jakarta. Just like what they had in Bangkok.

There was no instruction in English that says Blue Bird can be booked via an app AND via the kiosk outside.

The airport people whom I asked for help should have brought me to the kiosk and pointed out that I could order Blue Bird via the screen. But no, they kept pointing me to the taxi stand.

I should have read blogs on how to fucking get out of the airport especially no one speaks English.

So now, I am writing a blog entry for hapless idiot travelers like me who have arrived in Jakarta for the first time.

*no more train service so I was limited to taxis