Day 4 in Jakarta was the Saturday 19th of October and Monday 21st was my last day in the city as I was flying out the next day. I kept on discovering the city. I did a small boat tour around the Jakarta Harbor for 100k IDR ($6,30 USD) which was a good deal. It was a small wooden boat run by a local. The Jakarta harbor still has some old wooden cargo ship that are used within Indonesia for domestic transport between the islands.
Guided motorbike tour around Jakarta's market.
Late start of the day, I met my guide at around 11h30, we drove on his motorbike for like 20mins thought central Jakarta and close the the Business District where we stopped for lunch at a place he knew. After we went to the Animal market area where you can buy most animals available in the city.
After that got into the harbor where I got to do my boat tour, one thing good about my tour which I paid 500k IDR(just above $30 USD) for the afternoon, it did include food, drinks and entry tickets for the mangrove forest which was the next distention after the Harbor.
The Mangrove forest was a nice stop where you could get a bit of nature inside Jakarta which is a pretty congested city. After walking around the forest we stopped for an afternoon traditional noodle soup and local Ice Tea which is really a thing here, people have it as a default drink with menus at local restaurants (Warung).
My final stop for the day was the fish market of Jakarta which is also nice if you want to see a different less touristy side of down. Lots of people are coming in to buy and sell. You can order enough to feed your restaurants for a day with fresh fish or just come as a regular guy and buy something to cook tonight.
New presidential handover in Indonesia - impact on traffic
Sunday 20th (day 5) was the change of power to the new president, I didn't have a lot planned today and end up taking a bus to the mall but I didn't realize that all the routes and schedule were modified because of that day and since I was passing right through the event of course I was impacted.
On top of very bad traffic during the day, I stayed on the bus for over an hour, not really knowing where I was going. After that I decided to stop at a bigger the usual bus stations where I can figure out where to go next. I was around south Jakarta and close to an MRT or LRT station which I forgot the name of. I headed up just boarding another bus instead going to a train station close to a clothes market and the textile museum which I don't recommend going there just for that, just one room basically and they charge the same price as other museums.
Still after that I went through some very local streets of Jakarta where people would be selling lots of things and you had limited amount of Space available for walking. Grabed the cheapest Ice tea so fare in my trip which 0.32c.
I walked all the way to the the big Indonesia mall where I had early dinner, A curry from coco curry which is a brand I went to during my stay in Korea and Japan in the BC year (before covid) :)
And a nice Cinnabon for my breakfast tomorrow.
Last day, packing and the Mall
My final full day in Jakarta was spend going to another part of town between West Jakarta and Central Jakarta where the Aquarium was, I saw a big snake which I thought was fake at the entrance but actually it was part of the show and you could touch it. I planned on uploading a short video of that on inleo.io but 3speak is down so I have to wait to post those small clips I got from the trip.
The Aquarium is part of a very big mall which is actually two malls connected together by a skybridge on level 3 if I remember correctly. It is nice going from one to the other without having to go through the crazy traffic. The area is guarded at all times so very clean and nice place to hangout if you want to get your body temperature back up before going back to the colder AC temperatures of the mall.
Conclusion
I had a very nice stay in Jakarta and it was a good week to recover from Jetlag coming from Europe, I think it is a city worth going to to see how a big part of the population is living and working around Indonesia, between 30 and 50 millions leave in the Urban area of Jakarta which is close to 25% of the country's population.
I stayed there for a week but if I had to come back and show people around I would recommend that 3-4 nights is enough to do some of the main attractions if you do busy days and not slow days like me where I took my time.
For next time I would go down to Bogor as well to see the Botanical Garden and one of the secondary presidential palace.
Anyway time for me to join my next destination, if you check out my threads on inleo, you mights have seen I am very close to the beach for my second week.
If you are just joining in you can view my previous articles on your favorite hive platform and follow this multi month trip around Southeast Asia.
WaltInAsia#1 - End of first week in Jakarta, Indonesia
WaltInAsia#0 - Preparation and flight review to Jakarta