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Monday was travel day. We checked out of the hotel at 10am, walked to the Central Station in Amsterdam, and then took the train to the airport. We arrived at the airport around 10:30 and found our check-in counters for our flights on Indigo Air, a budget airline based in Mumbai, India. The check-in process was easy and friendly and then we made our way through passport control and security. We checked on the airport lounge wait time – last time we were in Amsterdam, we were around number 125 in the queue to be able to enter so we had low expectations for actually going in. This time we were number 65 and we decided again not to wait. We went back to the same food stall we ate in when we were here in September and shared a quinoa salad, chicken pesto wrap, and yogurt parfait. It was a short walk to our gate and we boarded the plane for an on-time departure at 1:30pm. We moved our time forward to 6pm, the time in Mumbai, and settled in for our nine-hour flight. During the flight, we had chicken and rice dinners. Sandy watched two movies: Me Before You and The Bucket List. I watched The Bucket List also. We both got a small amount of sleep. I finished reading the book I selected for Egypt (Amelia Edwards’ A Thousand Miles Up the Nile). It was a good book especially given the places we traveled while we were there. It was a little sad to finish it because it was my last connection with our journey there. But I started my new book and I am excited about this one. It is called Indonesia, Etc. and was written by Elizabeth Pisani. Our layover in Mumbai was three-and-a-half hours and other than the buses that take you from and to the planes, everything was quite simple. The buses were very slow to arrive and then when they did, we had to stand on them for longer times than usual. The other downside was that security made Sandy say goodbye to her cuticle scissors because they can be used as a vicious weapon. We spent our layover time in the airport lounge and we each had scrambled eggs, chicken sausage, bananas, pineapple, watermelon, and musk melon (cantaloupe). We boarded our second flight and moved our clocks forward 90 more minutes to get us on the time for Jakarta, Indonesia. This flight was around five-and-a-half hours and it was not very full at all. After takeoff, we each ended up with our own row, which allowed us to lay down and sleep for three or four hours. We landed just after 2pm in Jakarta and clearing passport control and getting our bags were easy processes. They don’t use Uber here, but the Grab application is very similar and that is what I downloaded to help with our transportation needs. The support staff at the pickup area is very helpful and the cost to get to our apartment a little south of the center of Jakarta was $10 with the ride lasting just shy of an hour. The apartment Sandy found for our stay is beautiful – it’s in a 45-story building (there is a twin building next door) and we are on the 12^th floor with a great view overlooking the city. It has a beautiful pool area, nice locker rooms with saunas and hot tubs, and a gym that will work out well for us during our stay.

We unpacked and then found our way through the basement parking area to the Epiwalk shopping center and decided on Senayan Restaurant for dinner. We each had a drink that was like a hot ginger tea, but it was almost like a ginger broth – we both liked it a lot. For food, we went by the descriptions and we both ordered Gado Gado, which we learned is one of the dishes we are supposed to try while in Jakarta. It’s a noodle dish with mixed vegetables and a medium-spicy peanut sauce. Because we arrived on Saint Patrick’s Day, we hoped to find a Guinness and we were in luck. Bluegrass restaurant, only a three-minute walk away, serves Guinness on draft and so we stopped there for a quick mini-celebration together. We grabbed some groceries and then went home to wind down and get some sleep after our travels.

Sandy did a little laundry on Wednesday morning, and she eventually figured the process out. As many different washers as she has worked with over the last couple of years, it can still be an adventure figuring out how to make the next one work (or how long it will take, this one was two hours). We had breakfast in the apartment – eggs and toast (cooked in the oven, which was incinerated the first round…thankfully the smoke detector didn’t go off since we opened the patio door and quickly fanned the smoke out) – and then we worked on mapping out our plan for our time in Jakarta. We worked out in the gym and worked on our blog during the afternoon. For dinner, we walked to Subway and after Subway, I ordered a chicken kabob from one of the kiosks in the shopping center where we went. We had worked out our cash needs for the start of our time in Indonesia and did what we needed to do at the ATM. Sandy was going to get a snack at the grocery store, but we realized they were already closed. Fortunately, Starbucks had exactly what she was looking for – she had a panini with peanut butter. It was a nicely paced first day in Jakarta focusing on the “living” things we wanted to get done.

Thursday morning, Sandy did some exercises at the apartment, and we had our bananas and yogurt with blueberries and then headed out to see some of the sights. We ordered our Grab car and arrived at the Jakarta History Museum at Noon. We spent 80 minutes exploring the museum, which covered the history of the city from prehistoric times through the Dutch colonial period, but not a lot of information on the history post-colonization. Not having had much knowledge of the colonial period here, we both found the museum to be informative and it did a good job of giving context to how Jakarta has developed. The museum is housed inside the oldest building in Jakarta – it’s roughly 300 years old and was historically the central government building.

It sits on Fatahillah Square and across the square is Batavia Café. Batavia is a former name for the city of Jakarta and the café/restaurant is housed in the second oldest building in the city. It’s a beautiful building and although it caters mostly to tourists, its history and colonial architecture make it a great stop for lunch, dinner, or drinks inside. We had lunch – Sandy had kiwi juice, I had pineapple juice, we shared pea soup – very much like the pea soup we had in Amsterdam earlier this week (evidence of the Dutch influence) – and Gado Gado to see what it tasted like compared to our first dinner in Jakarta. It was similar although this one did not have beef. After lunch, we watched the colorful rental bikes in the square for a few minutes and then we planned to walk to the Wayang Puppet Studio, just off the square.

As we headed in that direction, a local man made a point of encouraging us to go there and we continued. We walked in and Andy was there to greet us – another group was just leaving. There is a Wayang Puppet Museum at the square that displays puppets from around Indonesia, but it was closing and we weren’t sure we wanted to go anyway. We were more interested in the studio, which is where the puppets are made. Andy is relatively new at the puppet studio but his enthusiasm for the history and the craft was evident. He explained the three types of puppets – the ones made from buffalo or cow hides and used for shadow puppet shows, the masks that are used for dances, and the three-dimensional puppets that are used for small puppet stage shows (like we would see on Mister Rogers). The puppet craft is important to the culture because historically, this is how stories were told from generation to generation.

When he was finished, the man from the square showed up and was rather pushy in telling us and the few other people who were there at the same time that he would perform a puppet show in English for us and then maybe we could give a small donation. He was persistent as much as I didn’t want to reward his behavior, we ended up watching his puppet show. His English was difficult to understand but I picked up that he was doing a short version of the Ramayana story, but he changed one of the characters to Maria Sharapova. Every time he would say Sharapova, I understood that – the rest? not as much.

He got a small donation, but Andy got the bigger one and the puppet show guy was not very happy. Oh well, hopefully he can learn that some people aren’t appreciative of the assertive approach. From the studio, we walked to Chinatown and took a stroll through the small streets that are filled with markets for the locals. We walked through a small but beautiful temple complex inside the area and then we headed off to one of the big malls in Jakarta – Grand Indonesia.

It is filled with shopping, some higher end and also tons of food options. I was happy to see a Levi’s store because after a couple of years of very regular use, it is time to retire my jeans. I walked out with a new pair. I guess the prices are like the US – they were the equivalent of $88. Sandy would be better able to do the price comparison than me. We were on a mission to find Sandy some popcorn at the movie theater and we were successful. We briefly considered staying for a movie (it would have been Marty Supreme), but decided to carry on because we have plenty of movies we want to watch at home. It was a very nice theater though. As we walked through the food court, it was completely packed and it’s a large area. 90% of the tables had their food but they weren’t eating and then we realized it was close to sunset to break the fast of Ramadan. A little after 6pm, an announcement was made in the mall, and we believe it was to inform the diners that the green light had been given that it was time to break the fast because everybody then started to eat. The mall had a Haagen Dazs, so of course we had to get chocolate shakes before leaving and then on the way out, we stopped to watch celebrations taking place to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, which is the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.

We headed back to our neighborhood and grabbed some groceries. At the apartment, we ate peanut butter and banana sandwiches at home, watched the Oscars and I finished a movie called The Egyptian, watched an episode of Frasier and then headed to bed. It was a full day of exploring and we had a good time.

That brings us to Friday (today). We got our workouts in at the gym downstairs and then we walked over to Starbucks and spent around four hours working on a variety of tasks that go along with the nomadic life. The machine to make Sandy’s chai tea latte was broken, so she changed it up and had a caramel Frappuccino. Given the heat here, hot chocolate wasn’t as appealing to me, so I changed it up and had a chocolate chip Frappuccino. The machine started working again and the barista was so sweet – three different times he offered a free drink because he felt bad that she couldn’t get her chai latte. Back at the apartment we had more peanut butter and banana sandwiches, showered, did grocery shopping, and then changed into clothes that were better suited to the heavy rain that was coming down. We didn’t have to go out into the rain, but we were concerned about the puddles that we might have to walk through (which ended up being non-existent). Dinner was at Bluegrass – same place we had our Saint Patrick’s Day Guinness beers. This time we tried the local beer called Bintang, which translates to star in Indonesian. They were fine – reminded us of Heineken. I had wings and Sandy had a BBQ burger and fries. It was a nice Friday night and a good end to our first few days in Jakarta. We are excited because we have a friend coming to visit tomorrow.