My time in Jakarta went so fast and now it is over Didn’t do all that much, but it was nice to relax. We were staying in quite a fancy little hotel, as Rich was on “holiday” and wanted a bit of luxury, which I was JUST fine with! Didn’t even see too much of the city, just basically explored a couple of streets in the search for some clothes for Richard, and a dictionary, whistle, and pencils for me. We watched football everyday too (me mostly just one match, as I didn’t want/couldn’t stay up to watch the games starting at 0130am), sometimes venturing out to watch and sometimes just watching in the lobby of the hotel. But what was really nice about the hotel was the swimming pool on the roof that had a really great view of the city centre. There are some pretty amazing buildings in this city, I am quite impressed. I keep forgetting that we are in Asia, because there is nothing compared to this in Ghana, incl. Accra (the capital). Also had numerous language lessons with Rich, who apparently is now Indonesian ;) and can speak bahasa Indonesia fluently or at least is able to carry on conversations with anyone about anything it seems! It is quite impressive! He was a good teacher but I swear I am dyslexic when it comes to speaking Indonesian. I keeping the letters or parts of the word around.
Rich also took me to a Pasar Burung – a bird market. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it definitely shocked me. First of all, was the smell. It was such a overpowering heavy smell of dust and feces mostly. And the number of birds shoved into a single cage was absolutely shocking. Many were only just over a foot wide and maybe 2.5 feet high, and they would be crammed so full that there was barely any room for the birds to move. Swans in a cage just tall enough for it to stand. And then there were rats. Crates of rat pups, rats layered on top of rats, dead rats and live rats all stuffed into one crate. And then there were bats. Single bats in a small cage, with just enough room to hang upside down, but wouldn’t be able to spread their wings open – maybe halfway. A king cobra in a clear plastic container without any sort of anything in it. And macaques - tiny little baby macaques that had permanent fear grimaces or were trying to suckle a box because they had nothing else near them. It was a very strange experience. I brought my camera along with the plan of taking pictures, but as soon as we stepped into the market, I knew I didn’t want to even ask to take pictures.
I have now left Jakarta, as well as the island of Java. I am now in Sulawesi – an island to the north east of Java, and southeast of Borneo. Currently I am enroute to my final destination for a few weeks. I am now in the airport in Makassar which is on the west coast (south) of Sulawesi, and will soon be flying to Baubau – the capital city of the island of Buton, where I will be for the next 6 weeks. I’ve just learned that “Bau” means smell in Bahasa Indonesia, so I hope it’s not a bad smell….but I’m not very optimistic about that one!
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