Tuesday, November 8, 2016

6 Weeks in South South East Asia

November 4th & 5th Travel Days

We arrived at Soekarno-Hatta international airport after 30 hours of air travel time with relatively short layovers.  We bought our extended visas, and efficiently went through immigration and customs.  We then grabbed a tourist bus map, and caught the Damir airport bus into the city to Gambir train station where we began navigating the Transjakarta bus system. 

Jakarta is notrorius for its traffic clogged streets.  So the semi-express buses with their own dedicated lanes, subway like turnstyles, passcards, and tranfer platforms are a reasonably efficient way to get around the city.  That said,  there is still a learning curve to linking the routes  to other buses.  Each of the Transjakarta buses has not only a driver, but also a door attendant to make sure everyone is clear of the doors and has made the 18 inch step across the 3 foot deep gap.  They are also helpful to  answer passenger questions about the route and stops and transfers.

The hotel we booked was conveniently located next to an alley with 20+ food carts and tables with plastic stools. This fits the bill as precisely our favorite dinning experience. While the large bats flitted about over head, we enjoyed Chicken Skewers (Ayam Sate)   with peanut sauce 25,000Rupiah/$1.92 and fried rice (Nasi Goreng) 20,000RP/$1.52.  After dinner and showers we were both asleep within about 4 minutes.

No comments: