Jakarta, Indonesia Vacation
Matt had a business trip to Jakarta and wanted us to tag along. After looking at the calendar and school schedules we decided it would be best to come the weekend before his meetings and explore Jakarta. And it happened to be Chinese New Year, which is a holiday here and my birthday! Of course we went through Viator again to get a tour guide and we were fortunate enough to book Ira for 2 days. We packed a lot in those 48 hours and then Matt was able to explore even more for 10 additional days while with co-workers.
Day 1:
We arrived at Mulia Hotel around midnight. Only a 4 hour flight from Manila and the hotel was wonderful.
Our view of Jakarta from our hotel window
Happy Chinese New Year…year of the Horse. Our first stop of the day was to a Chinese Temple “Vihara Dharma Bhakti.” There were so many people there and the air was full of smoke from the incense
We spent time at Sunda Kelapa seeing huge wooden boats and then taking a 15 minute boat ride with this older gentleman
Next stop was to “Old Town Jakarta” where Matt was approached by a few teenagers asking him questions for a school project
In “Old Town Jakarta” there is a European feel since the Dutch where here. You can rent these bikes with matching hats for an hour and ride around the square
We bought this painting off the street from the artist (middle) on our way to another attraction
This Cathedral is built directly in front of the largest Mosque in Southeast Asia
Istiqlal Mosque is the National Mosque of Indonesia (3rd largest mosque in the world) and we were told President Barack Obama visited here in 2010
People still enjoying their time at the mosque after the Friday noon prayer
Istiqlal tower as seen from within the mosque grounds
Holding the National Monument…maybe she can get us some of the gold off the top
A late lunch at D’Marco where our tour guide is part owner. We enjoyed all of the food that she had prepared for us and these are the “dessert pizzas”
In the evening we went to Grand Indonesia Mall where there were “Chinese New Year shows”
Also at the Grand Indonesia they have this music/water show that lasts about 5-10 minutes and was pretty fun to watch; and it was right next to Baskin Robbins ice cream
Day 2
We drove out of Jakarta for our next adventure. In some areas beggars are sitting between the lanes of cars
Taman Safari was our first stop of the day where we were able to feed animals from our car window…guess he didn’t want to feed the zebra though
There were lions, tigers, and bears (oh my)…plus many other animals we could see up close from the comfort of our car
We found a komodo dragon in it’s own country at Taman Safari
Predator vs. Prey. We were in the reptile exhibit during feeding time.
Driving to our lunch appointment we were able to see the traffic that everyone talks about in Indonesia. It was the worst traffic we had ever seen; people were sitting here for a couple of hours waiting.
We had lunch up in the mountains, but it was too cloudy to enjoy the view. After lunch we bought some souvenirs and the other vendors would not go away
Our last stop in Indonesia was to the Flower Garden
The kids could have spent another hour or two here enjoying the garden. They really liked doing this maze
More photos from our Indonesia trip here.
