Jakarta to Jogjakarta to buy a fat hogjakarta (Part one)

I wrote this blog covering Jakarta and our trip to Jogjakarta and it was some seven thousand words long, so I broke it down into a few smaller pieces.

Overwhelmed by choice of food in a trendy shipping container street food court

Landing in Jakarta was pretty exciting and felt like a different world to what we had experienced over the last few weeks in the rest of Indonesia. Arriving at the airport we felt we had stepped into the future with modern, clean buildings, drinking fountains, and public transport with well advertised predetermined prices. We stuffed around a little at the airport trying to work out how to get into the city, and found that Jakarta suffers one of the many problems of Sydney – with two or more people, the train to the city is more expensive than a taxi. So we took a taxi to our hotel and checked in for the night.

National Monument in Jakarta

We didn’t really want to do much in Jakarta, our main motivation for being there was to sort out Mimi’s visa for Singapore and Malaysia. We decided our hotel was not too bad for the price and was in a decent location for what we wanted to do, so notified hotel staff that we want to extend our stay one more night. After finding some food at a trendy shipping-container-street-food-vendor type of place, we headed down to the embassy area. The Singapore embassy had outsourced their visa process to another company, so we visited their store only to find that the visa process for Chinese citizens was a long and arduous process. We thought maybe we should just skip Singapore and head straight for Malaysia. So off we went to the Malaysian embassy.

Some of the cleaner narrow back streets of Jakarta

At the Malaysian embassy, the front guard told us that visas should be applied for at the 12th floor of the Mandiri Health building, a sky scraper we could see on the other side of the highway down the road. We trekked down there, a long walk down a busy road, and made it to the visa center, only to be told that their office is only for people with a Kitas – that is, an Indonesian working visa. Their advice to us was that Mimi should apply online for a tourist visa to Malaysia. Feeling annoyed at having run around and wasting most of the day, we headed back to the hotel. On the way we stopped and had a look at the national monument and surrounding park, but decided not to go up to the top due to extremely long wait times.

Delicious satay in Bogor

When we arrived back to the hotel, we found that our hotel room had been booked and so we had to move hotel. Luckily there was another cheap guesthouse around the corner from where we were staying, and the staff here were much more helpful and friendly anyway. After moving all our stuff, we headed out to buy some more street food. We picked Martabak, a type of giant folded crumpet with chocolate sprinkles on one side and sweet cheese on the other. We ordered this take away and ate back in our hotel room, seeing how to apply online for a Malaysian visa. Unfortunately for us, the advice online was to head to the Malaysian embassy and apply for a paper visa.

Orchids in Bogor Botanic Gardens

The following day was a Friday, and we figured we need to work this visa garbage out. The guesthouse staff helped us find a printshop where we printed copies of booked accomodation for Malaysia, passport copies, and copies of Mimi’s Australian visas. We were then off to the same embassy we had been at the day before. Nearby the main entrance where the guard had previously sent us off to a different building, we had seen a sign saying something about visas. But, at the time we weren’t sure if this was for the Malaysian embassy or somewhere else and figured if it was for Malaysia the guard would’ve told us about it as well. We headed straight for that entrance this time only to arrive just as they were starting their morning break, 10 am to 11:30 am. We waited around, getting some lunch nearby, and then finally they opened their doors again. This time, insisting we needed to see immigration rather than mentioning the word visa, we were signed in and allowed inside. We queued once again, and finally we were speaking to someone behind the immigration counter. They assured us that no paper visa could be applied for there and that they only help people apply for a Malaysian visa if they have a Kitas. We explained that online we had been told to apply at the embassy, and that their visa center across the road seemed to have the exact same function as their immigration counter in the embassy. Unfortunately they really didn’t care and didn’t even try to confirm there was no alternative. Since it was a Friday, there were no senior staff to ask anyway. They said we could come back Monday as that would be when their seniors would return. Again we left beaten and broken by such bad systems. We headed back to the hotel, eating dinner at the same trendy street food place as before, and had an early night.

Flowers and enjoying the sights of Bogor Botanic Gardens

We decided we’d had enough of Jakarta and their bad bureaucracy and so we set our minds on Jogjakarta. The plan was to take the train there, see the countryside on the way, and then slowly work our way back to Jakarta along a different route so that we would then be able to take our ferry to Singapore or take a flight to Malaysia (visas pending). When we went to book train tickets, we found they were all booked out for the next few days as we were coming on a long weekend. Easy change of plans, we would work our way slowly to Jogjakarta and then eventually take the train back to Jakarta.

Local kids playing under bridge over river that runs through the gardens

Saturday morning, we walked through small back streets which showed the true face of Jakarta to the train station near our hotel. We were heading for Bogor, and after making our way across some busy intersections, we were at the train station. Bogor is a small city not too far south of Jakarta. It is popular for locals to visit on the weekends, but I believe a lot of people also commute from there to Jakarta for work. And so the train to Bogor is a commuter train, most people standing and very few seats. Luckily for us, there was some sort of national celebration going on, and so many people were sticking around Jakarta for festivities, and the train emptied out not too far into the trip.

Known as the Couple Trees, these two trees of rare species in Indonesia - Banyan and Meranti - were planted in 1866.

We arrived in Bogor with no issues, walked a little to get out of the madness of the train station, and then took a bus to our hostel. The bus system in Bogor is a fleet of what seems like privately owned Angkots – mini vans with benches installed down the sides of the back. They’re awful for anyone taller than 5 feet to get into and are even worse if you have a backpack. Aside from this, they’re pretty convenient given you rarely have to wait more than 3 minutes for one to pass, and they can easily navigate all the tiny streets that are lined with cars and motorcycles. We headed out for some nearby food, eating in a less than impressive restaurant serving standard Indonesian but following up with some delicious satay. After getting back to our hostel, we decided we should stay at the same place at least one more night as there seemed to be a lot to do around the area. I asked if we could extend our stay but again the accomodation had been booked out. Talk about bad luck. Fortunately the owner had another hostel nearby and was happy for us to stay there, she would even help us move by driving us over there the next day.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -

I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

The staff had told us that we would need earplugs to sleep in the morning due to being so close to a local mosque. By this stage we were basically used to mosques calling and so weren’t too fussed. Indeed, we were woken by some of the worst music I’d ever heard. This wasn’t coming from the mosque, I had slept through that, this was coming from across the road where awful Indonesian salsa music was playing with an extremely heavy bass and constant counting in an extremely irritating voice. Turns out Sunday morning is dance morning, and some locals go into the street to dance. The music for the dancing is across the road from the hostel we stayed at, and the music is loud enough for the dancing people to hear it on the next street over. Some might ask why they wouldn’t play the music near where people are dancing. I don’t ask these questions anymore.

Giant water lillies

Sneaking a photo of the presidential palace through an unguarded fence

After trying to sleep more and failing spectacularly, we packed our bags and checked out of our hostel room. We left our stuff in the foyer and organised to move in the afternoon after exploring for the day. We spent the better part of the day at the Botanic Garden of Bogor. This garden is the largest tropical botanic garden in the world, and also includes the grounds of the Presidential Palace. The grounds were really nice to see, originally built by the Dutch, and included an Orchid garden, fruit trees, medicinal plant garden, giant water lilies, giant old growth trees, large manicured gardens, and bamboo plantations, to name a few. We took our time there enjoying the quiet where we could find it (there was dancing going on in the garden too) and being swamped by local tourists for photos often.
Following a day at the botanic gardens, we had an easy afternoon and then headed back to our old hostel. From there the owner moved us in her car to the new hostel not too far from the first, where we booked to stay two nights.

Wonders of the Bogor Botanic Garden Zoology Museum

We had been waiting for the weekend to be over, as we knew there was an immigration office in Bogor, and we were nearing the time we needed to extend our Indonesian tourist visas. We headed over to the office and managed to start the process relatively easily. After giving away our passports, we then gave away fingerprints of all 10 fingers and high definition photos of our face and eyes. Nothing like feeling like a criminal in a foreign country. We were given receipts for our passports, slips to take to any bank to pay for our visas, sent on our way being told to come back on Wednesday. We paid for our visas, grabbed some lunch, and then headed to our hostel to get changed into something more comfortable than the long pants and shirt that had been required for the immigration office.

Majestic yapper

Instant noodles has made this coutnry awful in more ways than one

Capturing fish in plastic bottles from the stream of the waterfall. Not sure what they were used for.

That afternoon we headed off to a nearby waterfall. I say nearby but this was actually a long crowded angkot trip into the mountains followed by a walk up a long steep road. Still it was a fun outing, and the waterfalls were an easy hike away. We saw many monkeys up in the mountain, a majestic yapper, and trekked along rivers through thick overgrowth to see the falls.
After exploring for a little and narrowly avoiding encounters with the monkeys, we started back to Bogor on foot. It wasn’t too long until another angkot came past and so we made use of this to get back into town.

One river we had to walk up to get to the falls

Resort near the waterfall

Up next, our trip to the volcano currently known as Mount Salak.