Yes, we made it: Indonesia! We will be travelling here for 3 weeks with our 15 month old girl. The journey starts in Jakarta, since my father and his wife are living here. My father married last year and lives wit his wife in Tangaran, a part of Jakarta tourists normally will not visit. It’s a modern district, totally different from the centre of Jakarta, which we visited during a daytrip.

Modern Jakarta

I will tell you some of the fun thing we saw in modern Jakarta.

Where we stayed

We stayed in an appartment in the same flat as my father lives. We were staying on the 29th floor. This was very high! Although not all floors exists, because Indonesians believe in a lot of unlucky numbers: number 13 and all numbers with a 4 in it, these floors were non existent.

The appartment had a shared swimming pool and gym, very nice! Because Indonesia is a Muslim country, most women used the swimming pool fully dressed. For us it was the perfect place to stay, but i can imagine it’s not the best place if you want to see central Jakarta.

Some fun things in the malls

Jakarta has a lot of malls. People go here not only to shop, but also to get entertained and eat. The airconditioning makes it a nice climate inside. Here are some fun things I saw in the malls:

Carrousel inside the mall

A shoe inside water

Arcade hall in the mall

Giant horse, which Lily liked a lot

You can buy cars inside the mall

This sounds disgusting, cheese tea! And look, the line for the cheese tea is so big! We decided to skip the line and not try it.

Kids entertainment: this stuffed animal can walk through the mall.

The best entertainment for a blond girl with blue eyes: all the attention! Lily gets so much attention in Indonesia, everybody seems to love her! And she loves the attention!:)

Food

We love the Indonesian food! We are very lucky that our little girl is fond of rice. At most places you can ask to make is less spicy. We eat vegetarian, and that’s no problem here. There are even vegetarian restaurants! Otherwise, Indonesians use a lot of Tofu and Tempeh.

Jummie!

In Jakarta they have ‘baby chairs’ almost everywhere. In Indonesian it’s also called baby chair.

Sometimes there are live bands.

Jakarta centre

Monas

Monas is a monument which is surrounded by a big square that looks like a park. A lot of people hang out in the park it’s a great place to meet locals.

The traffic around the square is so busy. The locals have a solution for that: just cross when the traffic is not to busy, while slowing the cars down by signing with your hand. Just like the guy on the photo left is doing.

 

Famous in Jakarta

A lot of people want to take a picture with us, especially with the baby, my husband (red hair) and my brother (he is very long). It’s so funny to see the Indonesian people making photo’s of us all the time.

National Gallery

The national gallery is next to the Monas. They show art from colonial times to modern art. Since I like modern art more, the photo’s show more of the modern part. It’s a nice museum where you can easily spent about 2 hours.

Next stop is Bogor, I will tell you about that in the next blog.