View from my balcony
Sadly, our flight leaves at 8pm to go back to Jakarta. After that we head three days to Aceh in the northern part of the island. I may not have internet connect there but let's see.
This is our attempt to keep our families and friends up to date on what we are thinking, doing and experiencing.
After our meetings ended at about 5pm today we went back to the office with the driver. We decided to go out to dinner with a colleague and on our way he stopped off at Obama's elementary school. It was great. There is a plaque right outside the building, you can see it on the left. The school is beautiful and really well kept for the visitors/tourists I'm sure. In one of the classrooms I peaked in they had a huge movie sized poster of Obama right in the middle of the class. It was really fun.
Bec's this is for Jake. He will be happy to know that Chili's is in Jakarta. Isn't that crazy. They are also really BIG on dunkin donuts. The shops are EVERY WHERE. I think they have more dunkin donuts than Boston. They also have oddly KFC and Tony Roma's. Wierd right?
A night time view of the pool.
The main entrance to to the hotel
The view out of my room. I am on the 14th floor.
My bathroom. I have a separate bathtub, shower and toilet.
My bedroom. Sorry about the mess. I didn't feel like picking up to take a picture.
When we arrived at the hotel, I took a fantastic hot shower, called home, unpacked my suitcase and went to bed. I requested a wake up call at 9:30am. I slept fabulously and didn't wake up until the phone rang. I went downstairs to the delicious breakfast. They had beautiful juices, cucumber, pineapple, watermelon, honeydew melon, and orange. It is a beautiful rainbow of colors...I'll take a picture tomorrow. For breakfast they had american, european and traditional breakfast with udon noodles, fried rice, dumplings and other food we would typically eat for dinner. I had an omelet, croissant and cheese and watermelon and pineapple juice and cappuccino.
After breakfast, we took a taxi to find a shopping center. We arrived at an indoor mall but that didn't look any different from our malls. They had nine west shoes, perfumes and soaps like you would find in american malls. On the third floor though we found this fantastic market with lots of handicrafts. They have this coffee (kopi luwak) that is supposed to be a delicacy. It is made from feeding coffee beans to a cat like animal and they poop it out and they use that to grind the beans. No kidding. It is poop coffee and it is $150 for a small little container (like a quarter of a pound, maybe less). I found a few really fun things, we had coffee (normal coffee) and then we decided to take a bus to another part of town. The bus was an adventure but we did great.
The other part of town was really poor, dirty and there was not much to do so we decided to get a snack (dumplings and lumpia), a beer (bintang) and water. After walking around that area a little I felt like I had spent three years sucking down exhaust, smoke and pollution. It was terrible. We took a taxi back to the hotel. To be honest there is not a lot to see in Jakarta. Indonesia is supposed to be (and I am sure it is) a beautiful country with amazing snorkling, volcano areas, white sandy beachers, birds of paradise, komodo drangons and beautiful hiking areas. It's just that Jakarta has really nothing to see.
At the hotel I had a hot stone massage, went shopping the amazing mall connected to our hotel and then came back around 9pm, ordered room service and here I am.
Tomorrow we have a meeting at 7am? Who planned that?!?! not me, believe me!