Insanely long flight: Arrive Jakarta

Depart: Washington DC 6:00am Friday

Arrive: JFK 7:05am

Depart: JFK 10:05am

Arrive: Honk Kong 2:05 pm Saturday

Depart: Hong Kong 4:00pm

Arrive: Jakarta 7:40pm

I left our house on Friday morning at 3:50am: an obscenely early time. I am travelling with a colleague and meet her at the gate at about 4:50am after checking in and going through security. We left for JFK airport on a small, small, small plane that only had 3 seats across. I hate those planes. We got a little breakfast and coffee and got on another airplane headed to Honk Kong. The plane was terribly crowded with lots and lots of screaming babies. The pilot announced that the flight time would be 15 hours and 40 minutes. Are you freaking kidding me???? How could anyone possibly survive on an airplane for that long?

The plane I was on (Cathay Pacific) had over 100 movies! I watched 5 movies: angels and demons (ok), the proposal (really good), the hangover (good but a little dark), and some other movie but can't remember it was from the "recent hits" list of movies. I also watched a few episodes of friends. I ate 3 meals worth of airline food-ugh!! I slept maybe 2 hours and that is generous.

Once we arrived in Hong Kong, I had a cappuccino at starbucks in the airport and then I got on another 4 hour flight to jakarta. I know you are thinking to yourself "how did she get on another plane?" Believe me, I was thinking the same thing myself.

When we arrived in Jakarta someone was waiting for us and took us to the hotel. We are staying in a great hotel. Here are a couple of pictures.

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!