Jakarta - done and dusted!

After a hectic, stressful and tense day, I am finally at the airport, coffee in hand, boarding pass at the ready, return visa paid and sorted, ready to get myself on my flight back to Singapore. The prospect of landing in Changi airport has never before been so wecome!

            Whilst I was hoping that stories about Jakarta had been exaggerated by spoilt Singaporeans who are used to everything running like clockwork and never having to wait more than 2 minutes for the next tube to pick them up, it turns out that Jakarta really is every bit as bad as the rumours had it – and even the locals say as much!

            Once I made it into the office this morning I met up with a couple of Indonesian’s working for Google who operated as my guides for most of the day. From their very own mouths Jakarta just went further and further down in my estimations.

Amidst rumours of kidnapping and abduction by cabbies (even those in the legal and monitored legal cabs) and tales of ridiculously high number of scams and bag thefts by motorbike there really is no safe way to travel in Jakarta. It turns out that there is only one brand of taxi that is acceptable, and the idea of walking even five minutes along the road to get to a meeting or event is totally unheard of. Travel by car takes four or five times longer than it should due to the poor infrastructure, and then made a millions time worse by people’s fear of public transport and walking around on foot.

             Luckily the event that I was presenting at went well, and although I didn’t understand a couple of the segments that were presented in Bahasa, I got the gist of the main topics covered off and found it really interesting to learn more. I was presenting the final segment of the event and the one piece that most of the audience really did need to learn about from scratch. It all went well – I think there’s quite a bit of follow up and training to be done, but people were keen and joined in a lot, so that was great. The other meetings that I had booked in for the day also went well and I managed to arrange for them all to be within walking distance (this was before I received my warnings about venturing outside on my own).

Heliport reception area by the Google lobby 

The only negative aspect of my trip was Jakarta itself. Bali and Batam are two Indonesian beach / holiday destinations, and I have nothing but positive comments to make about them. Jakarta is just inefficient, dirty (not in a quaint, Asian way), threatening, and really just plain terrifying! It should have taken me 30 minutes to get from the airport to the office – one hour later I was still on the road. Then getting back to the airport after the event, I thought I had planned ahead well enough by leaving myself three hours for total travel and check in time but I was told that I needed around 5 hours, just to be safe. 5 hours to travel 30 minutes and check in?! Ridiculous! 
              In the end  made the trip in around an hour and 45 minutes, which was still ridiculous, and then spent quite a while wasting time at the airport, trying some really vile fast food which I ate only a very minimal amount of and writing this blog post while I wait for my gate to board, but if there's one thing that I really don't want to do at this point, it's complain. I won’t complain anymore now. I’m at the airport, my flight hasn’t gone without me, and I will be able to sleep in my own bed tonight. All is well!

My questionable airport supper

Also, I bought my Jakarta magnet on the way through the airport, which means it’s 100% ticked off my travel list and I need never return here ever again. Until work sends me again…