We arrived on Sunday and there was very little traffic which was a great surprise to me. By the afternoon things had started to liven up. I have included a photo of the big roundabout just near our hotel at each of these times.

We have found the people very friendly and enjoyed our shopping ventures in the local shopping areas. We were the only non-Indonesian people in the shopping area we went to on Monday. Little kids looked at me as if I was out of space with my white hair. There is a photo of me trying to ask a price for some shoes. (which I did not buy!)

There was no pressure to buy anything. This was a very different experience to our trips to Hong Kong and Singapore, but the markets were very similar.

On Tuesday we went to the antique market where we saw everything from gigantic chandeliers to 17th century ship cannons (see photo). We looked for a souvenir for us from this visit and eventually bought a carving of a fisherman which will probably be confiscated at customs. We haggled down to half a million Rp (or $50) plus I also bought a carved head. We later saw the same carving in an up market souvenir shop for 6 +million Rp ( or more than $600) so we were pleased.

Today we went to another market in north Jakarta called ITC Mangga Dua. This was a six level crazy shopping experience. See if you can spot me under the escalator in the complex. We loved it. Michael says it was like Paddy’s Market on steroids. Lucky our bags were mostly empty as we had a ball and spent about $300 over the 3 days!

The craziest thing we have done so far is to catch a taxi. There are lots of different companies but my research and the hotel told us to use Blue Bird, which we have. But driving on the road is crazy. It does not matter how many lanes are marked on the road, you can count on having at least 3 more lines of traffic to contend with. Many motor bikes and weird bike/taxis contraptions on the roads, but surprisingly few cars have dings in them. There are no lines marked on roundabouts, car drivers toot their horns (quite softly) which means ‘something’ and things seem to work. A taxi ride to the shopping centre which was about 4 Km away cost us the equivalent of $2AU. The one from the airport to our hotel (25km) on Sunday cost us $12.

The price of alcohol meant we drank almost nothing. Note only one picture of Michael drinking a beer which cost 60,000 Rp while my wine cost 120,000 Rp for a glass.

We will come back another time, but doubt there will ever be any Italians or Germans here as they could not cope with the lack of alcohol!

This is my final post for this trip. Thanks for following.