Jakarta and Taman Mini

This weekend I went to Taman mini, which is an epcot center type thing in Jakarta. It has a building from each of Indonesia's 34 provinces and a pond with man-made islands in the shape of Indonesia. I went with Daniel, his sister Monica and Tamara. We stopped by Daniel's aunt's house before going and lo and behold... Two maine licence plates! His family is have worked at diplomatic missions around the world and were in the United States for awhile. That is one thing I never thought I would see in Indonesia. Nobody knows where Maine even is.

We took a bus to Jakarta. There were no seats left on the "air-con" bus so we just stood in the aisle. That is normal here. The bus also doesn't stop where we (and half the bus) needed to get off, so during a big traffic jam, you just open the door and jump out of a moving bus then try and avoid traffic as you run to the side of the multi-lane road. I guess it is a bus station but busses don't stop? The crowd of people here are in the middle of the road and are either getting on or jumping of moving busses.

We then hopped in with this wild-man. He is supposed to be driving a specific mini-bus route but for a extra 50 cents or so you can just charter the whole bus and he will drive you where you need to go. He keeps his wad of bills in his hand at all times. He told Andrea that she was very beautiful but hadn't paid attention in school so he couldn't say it in english. Stay in school kids unless you want your day job to look like this.
This is inside Taman Mini. I believe this building is from a provence in Sumatra.
This is some intricate carving on a wall inside the Kalimantan building. Several of the buildings were on stilts 40 feet in the air with a ladder carved out of solid wood. They put them up that high because some houses are built in swamps and its too high for the tigers to find a way in.
This is me in the Papua tent with a statue of a native warrior. As you can tell it was REALLY hot in Jakarta. By the end of the day I felt ill and dehydrated from heat exhaustion despite drinking a lot of water. Brutal. I can't survive in Jakarta beyond a few hours.

This is Andrea, Daniel, Monica and Tamara sitting with me for lunch. This low table and rug-seating is pretty standard, but not very comfortable for me as I am far to big to fit near the table.
They also happened to have a gondola you can ride around in. It doesn't go anywhere and would probably be put to better use at Sugarloaf. In the background is the Magic Kingdom. Oops. I mean the children's play castle. I resisted the urge to go in and get my picture taken with the Princess.
This is the pond in the middle with the man made islands. Papua is on the left. The cluster of small ones in the foreground is Maluku, with Sulawesi and Kalimantan on the right and Java in the back left. You might be able to make out Sumatra in the distance.

Here is Blizzard Beach. Oh... I mean Snow Bay. I have to remember to get these names right.

After recovering from Saturday, I took a lazy 4th of July, played a little 1v1 with Ronal and prepped for the BBQ. This is Mo-Mo and Ronal playing. Earlier in the morning I collected my laundry which was delightfully cleaned and folded. $1 for laundry service. Done. After the laundry I took a stroll through another section of town with streets about 3 feet wide and houses built on really steep hillsides. Nobody there spoke english and it was a bit less well off than other areas but it was a lot of fun. There are great views of the city and you can get lost in the little streets. People were very friendly and kept trying to give me directions back to Bogor but I wasn't lost. Eventually I made it to some farmland. It reminded me of favelas in brazil but without the crime. I forgot my camera but I will go back and get some pictures.
The BBQ worked out pretty well. It took some getting used to; cooking with coconut shell charcoal but we had a small crowd (10-20) who celebrated the 4th of july. The hot dogs here are red so it made me feel right at home. Ronal brought his guitar and like every Indonesian party, singing commenced for a couple hours after dinner. Oh yea, there was also a huge snail (6in long) that celebrated with us. I briefly entertained tossing it on the grill but decided against it. Would have fit in a bun perfectly. Good times.

Edit: Found a picture of the BBQ. Andrea put it on her blog. As a disclaimer, this was after a particularly frustrating 30 min with the coconut charcoal.

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