I'm feeling a bit better...it seems that apart from having a bunch of lazy antibodies, my other pathetic excuse of becoming sick is a weak stomach. So forget it if you want me to participate in some Fear Factor eating contest...I can't even consume a hot asam pedas without going up in flames.
Anyway, enough about my 'I can't never be cosmonount' stomach. Back to my travel log - Jakarta, the city of 12 millions.
That is the Tugu Selamat Datang in Jakarta...from the side it looks like some kind of arch structure. (forgive the photographer) Well it's not, it was actually a figure of a man waving hi and a woman holding a bouquet of flowers. If you tour around the city you can see a lot of monuments like this. They have a hoby of building symbolic structure I presume.
By arriving and living through Soekarno Hatta Airport you will see Pak Soekarno and his friend Pak Hatta on the way to Jakarta. Then there is Tugu Pak Tani, Tugu Sudirman, Tugu Gajah Mada ect. I lost count by the time we saw a statue that looks like the Hanuman monkey flying. The tour guide said it was symbolic as the place was near an air force base... hmm I still can't see the connection.
Did I say that we arrived in Jakarta by midnight on the day of Indonesian 63rd Independence Day, the 17th of August. Sorry folk they don't light up the sky with fireworks or any concert. There was no countdown celebration. It is pretty subdued if you ask me. In the morning they have this little ceremony of putting up the flags and reading vows in front of the Istana President. They might not have all the 'warna-warna Malaysia' celebration but theirs was very symbolic ritual. The girl and boy that were name the Putra and Putri to read vows and carry the flags were so proud of their job.
This is the National Monument (another monument). It was design by the first president..yup that would be Pak Soekarno. It stood 137 m tall, made by marble and gold ( 50 kg of it!). No you can't scrape the gold of because the gold made the top part of the monument. (the little pointy thing...there is where all the gold is put. Up close it looks like flame)It was said that during Soekarno time, no building is allowed to be build higher that this tower. So he can go on top of it and view the city without any obtruction.
You can't say you've been to Jakarta until you see this...that little trishaw with engine is called Bajaj. We didn't ride on it fearing we would overturn during U-turn...hehehe
Another mode of transportation...Kereta Kuda 50 thousand rupiah per ride. (about RM 19). There are a lot of this in front of the National Monument gate.
This is what the sky look like on the nice side of Jakarta, shining skycrappers. Going around Jakarta you can see almost two facet of the city. The rich and shiny part and the slum and glummy part. It's a huge city...the 11th largest city in the world.
The shiny part have people living in nice big house or apartment while the slum part have people that don't even have a roof upon their head apart from the highway flyover. (yup people actually build houses below the komuter or highway flyover, save them the roof cost)
What is it that you do in Jakarta anyway....shop...shop and shop till you drop. (not literally but in my case ...;-P)
...to be continued
To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries. - Aldous Huxley
0 comments:
Post a Comment