Jakarta - Not What You Think

Came back from a 4 days 3 nights trip to Jakarta, Indonesia on Monday and started the new semester on that day itself. Who ever thought Jakarta is a place that is not developed, you are WRONG!!

Jakarta is VERY much developed and pretty much similar with Kuala Lumpur. If it wasn't for the inner war and corruption, Jakarta would have been a much more developed and advance city compared to KL.

The buildings are more architectural.

The people are more friendly. The traffic is alot more worse. There are more motorcyclist.

You'll see alot of Toyota Vios around. Practically 70% of the cars are Vios including taxis.

One reminder. Try not to take the Silver Bird taxi which is a Mercedes Benz. The charges are crazy and I heard it's not so safe. They bring you to small roads and small areas.

Another amazing discovery is that they have buses with 5 seats!! 2 on one side and 3 on another side ( _ _ _ _ _ ). Amazing isn't it?

One thing that frustrats me is the security. You gotta go through security check (like those in airports) everytime you enter A building. It annoying when you go in BIG groups like us.

Funny thing is, Jakarta doesn't have a train system. But their busway is quite similar like the train system. Ticket counter. Platforms (bus stop). The busway system is VERY efficient I have to say. Buses come in every 1 1/2 minutes. They even have people controlling the number of people to go on the bus. Something different huh?

Owh. And their road has 6 lanes (including 1 bus lane) in one side. Which means they have a total of at least 12 lanes for roads!! That is crazy. Try running a 100m dash and not get killed. Lol.

This trip was definitely an eye opener. I will go back to Jakarta. Probably in August or October. I dunno. Hopefully nothing comes in the way. Cheers!