Leaving the ship in Indonesia was always interesting because of the traditional entertainment provided on the dock. Music and dancing always.
But the air quality and the commercial shipping view in Jakarta took away a lot of the glamor. This was a sunny day and very hot. You can’t tell by the photo.
Jakarta urban area is the second largest urban area in the world only beaten by Tokyo. There are over 30,000,000 people living here. And I swear every one of them was on the road yesterday (Saturday). We took an excursion to see the highlights of the city. There were very few in my opinion. We saw the government buildings, a large Mosque, the Catholic Cathedral, and Liberty Square. It was planned as a 3 hour excursion. As we left the last site we were just past 3 hours. Since we were late the guide told the driver to take a short cut. Yea! That worked well. The road was blocked so we had to find a place to turn around. Eventually we got back to the ship at 5:30 which was 1 1/2 hours late.
Liberty Square is basically just a statue celebrating their independence from The Netherlands. It was okay.
Sunday morning we took a shuttle bus to a shopping mall close to the harbor. We have been to Mall of America and Mall of Norway (in Flam Norway). But how about Mall of Indonesia. The mall was huge and gave us an opportunity to walk. Our excursions are mostly bus rides with some walking at specific venues. This was free time. But the Mall had far more food vendors than stores. And the large stores were more like Target than like large department stores. There were large numbers of small clothing stores, bed stores, luggage and even kids rides.
But the one that blew my mind was ACE. It was 3 floors. It had tools of course, but also clothes, kitchen stuff, lighting. It was the biggest store in the complex. I almost bought a hand drill just because I could.
Johnson's Travel 