Eating And Crazy Motorcycle Rides Through Jakarta Indonesia
After my stay in Bali and Komodo, I spent a few days in Jakarta to see some of the sights I missed during my first trip to Jakarta two years ago. The main sights I targeted were the National Monument, the big Istiqlal Mosque, Kota Tua and Jakarta’s Chinatown. I already knew that Jakarta has a great food scene so I planned to try out different smaller local eateries right in the same vicinity of my hotel.
Overall, I didn’t feel the tourist attractions in Jakarta were enough to make me feel that this huge city should be a key tourist destination for travellers even though the Istialal Mosque is quite impressive. But other sights were basically just mediocre in my opinion and there are not a lot of them in the first place. But I did like the food scene especially at the small local family run eateries along side streets where no other tourists except myself were found. The food is tasty and dirt cheap.
However, this is probably my final visit to Jakarta as the air pollution seemed worse than it was two years ago on my first visit. I had to wear a N95 mask outside at times. The city is also still quite dirty with garbage piled up all over the place and the traffic is horrendous. Jakarta just wasn’t a nice place to visit as a tourist and instead of the four days I spent there, I could have easily seen all I wanted to see in two. In fact, perhaps the best fun thing I did while in Jakarta was take Grab motorcycle rides through that crazy traffic. Drivers not only weave in and out of traffic like they do in other southeast Asian cities in Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam, Jakarta motorcycles often go against traffic (I captured one of my thrilling Grab rides on video with my driver doing this).
Return To Indonesia
I really like Indonesia and the main reason why I travel there is for the scuba diving as regions like Raja Ampat and Komodo are currently the best in the world in many scuba divers’ opinions including mine. I also liked Bali as well. So I will return to Indonesia probably in two years to dive another part of Raja Ampat that I didn’t do during my first trip there. But I’m going to try and bypass Jakarta next time and enter Indonesia through Denpasar airport in Bali instead. Bali is such a big international destination these days that many flights arrive there directly from other countries eliminating the need to connect through Jakarta.
