This morning I woke and had plenty of time to sample the hotels breakfast menu before they closed the kitchen. Sadly they didnt have a full english breakfast or cornflakes, but there was plenty of rolls, cakes, fruit, bacon, eggs and the sausages so it was almost the same.
After breakfast I asked the hotel reception if there was any maps or tourist information on offer to a lonely traveller, however although they had a map all they could suggest was for me to hire a taxi for the day and go see some places that I already knew existed.
Of course I don't know where to visit and so much of today will be spent just searching the internet for places that I might visit tomorrow, seing as I had already lost much of the morning and the weather outside was both muggy and showery.
At one stage I did actually try go for a short stroll around my hotel, much to the disapporoval of the hotel doorman who strongly suggested that I take taxi. At first I thought this was a usual trick, that they are in cahoots with the taxi firms, and so do not want any traveller bucking the trend and going off walking on their own, but soon I came to another theory.
It is not so much safety from being mugged or anything, but from the many cars and motorcycles that sped through the town, not so much as speeding but certianly constant, relentless and taking up every available bit of road there is.
The pavement is no better, as if it is not packed with parked motorcycles, stalls for food, and pimping taxi drivers who eyes would veritably jump out of their sockets when they saw me approach, all thinking the same thing "lone tourist, new to city, must need to get somewhere = money, money, money". It came as a shock to some that I just smiled, shook my head and continued on my way, not sure exactly where I was going but I was sure that I wanted to at least try and get a feel of the place.
I hadn't gone more than five minutes down the road when I started to get a vaguely familiar sensatoin, one of nausia and sickness. Much like I had experienced many years ago when I was invited to spend a few hours working in a carpark, the resultant mix of car fumes began to build up inside my head giving me a headache and upset stomuch, making me believe that not many of the cars here are fitted with catalitic converters.
I managed to reach a a bank, retrieve some cash and make it back to my hotel before the headache came on and that pretty much ended the day for me before it even began. The internet in the hotel is terribly erratic and disfunctional meaning that surfing the web was nigh on impossible and the movies on the box today were not exactly inspiring today either, so I just pretty much slept and ate my way through the day.
The next morning it was a similar routine as although the headache went immediately following breakfast I got a very upset stomuch and this sent me back to bed for an hour or two to try and make it go away.
I did ask the hotel how much it would be to hire a taxi for the day, and was told that it would be IDR 400,000 to hire a car for the day and so to get a taxi it would be as much if not more.
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