The rest of yesterday was not much more than a boring blur, as the minutes stretched into hours and they slowly gave way to night through hours of watching television, movies and trying in vain to get anything online sorted out.
I did manage to backup to disc the rest of my photos for Decemeber and January and then after receiving word form my sister, delete the photos from the first three months which has freed up a lot of space on my hard drive, but as for venturing outside the hotel or even feeling 100% I must say that it was not so much of a success.
Not that I would have been able to see much had I tried to venture outside as the weather turned to cloud and fog with occasional downpours from as early as 4pm and with it getting dark around 6pm I would have spend more time in taxi's and trafic jam than I would have actually visiting places.
Jakarta is one of those places that is too big to see or find you way around without a few maps, knowledge of the local bs routes and plenty of research to find out where you want to visit and how best to get there.
I have heard through various sources that the begging in Jakarta can be as bad as that in places like India or Egypt, but from my experience it was not on the same leve, or at least the bus station, hotel, streets and airport were not as bad, which amounts to pretty much the same thing.
For my last meal in Jakarta I decided to go to the restaurant instead of ordering room service yet again, but was sadly let down by the service which was slow and not as attentive or as friendly as it had been the day before and the prices made no real sense.
I have always been a hater of illogical prices, so it was extra frustrating to order a fruit tart that said it was 20,000 to then receive a bill of 25,000 plus a further 2,500 as tax on top. I mean, what is the point of showing a price if what you pay bares no similarity to it, you may as well just make a price off your head. Its like those stupid offers in superstore windows offering up to 60% off, only to find that everything you actually want is only with a lousy 10% discount and the "up to 60%" only applies if you are an OAP who comes after 4pm on the third Sunday in the month and wants the smallest oldest cut of the meat, just bloody frustrating and a waste of time.
I have never been a fan of advertiement people, feeling that they lie as much as politicians, and if I had my way then the lot of them would be rounded up and publically flogged to within an inch of their lives and told never to ply their deceptions arts again.
I went to sleep around 10pm, not having to wake til around 7am, but due to a slight hitch back in the UK I was up part of the night on the phone, all in the name of a worth cause though so its ok, and having had a boring and dull day I wasn't really that tired anyway.
Waking up on time, I decided against delaying my departure to have breakfast even though it was free, and instead I just sorted myself out, settled my bill and left. One surprising thing about the bill, again to do with price, was the varying cost of a can of fizzy drink. In the bar downstairs a poured glass of coke from a 2 litre bottle cost me 31, 000, when I had it as part of a room service meal it was 25,000 yet when I took a can from the poorly stocked minibar it was only 12,000. Why the three prices for the same drink in the same hotel I have no idea, but then its all just fun and games really.
I think that I should have picked up my rucksack and walked across the road before I got in a taxi to take me to the train station as the location of the hotel on a main highway meant that by the time it reached a place where it could turn around and come back the metered fare was already up to 12,000 and it had only taken me 15,000 to get here in the first place. By the time I reached the trainstation I had to pay 25,000 and a further 280,000 for a executive class train ticket to Surabaya.
If I could have spoke better indonesian I guess I could have asked for a cheaper seat, but at only 20,000 difference and the quality of seats and service is much reduced so for the 10 hour train tide it wasn't worth saving the £1. The train was almost a half hour late in leaving and the station staff rudely demanded a tip for showing me to my seat, but he got far less than the 40,000 he was asking, the nerve of it. I only really even followed because I made the mistake of allowing a local to strike up a conversation with me and he in turn told the guard to show me to my seat, at which point i was sort of commited, though I didnt realise that he was going to try and ask for a tip for such a small favour.
My other mistake was having my 1,000 notes all wrapped up in 5,000 notes as I only intended on giving him 2,000 but when the 5,000s came out I couldnt really take them back, though the way he almost broke my rucksack into two by cramming it in the overhead storage space was almost enough to make my blood boil.
The rain was back with a vengence and by the time the train got half an hour along the tracks it looked dark enough to be almost night and the rain was pounding the windows plenty. The train company were sly in sending around a pretty young female to take purchase orders of food barely half an hour before they brough round the standard tray of light refreshments, much like airline food, though to be honest hte prices were reasonable and a can of coke on here was only 7,000 - barely half of even the cheapest of the prices that the hotel had charged me.
The seat that I was allocated was faulty in that you couldnt sit in it and not have it fall into the full reclining position, which made comfortable watching the ontrain entertainment impossible though once I saw the poor quality of what was being shown and the fact that they kept interrupting it for advert breaks it was almost a blessing.
What did surprise me in a good way, was that all the seats in executive class have twin power sockets next to them just below the window tables and so I was able to plug in my laptop and watch the couple of dvd's that I bought in Singapore which were far better quality than the run of the mill gore fest military action flick where everything explodes when its hit by a bullet.
After the two movies I did a bit of blogging updating and then as I had plenty of time left to kill I chose to watch on the films a second time, especially as although I was told that it arrives at 7:58pm it was running so late that it didnt come in til 9:25pm.
My contact in Surabaya did the familiar "oh my god, your really here, i never thought you would, I ... er ... actually I'm not all that comfortable to meet you right now, sorry, I was just being polite. I hope you enjoy your time in my city but I'm afraid I am not able to meet you at the train station, or your hotel, or at all even. But I hope we can still keep in touch as friends!!!" bollocks, so I had to make my own way from the station to my hotel.
Needless to say that this latest bit of news did not go down too well with me, especially as I had been sending emails and texts to them on a regular basis over and moreso recently to make sure that everything was still on so to get this news as my train pulled up in the station was about the biggest kick in the balls I could have got.
The hotel was nice, with a big billiard table and it would have been better if it was straight and not lopsided. I played a few games, for 5,000 an hour which suddenly jumped to "no, no 25,000 an hour, sorry you must have misheard me" which is still not a lot but its 5 times more than I was expecting and I would have done something more about the wabble and played longer if i had of known.
Around midnigth I went to sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment