We started our two-week trip to
Indonesia in
Jakarta. 'The Big Durian' is Jakarta's unofficial nickname, supposedly given to it by expats because it's spiky and smelly on first glance, but warm and delicious once you get to know it. (I can certainly confirm the smelly part of the description!).
Arriving late at night we started our visits the next day with Indonesia's
National Museum, also known as the 'Elephant Museum' by the locals as it has a statue of an elephant outside (which you can just see to the right on this photo).
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| part of the museum's stone sculpture collection |
One of the museum's centrepices is a 4-metre tall stone sculpture of
Aditawarman, a 14th century nobleman:
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| notice the ring of skulls on which he is standing |
Opposite the museum is a park called
Merdeka Square, in the middle of which is the towering Monas, (aka National Monument), built by President
Soekarno in the 1960s, and probably Jakarta's main landmark.
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| the 132-metre high Monas |
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| lunch! (chicken noodles) |
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| some friendly security guards |
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The statue below is the West Irian Liberation Monument, erected to celebrate the liberation of this province from Dutch imperalism. This region is now known as
West Papua, and is the western half of the island of
New Guinea. However an
independence (from Indonesia) movement is active.
The Gedung Pancasila building is famous as the place where Soekarno paved the way for Indonesia's constitution following a 1945
speech there.
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| frog? toad? |
On our second day we went to the old port area of
Sunda Kelapa, which is full of
pinisi, traditional two-masted wooden ships.
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| pinisi |
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| kids, Sunda Kelap | | |
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| Sunda Kelapa |
A landmark of the area is the old watchtower, built by the Dutch, built in 1839.
There's not much to see inside, but you get a good view from the top, as you can see from the following photos.
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| Looking north from the watchtower |
After Sunda Kelapa we visited Kota, the old part of Jakarta (which was known as Batavia under Dutch rule), whose central square is Taman Fatahillah. Here's the old town hall, now a history museum:
After we left Jakarta we flew to
Yogyakarta for the next step of our trip. After that we travelled to
Pulau Weh (Northern Sumatra) for a week of scuba-diving.
Suggested reading :Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883
by Simon Winchester. As the title says, an account of the eruption of Krakatoa, situated between Java and Sumatra. The author brings to life the drama, the people and the science behind the eruption in an interesting way.
by Amelie Nothomb. A complex story of first love set in late 1980s and early 90s Tokyo. Amélie is a 21-year-old Belgian student studying Japanese in Tokyo when she begins tutoring Rinri, a sweet, shy and wealthy 20-year-old, in French. The relationship quickly evolves into a friendship and, soon after that, into romance. 
