Jakarta, Indonesia

My first visit to my Indonesia office. I keep hearing people say not safe in Jakarta, kidnapping etc, wonder how true that is.

Took a garuda flight as it's the company policy to take a cheaper flight. And it's only a S$12 difference between Garuda and SQ. I even offered to pay the difference but was not allowed to do that.

Luckily it's only a 1.5 hours flight. Reached the airport around 4pm and was picked up by the hotel's transport. Reached the hotel about 5pm, thank god no jam as jakarta is well-known for bad traffic.

Stayed at the Mandarin Oriental hotel and it's diagonally across the Grand Hyatt hotel. The security at the hotel is very tight, when you reached the entrance, there is another check just like the airport kind where you need to put your luggage and bags on a belt for scanning.

Then it started to rain and I could see the traffic starting to form from my room. Eventually, I went out at about 9pm to the opposite Plaza Indonesia (next to Grand Hyatt) for dinner. The hotels are located in a huge roundabout and I literally had to run across to the opposite side to get to Plaza Indonesia. Later when I am back, I was told that was a very dangerous act to do.

Plaza Indonesia is pretty much like our Paragon where big names such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Salvatore Ferragamo etc were there. Wanted to get some shot glasses from HRC for my sister so I walked and asked around where the place is.

Finally found it. The shot glasses are so expensive. About S$20 each!!!! After that I proceed to this place called Sari Ratu for dinner as recommend by a friend (Arifin: if you are reading this, the food is not nice). The moment I sat down, they started to bring out about 8 kinds of dishes such as rendang, ikan asem pedas, sayur nangka, gulai otak, ayam gulai, telor and some others which I didnt eat so I guessed not charged (i copy these from the receipts..hahaha), when I asked is this a set, the waitress don't seem to understand so I just say never mind and proceed to order some steamed rice to go with all the dishes. In the end, the whole meal costs about 75,000RP.

The next morning, I started the journey to the industrial area of Jakarta about 8.10am. Reached there about 8.50am, not bad, not much jam too. The meeting was good but we went past the time and by the time everything ends, its about 3pm and my flight is 4.30pm. I was so anxious as there was a huge jam, I kept telling the tax driver to hurry as my plane is flying off. Eventually reached the airport about 4.10pm, I ran like mad to the check in counter and was told that the flight is delayed to 5pm. Thank God...

I was like breaking into cold sweats throughout the whole taxi journey and I could feel myself hyperventilating and I almost vomitted. By the time I reached singapore, its almost 8pm, what a long flight....2 hours and I still have a concall at 11pm the same night.