Second day in Jakarta was great. Reached Mangga Dua by 9.00am. Its just about 20 minutes from our place. Well, this something what Chow Kit is to KL. There’s this shopping mall.. bazaar kind of thing where you can find a lot of things… clothes, accessories, fakes, spectacles, embroidery services, all kinds of beads, you name it. Anyway, I only bought a pair of short bermuda jeans for just Rp9oK. Had Indomie breakfast.
Ok, did I tell you all that.. to me, Indonesian food is just like another malay food. Alright.. maybe my 2 days stint is just not sufficient to eat.. but then the renown nasi padang is just like another nasi kandar. Only that they serve in plates for each dish and its not as hygiene as you thought it would be. Imagine, they put all the available dishes they have in the house on the table and whichever you don’t eat, they collect it back to “recycle”/reheat for the next customer. You only pay for the dishes you ate. Don’t expect the aroma of nasi kandar you always eat in the alleys near your office. You’d be disappointed for generations. The nasi padang we patronised was recommended by a waiter at Cafe Batavia. He said there’s only 2 good nasi padang joint in Jakarta…. Sari Bundo and Garuda. So the one convenient for us to go was Sari Bundo. Another thing is Indomie, an instant noodle which is delicious. I think thats their national food… for every noodle shop there must be indomie in the menu. Bakso indomie, indomie soup, indomie goreng, dry mixed indomie etc….
Eh… went off the chronology of events. Ok… after Mangga Dua, we went to Fatahillah Square by angkut (the tuk-tuk motor bike). There are the various museums… Museum Fatahillah, Museum Wayang, Museum Fine Arts, etc. These are old colonial buildings converted to museum. This is what I wanted to see. After the visiting the various museums, we retreated to Cafe Batavia for a drink. The setting in there is very posh and nice. You should go there if you ever visit Jakarta. After the drink.. went eat nasi padang at Sari Bundo (lunch). While eating lunch, our table was facing a nice colonial building and I was staring at it throughout the meal. Then before we left the restaurant, we asked a waiter there what is that building opposite and was told it is the National Archieve (they call it arsib nasional). Ok good. He even recommended us to visit the place. So we took quite an effort to cross the busy road. Yeah, it was a nice building. According to a picture I saw thereat, it is a fact that there was an awry massacre took place at the backyard of the building a few centuries ago. The locals massacred the colonials, chinese etc.
Later in the evening, we went to the Kathedral in central Jakarta… a gothic catholic church which I believed to be the oldest church in Indonesia. It is a must visit place in Jakarta. At the time when we were there, so happen there was a wedding mass going on and we attended it partially. The church is also a museum in its own right, as the upper level stores artefacts of Catholic presence in Jakarta. But too bad, it was closed that day. Ayoyo.
Its quite weird to me as we’re used to english or chinese mass here and there they speak malay. Let me tell you, I feel very uneasy because chinese are all speaking malay among themselves and chinese traders speak malay to me. It never happen before (except the time people mistaken me for a malay). Its like thing you rarely see here (except my house; i speak malay with Mr Bean sometime). Ok… there are many nice places for wedding photo shooting in Jakarta. Mainly the places are Kota Lama (the Cafe Batavia area) and this Kathedral.
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