Sunday, November 10, 2013
Everything we heard or read about Jakarta was leaning heavily towards the negative – to say the least. Gridlocked traffic, not that many interesting sites, … so we decided to give the place a miss and went to Bogor for a few days instead.
What to say about Bogor. It’s about 1.5 hours south of Jakarta.
We visited the Kebun Raya Botanical Gardens and enjoyed walking around there instead of on the busy streets, but, truth be known, I’ve seen nicer, more impressive botanical gardens. It is of course totally possible that in a different season and with more colors present I would change my mind.
The traffic (and afternoon rain storm) discouraged us from exploring more of the city. The area where our hotel (Novotel) was located was totally different: gated and well kept communities with equally gated and well kept streets and almost no traffic. We walked into town and at least that part of it was pleasant enough.
We ended up spending one night in Jakarta in a hotel close to the airport, for obvious practical reasons: our flight to KL the next day. We only experienced 3kms of Jakarta traffic (not on the relatively well flowing toll road) and that took 20mins. Given we didn’t get there till around 2pm we didn’t feel like braving that again (in a rental) to go see some of the city. Maybe on a future visit.
The next morning, November 13, we got on the hotel shuttle, did the same 3 kms in 20-25 mins, and got to the airport to catch our flight to Kuala Lumpur.
