Jakarta and Pangandaran

Day: 13
Countries: 2
Stops: 4


OK, so I guess we're finally up to speed. My flight from Beijing to Jakarta was long...including a 4 hour stop over in Guangzhou, but otherwise smooth sailing. It was kind of interesting though, the flight from Beijing to Guangzhou was on this ridiculously large plane, with 2 decks and room for over 500 passengers. In contrast, the Guangzhou to Jakarta flight was on a small plane, the kind you'd be on from Calgary to Vancouver, but with the old school entertainment system. Anyway, Getting the visa on arrival in Indonesia was fairly painless, and so was getting the taxi to the hotel. Finally arrived at the hotel around 10pm, so I pretty much just crashed. 

The next day, I made my way to the National Monument, or Monas, for a view of Jakarta and a quick and dirty summary of Indonesian history (in dioramas!). Afterwards, just found my way to the tourist strip, Jalan Jaksa, to look for internet access and have lunch. Met up with the tour group at 7:30 pm and had a group dinner, and then left the following morning to catch the 11:30 am train from Gambir train station to Bandung, where we got on to a hired mini van that took us all the way to Pangandaran, about a 6hr journey down a windy, narrow, congested road, and arrived at 10 pm.

Monas, in Jakarta

After waking up to the sunrise over the East beach, which turned out to be just across the street from our hotel room, we had a pancake breakfast and walked around town, down the West beach where the surfing action is, then through the town to the East beach. The afternoon was reserved for a guided walk (by our local guide, Aep) through the local forest park, where we saw long tailed macaques, black langurs, monitor lizards, a flying squirrel, and later on, flying foxes flying out at sunset. Today, we went on a day trip to Green Canyon, making a few stops along the way to see how they make fish/shrimp crackers, palm sugar, and wooden puppets. Swimming in the river at Green Canyon was pretty cool, the water was a bit low so we were able to go further up the river and swim in a secluded spot surrounded by the canyon walls. Afterwards, we drove to Batu Karas for a late lunch and some time on the beach. Tomorrow, we're off to Yogyakarta!

Wooden puppets

Green Canyon