Post from Tim:
Ask travelers who enter Indonesia through Jakarta to describe the city and you will hear nothing but criticism. They cry out about the city's dirt, pollution, crowds, and traffic. They will tell you that the city streets are so crazy that you can't even walk across the street.
We arrived in Jakarta with these stories in our thoughts, but quickly dispelled them as false. Chaotic traffic filled the streets, but aside from the addition of noisy three wheeled tuk-tuks, the traffic whirled around us just like in the rest of the country. The same fumes from small motorcycles sputtered into the air. The same food stalls crowded the sidewalks and forced pedestrians to walk around. I didn't think of Jakarta as a nice place, but I was sure it didn't deserve the horrible reputation that my fellow travelers had handed to me with distaste.
After just one hour in the Malaysian capital city of Kuala Lumpur, I understood the slamming of Jakarta. Our plane arrived to a brand new futuristic terminal and a new air conditioned Mercedes bus took us down a beautiful four-lane highway past brightly painted buildings that sparkled with color. A permanent dense haze no longer colored the sky like the one I had become so used to in Indonesia. The streets were clean and orderly. Drivers actually stopped for red lights and let pedestrians cross in safety.
When you travel, your expectations rise and fall to the level of your surroundings. When I arrived to Jakarta, I had come from a month of traveling through Indonesia and it seemed like a great place. Most of my fellow travelers arrived to Jakarta from Europe, Australia, Kuala Lumpur, or Singapore. The transition for them was so abrupt that they hated the city, yet I had some time to fall into the rhythm of the city before I arrived and I liked it.
I guess the moral of the story is, if you stick around long enough anywhere, you can enjoy almost anything.
We arrived in Jakarta with these stories in our thoughts, but quickly dispelled them as false. Chaotic traffic filled the streets, but aside from the addition of noisy three wheeled tuk-tuks, the traffic whirled around us just like in the rest of the country. The same fumes from small motorcycles sputtered into the air. The same food stalls crowded the sidewalks and forced pedestrians to walk around. I didn't think of Jakarta as a nice place, but I was sure it didn't deserve the horrible reputation that my fellow travelers had handed to me with distaste.
After just one hour in the Malaysian capital city of Kuala Lumpur, I understood the slamming of Jakarta. Our plane arrived to a brand new futuristic terminal and a new air conditioned Mercedes bus took us down a beautiful four-lane highway past brightly painted buildings that sparkled with color. A permanent dense haze no longer colored the sky like the one I had become so used to in Indonesia. The streets were clean and orderly. Drivers actually stopped for red lights and let pedestrians cross in safety.
When you travel, your expectations rise and fall to the level of your surroundings. When I arrived to Jakarta, I had come from a month of traveling through Indonesia and it seemed like a great place. Most of my fellow travelers arrived to Jakarta from Europe, Australia, Kuala Lumpur, or Singapore. The transition for them was so abrupt that they hated the city, yet I had some time to fall into the rhythm of the city before I arrived and I liked it.
I guess the moral of the story is, if you stick around long enough anywhere, you can enjoy almost anything.