Cruisin Marys

Jakarta is a huge city with over 10 million inhabitants. We were told that there are more scooters than residents, and we believe it!. We saw the craziest traffic we have ever encountered. Scooters were everywhere, and they zipped in and out between buses, trucks, and cars without a care. Certainly was not like anything we have seen before.

As we sailed into the harbor, there were many large ships but also little fishing boats like the one below.

We did a private tour to see the sites. We started at the beautiful National Monument that commemorates the independence of Indonesia after WW II.

We visited the Cathedral of Jakarta and had a lovely chat with the (surprisingly fit) Pope. Directly across the street is one of the largest mosques in the world. The Cathedral and Mosque share parking; great to see people existing together in peace.

We visited Chinatown where we had some savory Martabak. It was cooked by a street vendor and was absolutely delicious.

We visited the old Dutch area and had a drink at Cafe Batavia, the World’s Best Bar.

We visited New Chinatown, which reminded us of Las Vegas. It was hard to grasp the vast disparity of the areas of the city.

Day 2 we worked on developing our culinary skills. We took a cooking glass at a local Indonesian restaurant. We started with a trip to a local market, not similar to Piggly Wiggly at all. It was really fun and our steamed fish was delicious.