Jakarta

We arrived at Jakarta airport at nearly midnight. It was all pretty painless...we met two girls from Leeds and we shared a taxi with them to our hotel (they hadn't booked anywhere, and our hotel was right in the middle of the main backpackery area, Jalan Jaksa). We checked in fine; the description of the room in the Lonely Planet was accurate: clean, but a little heavy-handed with the mothballs.

Jalan Jaksa is bright and colourful, full of little stalls selling everything and lined with cheap restaurants and guest houses. We were fortunate (!?) enough to arrive at the annual Jalan Jaksa carnival, which meant that there were processions meandering up and down and a stage at one end of the street.

The first full day we went to the bank to get some money, and the ATM managed to freeze on us - after deducting the money from the account but before giving us cash or reciept - so we spent most of that morning in the bank waiting, or talking to reluctant Indonesian banks on the phone, or trying to communicate with a helpful security guard who knew no English. We walked down to a nearby mall (Plaza Indonesia) to kill some time and eat something. So around we wandered, eating in a food court in the basement and pondering the other problem, getting a Vietnamese visa.

We had thought that Vietnam issued visas on arrival, but they don't - you have to apply in advance via an embassy. We tried calling the embassy in Jakarta but there was no reply.

We got back to the bank as the tecnicians arrived to fix it: they gave us back the card that had been stuck in the machine and assured us that no money had been taken from our account. Still, we took pictures of the security guard's badge, just in case.

It had been a long, tiring day of waiting and stress, and so we went back to the mall and saw a film in the cinema. The cinema was amazing! It was quite expensive by Indonesian standards, costing 50000 rupiah (about 2.50 in GBP) for a ticket, but you could barely touch the seats in front with your feet, and the seats were big, squashy armchairs...amazing.

We ate back in Jalan Jaksa while the celebrations were going on, and then (shamefully) went back to the cinema for the midnight showing of another film. Unfortunately, the nearer cinema wasn't quite as comfortable (but still good, and half the price) and we both enjoyed the film immensely, because it was so laughably awful! Seriously, if you want to know how to make a good film, you can learn more by watching one really terrible one than fifty good ones.

The next day we went to the old colonial Dutch section near the harbour. There wasn't that much to see - the square was being dug up and re-paved - but we found a really good restaurant facing the square (Cafe Batavia), and we spent most of the afternoon there. It had black and white pictures hanging absolutely everywhere, big sofas, live music - really colonial and comfortable (and expensive..but not by English standards).

We headed back through the Freedom Square, with lots of people playing football and shouting "Hello, how are you" and "Lovely Jubbly" and things at us. We walked past a massive and vaguely phallic monument (Lonely Planet's words) and back, not to the hostel, but to Plaza Indonesia to cool off and ended up watching yet another film - it was just so comfortable!

The final day we hit the huge, crowded, cramped malls in the North selling everything from fake DVDs and clothes to mobile phones and accessories and shoes. We worked our way down this street, eating at some fast food place and even going in a place with an amazing curved escalator! We took a Bluebird taxi (reliable, curteous, metered) back to the hostel to get our bags and then on to the airport to catch the incredibly delayed flight to Bali.