Day 26: Small steps in Jakarta

Decided to risk heading downstairs for the (apparently) delicious a la carte breakfast that Shandos had raved about a few times earlier in the week. I hadn't made any disastrous pitstops for over 36 hours at this point so I was feeling confident. And the gamble paid off! The food was indeed excellent, I had a very tasty croque monsieur (jaffle with ham & mushroom filling, topped with cheese and a fried egg) which stayed in for the entire day.

The morning we spent working on various things, before venturing out for lunch. We wandered a bit before settling on Happy Day, an American-chain style restaurant a couple of blocks from the hotel. Shandos had eaten here a few days ago while I was sick and wasn't overly impressed, but I just wanted something clean looking that wasn't likely to upset my stomach. I got my wish at least, though I agree it wasn't especially spectacular.

Again we spent the afternoon doing various bits & pieces at the hotel lounge, but headed out around 4pm. We were considering heading to one of the rooftop bars that dot Jakarta but figured we'd be under-dressed for most of them - I've only got thongs and hiking shoes, and only shorts! Instead we decided on the backpacker area of Jalan Jaksa where we hoped to find a bunch of cheap restaurants and bars.

Grabbed a cab and headed into Jakarta's traffic around 4pm which as it was essentially commuting time on a weekday was at a standstill (though time doesn't seem to really have much impact on the traffic here). It got worse as we rounded a corner near our hotel which bounded the main Presidential palace and several military jeeps charged out the gate, limousine with President Widodo aboard and trailing just behind. Off he went with his motorcade and escort, changing traffic lights to suit (again not that people pay much attention to the lights), while us mortals sat and waited.

Before long we arrived at Jalan Jaksa, and were a little disappointed to find that it was actually nothing special. There were a couple of backpacker style dive bars and some dingy hotels but that was about it. Found a couple of interesting looking alleyways which we explored down, past locals with their little food carts and warungs, unfailingly happy and smiling - quick to ask where we're from but not following on with a pressure sales tactic.

Eventually we found a bar that we'd heard about called Melly's Garden, which was set back from the road amidst some gardens and Hindu temple architecture. Almost like being back in Bali, as it had the mosquitoes to match! But we were very early - at 5pm there was literally nobody else in a 300 seat venue. Undeterred we took a seat, grabbed a couple of 750ml Bintangs and settled in. By 6:30 the place had started to pick up but we'd almost had enough to drink and there was no non-smoking section as usual which kills our enthusiasm for venues pretty quickly. So off we wandered, the earliest of the earlybirds.

Foursquare had recommended a burger joint a couple of blocks away which we wandered over to, but the supposed burger joint actually turned out to be a small food court type place with semi-permanent food trucks surrounding a small eating area with table service. There was a bunch of different options (none of them burgers but never mind); we both ended up going for a kebab each and shared a platter of satay skewers. Satay is a bit different over here - rather than large chunks of marinated chicken you get in Western countries, it's very small bits of chicken grilled almost crispy, and then slathered with a thick spicy peanut sauce. Delicious.

While eating we noticed the most popular stall was selling "martabak" which neither of us had heard of, but were intrigued by. Martabak is apparently very common across the middle-east and subcontinent and was brought here by Indian traders. It's essentially a pizza/pancake style dish, but it gets folded over to form almost like a sandwich (or a square calzone, but not crispy). The fillings are normally minced meat, spices, diced potato, cheese etc sort of like a Turkish gozleme, but this stall was doing a roaring trade in sweet ones filled with Oreo, Toblerone, Milo, peanut butter & chocolate etc.

We couldn't just make a find like this and not indulged, so we settled for a red velvet pastry filled with cream cheese and crushed Oreo biscuit. The bread/pastry was roughly the consistency of a crumpet, and the filling was amazing though extremely rich and I couldn't eat more than a few pieces. We'd at least had the foresight to bring it back to our hotel room where we ate it with our remaining bottle of wine from Bali.

All in all a good day, if a little tame. But at least my food stayed down!Read more