(Staying at the Mandarin Oriental for the conference=not too tough)
I was back in Jakarta for a week a couple of weeks ago to attend the Conference of Australian and Indonesian Youth (CAUSINDY). It was certainly nice to be back. I enjoyed the conference and spending time with the other delegates, and also managed some catch ups with former colleagues and friends who are still in town (though not enough and there are many people I wanted to see that I didn’t get to! Jakarta makes cramming things in to a tight schedule so difficult, the traffic is not any better than before!).
While I really enjoyed being back and it was nice to be in a ‘real city’ for a week, and I certainly miss the Jak, I didn’t feel pressing pangs to move back. There was new stuff, there were things that were much the same, and there are definitely huge parts of my life there that I miss (friends, the people, the bars, the affordability of restaurants, nasi Padang, the affordability of amazing massages, cheap haircuts and cream baths, having someone else do my laundry and cleaning, speaking Indonesian and practicing it… unlike now, being able to run around the archipelago on the weekends and see amazing places, etc), I think now I’m in my extremely late 20s (for six more months, eeeek) I have other priorities, as much as it pains me to say it. If I could combine all of my priorities and all of the things in the above list, I totally would, and maybe I can in the future, but at the moment that would involve too many tradeoffs. It’s hard not to feel nostalgia when I go back there though for the extremely interesting life I had there for 2.5 years all up.
But anyway, enough of the pondering. Here’s a few photographic highlights.
Skye bar
Last time I was in Jakarta this place was too popular, but now there are other rooftop bars so the crowds are a bit more dispersed. It’s pretty cool! We had some crazy drinks and enjoyed the sunset views and then the twinkling nighttime ones. Canberra does not have bars on top of skyscrapers, this is one of its shortcomings.
(I see one of my old apartment blocks, Sudirman Park!)
A couple of CAUSINDY shots
I didn’t take too many, I was too engrossed in conversation I guess. But here’s a couple.
And here’s a couple of others courtesy of others.
(Thanks Pandu)
(Thanks Luke)
New hair
Hardly groundbreaking, but I did get an affordable hair chop in Jakarta at Irwan Team in Grand Indonesia. After the pretty trying few months I have had as I wrote about in an earlier post (and unfortunately am still having to some degree), needed a fresh look. I should have bought a tongsis (selfie stick) in Jakarta though to improve my selfie skills. Couldn’t believe how popular the tongsis were, people using them everywhere!!
