UPDATE (May 7, 2017): I’ve been hearing from some readers that Pasar Santa has all but shut down. Because I no longer live in Jakarta, I’m not exactly sure what the status of Pasar Santa’s businesses is. It looks like some are still open, but it sounds like a lot of them have been forced to…
I’ve never been an apartment person. I lived in a studio apartment once, during my college days at UC Santa Cruz. The walls were so wafer thin and I remember being able to hear the girl next door binge watching episodes of Sex and the City. I can distinctly remember the theme song penetrating the walls. Ever…
UPDATE: As of June 2015, Indonesia allows 30 countries to enter the country for 30 days for free. That means no more VOA for most countries (sorry all of you Australians, you’re not on the list! To find out more information check out this article. There is still a little bit of confusion about whether…
Seriously, what is there to do in Jakarta? That question has taken me a while to answer. Jakarta is an incredibly tough city to get to know. Measuring 662 square kilometers and consisting of over 30 million people (in the greater Jakarta area) exploring this megacity can be a daunting task – and that goes for tourists…
I’ve officially lived in Jakarta for six months. It’s unbelievable that six months have come and gone. At times it has felt unbelievably fast, at other times it has been painfully slow. My time in Jakarta has been thrilling, emotional, difficult and amazing – pretty much take any emotion and chances are I’ve experienced it….
Let’s be honest, Jakarta isn’t exactly a huge travel destination. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be included in your Indonesia travel itinerary (because in my opinion Jakarta is worth a visit) but the reality is that most travelers simply don’t venture here. And if they do it’s for a brief 24 hours. A side effect…
A funny thing happened when the calendar flipped from 2014 to 2015: I realized that my time in Indonesia is finite. I have eight more months here. And while some days that feels like an eternity, I know time will fly by. For the first time, I started to panic that I haven’t made the most…
Is it bad that I almost forgot it was Christmas? I suppose that’s what happens when you live across the world from home. This is actually the second consecutive year I’ll be spending the holidays abroad, and being away from my family for a second year in a row is a little bit of a bummer….
For Aaron and I, one of the toughest parts of traveling is that we are vegetarian. We both stopped eating meat in high school (long before we ever met) and we’ve both stayed true to our herbivorous ways for the past 14 years. Neither of us eats meat or fish and we have to be wary…
A responsible person probably would have found a job before they actually moved to Indonesia. That’s the proper order to do things. But, no one said that I was responsible. In all fairness to myself, I found out that I was moving to Jakarta only three weeks before I arrived. Suffice it to say, I didn’t have a…