The bus journey to Jakarta is hellish. We leave Pangandaran at 9am and arrive in Jakarta 10 hours later, hot and with very sore bums. The bus stops at several places along the way to pick up passengers and at each stop hawkers crowd onto the bus selling a range of drinks and snacks.
This was supposed to be an‘Executif’ class coach with air conditioning. But the seats were uncomfortable and the air conditioning didn’t work, circulating warm air rather than cold. The journey took three hours longer than it should have and I had a curtain that should have been providing shade blowing across me most of the way. But apart from hiring a car and driver this was the only reliable means of getting to Jakarta today, as getting train tickets is a bit hit a miss during the school holidays.
As compensation, some of the scenery was magnificent particularly as we climbed up through the mountains west of Bandung with their tiered paddies some only a few feet wide. As seems to be the way on these trips we stop to fill up with petrol at 4,500 rp a litre – a mere 27p. It seems that no one fills up before they have paying passengers on board. The bus is quite busy and their are several families with young children, all of whom are remarkably docile and well behaved, not a peep out of any of them. Children here seem to be implausibly calm and long suffering.< ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /?>
We make the usual prayer-and-meal stop at around midday. The prayer room and toilets are adjacent to each other underneath the cafe. The toilets are so dark that I’m glad that I have a torch in my handbag otherwise it would definitely been a case of hit and miss.
On arriving at Jakarta bus terminal we are immediately surrounded by taxi drivers demanding to know where we are going and snatching at the piece of paper carrying our hotel address. Some negotiation ensues and lots of derisive laughter when we name our starting price. Eventually we settle on a price; not as low as we would have liked, but we are not in the mood play the game and walk away (usually works though). On top there are tolls to pay – the motorways in and out of Jakarta are all toll roads and the journey of 50 kms out to our hotel which is by the airport involves going through five toll gates.
We have chosen, the imaginatively-named, FM7 Resort Hotel because it is only a couple of kilometres from the airport and means we won’t have to get up at some ungodly hour tomorrow for our flight. It’s an ultra modern, rather soulless place which turns out to be all fur coat. The staff verge on the incompetent and whilst they speak English they have great problems understanding it and we have difficulty checking in and trying to get a bottle of water was a major struggle, which would be understandable if this was a provincial hotel, but a bit surprising in one that caters for international travellers. We couldn’t fault the room though, which was huge and pleasant in the modern minimalistic style. Nice glass shower cubicle, too.