i am doing this instead of working, so shhhhhh. nobody can know! :D

feeling quite bad because i really did want to blog about all the trips but then, i started working and i can't do this when i'm at home as there's no internet there. thus, this sneaking about. D: so i'm gonna do this real quick.

Jakarta was hot, crowded and traveling takes hours. the traffic jams are crazy, like 2 hours stuck in the back of a car for a 30 minutes drive crazy. this is what i came back from Korea early for. sigh~ i know, i know, it was precious family time, so i shan't utter another word of complaint. this happened early July btw.

we were there for 5 days, i think. we got to visit some of the tourist spots because my uncle took a few days off to show us around. We went to a theme park in Ancol called Dunia Fantasi (Dufan), sat on two scary rides and walked around a bit. Ancol is a big place and it has several parks, kinda like Sentosa Island on land. it had a water theme park, a beach area, and other stuff. we only had time to enter the theme park though. Below was one of the scary rides.


we also watched this show thing that they had, the most exciting one would be the Chinese bikers in a metal ball. as seen below, my grandpa was pretty excited about the bike and you can see in the background is the giant metal cage. i think they had six or seven bikers in that cage. it was quite terrifying.

on another day, we headed to Taman Mini Indonesia where they showcase all the traditional houses from all their ethnic groups. really pretty houses with intricate designs and bright colors. heeh.

Taman Mini Indonesia is another big scale thing. its kinda like how they roll in Indonesia. they put everything into one ginormous park. they weren't only houses in Taman Mini Indonesia, there were different types of museums and i think there was a castle or some sort of fort. but apparently we brought rain with us and it rained nearly everyday that we were there. thus, making it difficult to wander about more.

on another another day, we went to Taman Merkasari which is essentially a fruit farm, a really large fruit farm. it was quite cool and we took a tour thing where they drove us on a tram around the farm to introduce the fruits to us. we got to take home free fruits and fruit juices too.

above is my uncle and his family. the cousins were real shy this time around and i guess i could have done my bit but i wasn't feeling up to it. when they were younger, it took one day for them to warm up to us but this time, it took them nearly four days to say hi to us and by then, we had to head back to Malaysia already. it was a wasted opportunity. i really want to have a closer relationship with them and not to mention, we have Kpop as common interest. hehe. must do better next time around.

what else is there? the shopping was indeed cheap, i got three pairs of shoes for RM10 each. lots of imitation stuff but i'm more into Korean style stuff, so i didn't buy much. there were some Korean styles here and there but pricey they were.

i've mentioned the terrible traffic jams right? another thing i realised were that the people there were creative in their ways to make money/survive. there were young kids running on the streets selling newspapers and they are not that much taller than the front of the car. its scary, its sad but if you look on the bright side, at least the people are actively doing something and not sitting around moaning and complaining. this is one thing to admire about them; their endurance, their tenacity, their strength.

i'm gonna end this here. got to have lunch and get back to work.

have a good week and i'll be back soon.
God bless!