A trip to Taman Mini

Taman Mini- a park situated an hour drive from our hotel. Our choices are: to spend a whole day at Taman Mini (not knowing what to expect) or to see ‘new’ Jakarta-the glossy one (according to our guide book), the one with tall buildings, shopping malls etc. We choose Taman Mini. But we need a ride. Transportation in Indonesia is a separate subject and I will deal with it later. After a horrible experience with a taxi driver last night I go down stairs to find out about the cost of a taxi. The receptionist informs me that she can arrange a driver for us for 6 hours that would take us to Taman Mini for $35. Too much, I think so I talk to a bell boy about the taxis that are parked in front of our hotel. There are two kinds of taxis: the ones that have a meter (therefore, presumably more honest, yeah, right!) and those ‘private’ ones that agree on the fee before the ride. The bell boy wants (I’m not so sure)to  be helpful and advises me to take a metered taxi. I insist on him asking the ‘private’ taxi driver for his rate. The driver says $12.50 one way. I negotiate to $10. We drive for about an hour. We pass the ‘new’ Jakarta-a city a bit like New York-nice and shiny with top notch designers stores and huge billboards (in English-disregarding the majority of the poor population of the city-that doesn’t speak English).That’s on the outside. However, as soon as one turns into a small street or alley, one will see the rubbish, the filth, the poor. New York is a bit like that too. Anyway, our driver smokes several cigarettes in one hour, there are no seat belts and I pray for the car not to break before we arrive (I don’t think there’s MOT (przeglad techniczny) in Indonesia). During the trip I’m preparing a little speech (possible dialog rather) in Indonesian for the driver to wait for us several hours so that he could take us back to the hotel. Considering that Indonesian is quite simple I manage to even prepare numerals for bargainingJ When we arrive I pay what was agreed and ask the driver to wait. As expected we negotiate and settle for $10. Krzysiek and Amelia are very impressed with my IndonesianJ

 

Taman Mini-they call it Indonesia in miniature as it is a huge park that represents many islands of Indonesia. It can be seen on foot, by car, motorbike (the most popular) or by bicycle-carts, little train that goes around or by aerial cable railway.  We choose the bicycle-carts (Amelia is thrilled). The owner of the carts ask me (like every single Indonesian) where am I from. When I say from Poland he asks if I can pay with Polish money. I have 100zl note in my wallet-he’s very happy. Not only I paid with Polish ZL-he gave me $20 back. What a deal! We pedal in this heat going up and down. Again, we are an attraction for the locals. Again, they want pictures with us. It is a fantastic place-we wonder why there were no ‘white’ tourists there? We only saw 3 white people. No wonder they wanted photosJ

I am absolutely amazed and impressed with the artistry and crafts of Indonesian people. What a fabulous attention to details, what precision! We return the cart and go back to the most interesting places on foot. I highly recommend it.

 

We return to the hotel without further adventures with the driver-he waited patiently and took us quickly to the hotel. I pay him extra for that…Taman Mini was well worth seeing. Tomorrow, we’re going to Bali. We all cannot wait…