Jakarta, I don't think I miss you

Jakarta is the city that you either love or hate. I moved out of Jakarta a year ago. The city made me ill, metaphorically and literally. But I have been spending some time back. A friend offered me a place to stay. It's in one of the executive apartment complexes in the city. Super fancy, super modern, superficial.

The first and most annoying part of staying in this place is that I can't actually walk to the apartment building from the main entrance. The main street that leads to the building apparently can only be taken when you are in a vehicle, i.e. a car. You can't even take an ojek (motorbike taxi) into the complex. So, if you're not in a car, you have to find a footpath that goes under the bridge/street and find your way to the building. I haven't found the footpath. I got away walking with walking on the forbidden street. Although, when I reached the end of the street, a security guy stopped me and asked whether there wasn't any security guard on the entrance. I said no. That was a lie.

This reminds me of how back in the days, rich people made 'special' entrance and paths for their servants. It was supposedly to prevent the master(s) from seeing the servants walking about doing their jobs. The rich didn't want to know about what happened in the servants' quarter. They didn't want to be associated with the low(er) class's activities. I thought it was all in the past and that modern people in modern city like Jakarta wouldn't do such thing.

There are high walls around the complex. There are poor people behind the walls. A slum area sits next to the executive apartments, separated by high walls. Reminds me a bit of Gaza. How walls can divide people.

Well, the truth is there's a real segregation in this city. The rich is pampered, while the lees fortunate is cast away. They are hidden behind high concrete walls, under a bridge, in dark corners and alleys where one might get stabbed or raped and no one would have come to help. And I guess the worse part is how so many people just choose to be oblivious because it suits them.

Latest trip: Penang, KL, Melaka November 2012

A few of my Indonesian friends frowned when I told them I was planning to go to Malaysia for a trip. It's just the whole "Indonesia vs Malaysia" thing that has been going on since godknowswhen. Yeah, but then again screw people.

Anyways, the last trip to Malaysia was designed so I could see a few different cities other than KL. I already spent 10 days in KL early this year, and I really didn't want to spend more than a day or two during this trip. So, I arranged a trip to Penang with a friend. I arrived in LCCT around 3pm. Rushing through immigration, I went through without any problem. The immigration officer didn't even bother to ask any questions. Awesome. Took the bus to KL Sentral, the normal RM8-AeroBus. I met with my friend at KL Sentral and we went straight to the bus terminal going to Penang, which was in Pudu. We managed to get tickets (RM35) to Penang at 5.30pm, but it didn't leave until 6pm. We arrived on the island at 11pm and got a cab to the hotel.

Batu Feringgi. credit: me

Masjid Kapitan Keling, Georgetown. credit: me

Penang was very quiet to my surprise. I thought it was going to be a busy little tourist town. But I guess, in the area we stayed in Georgetown, the UNESCO-heritage site, everything was just a bit quiet. Sight-seeing is probably the best thing you can do (or the only thing you can do when you're in Georgetown). There's bike tour and other tours. I chose the walking-by-meself-tour. Relying on the very reliable free tourist map, we went around Georgetown without any problems. We also went to the beach, Batu Feringgi. If you're not interested in doing any water activities, don't forget to bring books or any other form of entertainment. It's nice to just sit around and relax. Going about on the island is pretty easy, as long as you know your buses. The free tourist map that we had also gave information about bus routes and numbers. I suggest you go to an Indian place (locally known as "mamak") called Kapitan, close to the Little India area. It opens 24 hours, the food is amazing, and they have super cool free maps for tourists.

After Penang, we headed back to KL for Urbanscapes. It's a music festival, quite big in KL, and this year they managed to get Sigur Ros to perform. I was going to the Sigur Ros Singapore gig, but decided to cancel it and made my way to Malaysia instead. Sigur Ros was amazing. It's a bit hard to explain. It actually felt like one of those concerts that you have been waiting for so long when it happens, it ends so fast. Something like that. A friend, who saw them in Singapore, told me that she kept on replaying the whole gig in her head days after she went back home. I honestly can't do that. It all seemed very vague and blurry. But, I guess that's how Sigur Ros made me feel in general. So that's okay.  

St. Paul, I pressume? credit: me

I thought I was extremely tired and my legs were going to fall off after Urbanscapes and Penang, and maybe I didn't want to go anywhere. But, despite my unreliable legs, I decided to go to Melaka with another friend. A 2-hour bus ride took us to Melaka Sentral. I'm not really sure what the place was exactly. I think it was some kind of hub that connects people to different directions. Maybe. Anyway, from Melaka Sentral, we took another bus going to the city. And the city was another UNESCO-heritage site/town. What to do in a UNESCO-heritage site? Walk around, eat, take pictures (that's St. Paul's church on the right and a view from a hill in Melaka on the bottom), see people taking pictures of themselves, sit around, and eat cendol durian if you're into durian. Oh, when we arrived there (November 26), there were TONS of tourists and they were incredibly noisy. Exactly the opposite of Georgetown when I was there. Maybe it was the peak week or something.

not in the real colours, I'm afraid. Melaka from a hill. credit: me

I guess the reason why I'm writing this entry is because I wanted to attach different pictures :P if anyone reads (doubtfully) this and needs to ask details about the trip, like prices, hotel to stay, whatever, just leave a comment or two. 
Right, kthxbai.

Bye bye Multipy Forever

So, I let my account got killed and deleted from the face of internet. For good, I hope. I don't want to find any trace of it one day in the future because the people who are responsible for deleting it didn't do a proper job. Not that I hate my things on multiply. I just have decided to let them go. And forgotten.

I wish everything else would be that simple.