To start off, we did research on the internet and decided that a train would be the easiest way to get to Bogor. As per our information, a train left from Gambir station quite often. That worked perfectly for us, seeing as Gambir is less than a 10 minute walk from our church and it's quite a nice station. So we brought our bag with us to church and headed over to the station after the service. Once we arrived, we tried to determine which line we had to get in to purchase the ticket for the "nicer" train to Bogor. Much to our astonishment, there wasn't actually a train from Gambir to Bogor. The man at the ticket counter informed us that instead we had to go to Juanda station. Luckily for us, Juanda was only a ten minute taxi ride. Unluckily for us, the station was less than desireable for Westerners who appeared to have money. We were harrassed by a beggar and Alex was actually physically assaulted. Fortunately, we were able to jump out of that fire....and into a frying pan, or so it seemed. We were packed on the train like sardines and the "AC" was actually just oscillating fans. We had to stand for the entirity of our journey to Bogor.
Once we got to Bogor, we discovered that "cooler" for an Indonesian, doesn't quite mean the same thing as it does for a Westerner. A normal temperature here in Jakarta is about 30 Celsius and Bogor was probably a mere 28 Celsius. So, we didn't get a break from the heat, but we did get a wonderful, relaxing bathtub:
Besides the bathtub, the hotel we stayed at was quite nice and quite close to the famous botanical gardens, or Kebun Raya. So, after having two baths on Friday evening, we spent Saturday exploring the gardens. It was nice to smell grass and fresh air. But, there was still plenty of litter....and not the best use of English.
The red thing isn't a rock... |
Who knew that plants needed to work on progress? |
Once we had our fill of the gardens, we returned home to Jakarta. The trip home wasn't much better than the trip there, so the mini-vacation turned out to be more of a stressful experience as opposed to a relaxing get-away. However, we discovered that we could have taken a train that has overflow passengers on the roof!
Even though it was nice to get out of Jakarta for a bit, we decided that next time we will leave it to the professionals. Better to pay extra than to have faulty information about non-existant trains.
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