Tuesday, May 19, 2009

about to leave

we are about to leave for Bali and I found myself with some extra time. so here is a short post before we go to meet my friend Lilly on the beach.

Mini Indonesia, or Taman Mini, is a huge park. It cost 250 Million USD to build and has houses built in the traditional style of ever Indonesia island. These are remarkably different. It also has a small water park, several stages, a fair ground, and a man made lake that contains small fake islands in the shape of indonesia. Crazy. Not so many western tourists there, but a lot of Indonesian people chilling and having picnics. Good people watching.

There are some enormous and Dubai worthy malls here. But the thing I want to note is that the Food Section in the Gran Indonesia Mall has a New York City theme. A famous diner is copied and pasted there and a false rockefeller center. Bizarre.

ok, bye,

-Arjun

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Jakarta

Well I have to thank my uncle Satish and his friend binay for hooking us up with a sweet loft in Jakarta. Its large and wonderful and I had almost forgotten how much I enjoyed having my own space. Its pretty awesome.

Jakarta, an enormous city, is pretty sweet as well. There are a surprsing number of things to do here, and I will share with you our trip to the zoo.

yes we went to the zoo. it cost 4000 Rp to go. that is .40$ It is enormous. The zoo was fascinating and I took some pictures of pythos for my friend Pete, they had some realy big ones. But of course the primate habitat was depressing. In the states there would be daily protests over the treatment of those animals, although some of the sumatran oraguatangs had impressive spaces, as did the komodo dragons. but as we wondered through this enormous place we found ourselves in front of another strange building.

For a dollar we could enter the new gorilla habitat. It is enormous, beautiful, green and filled with open spaces. It contains many other primates all in equal luxury. I dont know why the sad spaces in the older part of the zoo remain, but I hoping they will be moved. The new space, was awesome, with tunnels through some of the habitats where you could see but not be seen, and canopy walks for humans as well as mokeys. very nice.

Last thing to mention... its really hot, so if youre coming to visit be ready for humidity and heat.

next post from Bali/Lombok

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Last piece of Turkey

Well its been a while since ive posted anything, long enough that Ive actually gotten complaints so let me tell you my excuse. My parents were here... and they move fast.

They move a lot faster than me anyway, when they got here we went to greece, we came back and rented a car and the drove around north turkey, and it was awesome, but really tiring. Mixed into this was shopping with my sister, ferry rides, and eating really late at night. This didnt leave much room for blogging. plus im not that committed to it.

After that our friend Amy came to visit, and that was also excellent. But im still recovering and think my next post will be from indonesia. We leave tomorrow, so you'll hear from me soon.