Thursday, March 30, 2006

A room with a view


So this is a view from our hotel window. Not bad, eh? The tile roofs are very typical, although they seem to be giving way to corrugated metal roofs that are not nearly so romantic.

We're thinking of moving out in a couple of days to a place closer to our language class. That'll reduce traveling time during these next two weeks, while we're taking daily classes. Our hotel is beginning to wear on us, anyway. There's the breakfast, which never varies: fried rice, white bread (which must be a legacy of the Dutch - I was surprised to see so much bread everywhere), margarine, cheap jam, weak tea and even weaker coffee. The cleaning, on the other hand, is never the same from one day to the next: they might give you new towels or mop the floor or change the sheets, but they won't do all three on the same day. Today they took our towels and didn't leave any new ones. Yesterday at 10 am they said "We'll clean tomorrow. It's too late to clean today."

Anyway, maybe we'll move over the weekend, and maybe we won't. We might just hang out and enjoy the peace and quiet: it's a Hindu holiday today and tomorrow so lots of people have gone away for the weekend. There's hardly any traffic jams and the internet connection speed is much better.

The teenagers who frequent the wartel love to change the pictures on the desktops. Last week they all had pictures of fighter planes. Today it's pictures of John Lennon, which seems a little less belligerent (no offense, Jim). A little snapshot, perhaps, of the Youth of Today in Jakarta.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Next time I'm in Jakarta I'll have to pop on over to the wartel and put those fighter planes back on the desktops!

Chad said...

Mine has some transport helicopters on it today. Must be the same guy. Go Air Force!