I was able to convince two of the guys from Milan office to come and visit Jakarta this month. I've been saying how safe Jakarta is and how fun it would be to spend holidays in Bali and Lombok, and all that scary stories are just media trying to blow anything out of proportion to sell papers and rating. What do you know, the first day they were here, a bomb explode. Sigh, these people, I�m all out of words for whoever commit this atrocious act. I was going to hide this unfortunate event from them but alas, they got BBC and CNN in the hotel, tsk tsk tsk. Anyway, my friends, Andrea and Marco luckily are made of tougher material. They didn't turn tail and book the first flight back to Italy; instead we're sightseeing around Jakarta like nothing happened.
That day and night after the ill-fated bombing, we tour Jakarta. It was mildly amusing seeing objects that are always there but viewing it with Andrea and Marco's eyes and perspective. It turned out they quite liked Plaza Senayan, Plaza EX, and even Carrefour Ratu Plaza where they could see all these exotic fruits and foods like durian, papaya, and sirsak. They also had a field day (albeit somewhat embarrassing to me) in the pirated area of Ratu Plaza, buying a dozen of games and a bunch of dvds. The problem in major cities in Italy is that there�s no such thing as mall and shopping center like we had in abundance here in Jakarta. So it's probably refreshing to them seeing a set of attractive girls drinking espresso with all their negligee in Toraja cafe. Or snickering to see aplenty of Italian brands parading their so overpriced items. The night we filled with some balinese cuisine in Ulam Balinese Restaurant in Kemang district. Although the food was rather too hot and spicy for their liking, they said they like it. Hm, maybe they just didn't want to disappoint me, I�ll have to look into that later. Surely I hope not. As always the case with Italian, these guys linger around dinner and we spent more than 3 hours in Ulam, just enjoying meal after meal, and that bali wine which tasted like vinegar to them much to my dismay.
Despite those small hickups we passed dinner beautifully, and later we asked directions to the cab driver (i admit i do not know many nightlife spots in Jakarta) and he brought us to the Faletehan Street where legend has it, full of 'ayam' - 'chicks' my friends were looking for. It was really disappointing, whether it's because of the day incident or whatever reasons the places is empty. Only a small band of overly happy but ugly looking tramps (forgive my French) standing in front of the many club. So we decided to take off and went to Hard Rock Cafe instead.
It was quite decent in HRC, I just found out that they moved the place to Plaza EX and we went there with little expectations knowing full well that after what happened today there should be little excitements among the crowds. But to my delight, the music and the place was very enjoyable through the night. Andrea and Marco was a bit surprised of how good the quality of the band and how much influence American brands have on us Indonesian.
Granted they ended up empty handed (they were looking for one romantic if not luscious encounter with Indonesian girls � we�ll venture about this subject in near future) but the whole night after the bombing finished up quite nice and satisfactory.
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