Just a Sunday in Jakarta

Jennifer Kelly
Jul 16, 2017
2 min read

Woke up early afraid I wouldn't hear the alarm again. After a short struggle to catch more zzzz's, I got up and headed to the hotel's gym to walk. Apparently I wasn't the only one having trouble staying asleep because within a few minutes, several of the cohort showed up! After 5.5 miles, I decided I'd had enough and headed upstairs to clean up for breakfast. The food here at Le Meridian has been FANTASTIC! I am sticking to my rule of one new food a meal. Sometimes I splurge and get 2 or 3 new things!

After breakfast, we headed off to an orientation of Indonesian history. IREX makes sure we are well prepared.

After lunch we visited the Batik Textile Museum and tried our hand at making our own Batik print. It really is harder than one might think.

It takes a special skill to get the wax that will keep the dye from adhering to the fabric in just the right places without getting it everywhere! Let's just say that I'm not quitting my day job anytime soon to move to Jakarta and make Batik! I'm terrible at it, but it was fun and makes me marvel at the designs even more! Here is mine! (Ignore my pained expression above. Apparently it takes great concentration to use a selfie stick....who knew?!?)

After the museum, we headed over to the Grand Indonesia Mall. I've never seen a building so LARGE before!!! It has 6,900,000 Sq ft of retail shopping bliss. I'm not normally a "mall person" but it was an experience to be sure! When we arrived, there was a big crowd. Turns out Indonesians president, Presiden Jojo Widodo, was in the building. A couple of the cohort got in with the crowd and ended up in a photo op with the Presiden!