JOKE Jakarta

So ask me an hour ago, and I may have told you a different story about my trip. No, actually, it would have been the same story, just with a REALLY annoyed look on my face and attitude in my tone :)

We are in Jakarta... believe it or not, we have been in Jakarta since about 6:15 last night. Yeah, Jakarta was not on our itinerary for "Places to Hang Out." Here's how it has gone done.
Yesterday, we left our wonderful beach resort (will give details of that stay in a minute) in the AM, headed back to Lena's via small boat and then OVERLOADED ferry boat that we basically caught up with mid-ocean. Such cultural experiences! We did have time to go to the mall and snag me another cute purse, then we were off to the Airport. We got off almost on time and landed in Jakarta... that's where it all went wrong.

You see, we are trying to get to Salatiga via Semarang. Look it up online and you'll see that Semarang has been flooding due to much rain. Apparently the water pools on the runway (don't get me started). So, we are told we are going to get PUT UP IN A HOTEL!!! Does this ring a bell?! i.e. Tokyo??? So, after almost 2 hours of waiting for a "bus" from the hotel to get us, we are on our way. But not until we got cleared up that Lena would NOT be staying in a bed with a stranger :) LOL. Wow, glad we stumbled onto that detail! The hotel was not bad for this area. However, our wake up call was at 4am so we could be on our way at 4:30. We get to the airport airport and guess what, our flight at 5:30 is not leaving. After a wait, we actually get on a plane at 6ish. We sit for an hour on the plane, we get back off the plane. Apparently Semarang airport was thought to be open. Not so. We wait for about and hour and a half in the waiting area again. We get back on the airplane. We fly to Semarang...
Oops... still closed, can't land... we turn around and fly back to Jakarta. 2 hours ish in air, 1 hour sitting on the plane, and we are walking back into Jakarta aiport. After much to do and Lena helping a new friend we made from Holland trying to get to Semarang at the ticket counterS (yes, plural, mind you this is all manual tickets etc.) we have our luggage back and we are bewildered. So we are now waiting for a flight at 6pm tonight to Solo which is apparently same distance from Salatiga. So what do you do when the world around you is falling apart?? You get a massage!!

In the international terminal here is a "rich person's" spa. We just all got hour long massages. Lena and I stuck with the Swedish soothing massage, Mark was more adventurous with the Javanese deep tissue massage. SIGH The world is a happy place again (except we are still in Jakarta, shoot!) We have now slept in 5 different places in l0 days...and about to be at our 6th (God willing and the Ocean doesn't rise).

All that aside, we just had 2 1/2 glorious days and 3 nights at, basically, a beach resort. Mark and I were forced to lounge in hammocks and lounge chairs on the beach all day. We got to get to know many of Lena's friends and partake in delicous food including a fish boil and pizza's out of an earthen oven on the beach. Rough life. Okay... I know this is crazy long now, so i'll save more details for later. Pics will wait as the connection here is slow. If you read this in time on your end, pray we got on a plane to somewhere other than Jakarta and actually get there :)

Cheers!