Jakarta—Half Water, Half Fire

Feeling a bit lazy at the last minute, I canceled all the volcano trips on Java Island, leaving only 3 days for Jakarta. Because I wanted to quickly get to know this city first, the first day’s itinerary started at the Indonesian National Museum. The museum displays stone carvings, gold artifacts, ceramics, textiles... tens of thousands of exhibits. Lately, I’ve been fascinated by human origins, so I was most interested in the exhibits and information about the "Java Man (Homo erectus erectus)." As a key link in human evolution, those million-year-old skull fossils can instantly stretch your mind’s sense of time. Exiting from the museum’s west gate, you arrive at Independence Square. As I strolled with the crowd around the square, I got a little lost in a local market filled with the aroma of various satays. On a whim, I bought a ticket to enter the National Monument (Monas), which stands 132 meters tall in the center of the square. I visited the history museum at the base of the tower, which has many small but profound models recreating historical scenes—very worth seeing. I had originally planned to walk to visit the Istiqlal Mosque (the largest mosque in Southeast Asia) on the northeast side of the square and the Jakarta Cathedral right across from it, but a sudden thunderstorm arrived unexpectedly, so I’ll save that for tomorrow (next post).