After next to no sleep last night, we have a brainstorm to work out a plan going forward

We get ready, pack up and check out a day earlier than we’ve booked – the hotel does give us a minor refund, which is nice and will go towards tonight’s stay

In a Grab, we’re taken to Plaza Indonesia Mall in hunt for a place Dave found online

Sadly, it’s under renovations so we settle for Starbucks with a couple of giant cappuccinos, a brownie and a cinnamon swirl

We then get another taxi to a nearby Maccies – don’t judge us, you’d have something comforting in times of limited sleep too ???? – and have some lunch

Fueled, we get a taxi to our new hotel, the ibis Styles Jakarta Tanah Abang, which is a great improvement – we have clean water and everything!

We have half an hour to embrace our new surroundings before venturing out to truly explore the megacity

To start, we walk about 15 minutes to the Merdeka Square, passing Baitul Ihsan Mosque and the Bank Indonesia on the way

Arriving at the SW entrance, being English, we find a queue and get in it; it seems we’ve just missed the opening hours of the park and they’re only letting a few people at a time to have a photo of the National Monument on the cusp of the entrance

This monument commemorates Indonesian independence from the Netherlands; we decide to walk around the West side to the North to get more views it

The North of the square has the Merdeka Presidential Palace Merdeka as well as several government offices

It’s a wiggly-windy road to our next landmark, which also turns out to be closed for the day: the Istiqlal Mosque – still pretty through the gates though

On the other side of the road is the West Irian Liberation Monument – this is another independence monument and has many quotes engraved into the wall about their desire to re-establish friendship between them and the Netherlands

It’s also nice that there are loads of locals here using the park for sport activities

A bit down the road is the Jakarta Cathedral – we don’t go in but admire it from the outside

Onto the next tourist stop – we hitch a tuk tuk to Jakarta Old Town which is North of here

The ride is bumpy and it’s fair to say our driver makes a few close calls ???? but we do make it in one piece

We get out and roam the small tatt-lined streets until we reach the Taman Fatahillah

This is full of locals sitting all on the floor and riding pretty bikes; this is where the Jakarta History Museum is too

We watch the live music before having a nose down some side streets where there’s many a food and drink stall to find Te’o fresh orange juices for us, making sure not to get hit by the traffic that’s awful close by!

We wander round to find the Jembatan Krukut Kali Besar Jakarta bridge to get a viewpoint of the quieter area and the pretty sky (see the featured image of the post)

This allows us to make our way to Chinatown, down some back streets; we arrive and find Petak Enam, a sort of Chinese food court where the locals seem to love getting their groove on

None of the vendors can take our international cards, sadly, so we go across the road to Pancoran ChinaTown Point which hosts a Chinese restaurant we choose, Thien Thien Lai Chinese Restaurant

Here, we get straight to business: half a Peking Duck and two Bali Hai beers

We get to see them dismantling the duck for us and then we’re presented the feast

With that polished off, we pay up and go back to the market briefly before getting a Gojek South

We pop into another Maccie’s for a cheeky snack to fill us

Very sleepy now, we get a Gojek back to our new hotel and chill