Jakarta 2023

I've been linking up this team in Vietnam because they want to visit the Indonesia office since I visited the Hanoi office, then they decided on the dates and I thought I didn't have to go Indonesia but Kenki said it would be good for me to join them. Then I asked my boss and he said yes we have budget please go. Within 2 days everything was booked and here I was 5 days later.

I took Garuda because I want to avoid the lousy SQ food and it turned out to be the right choice. At least there were appetizers and they served metal cutlery.

The walk from the plane gate to the customs were super super long -_- I walked about 20 minutes? That's about 2.4km already. They could have installed a monorail train or something. But the customs were super quick for foreigners, no queue at all and he just paste a sticker on my passport and I'm off with the hotel car. 

Checked in, the hotel was average, while the other team was staying at Westin just beside mine. Jelly. I was looking at grab food on the way to the hotel and was craving Mee Goreng so I went to the mall beside the hotel and got it.

And also got the kueh kinda pancake thing that Brian recommended and I was super full. The pillow was too high and I didn't sleep well the first night.

The breakfast was average too, I only liked their latte and oatmeal. The driver took us to the office and we settled in, exchanged name cards and I was just day dreaming the whole day while attending the meeting. Smart casual coz I'm only the observer. The rest of the Indo colleagues were wearing batik shirts, so cool.

Lunch was this amazing fried duck rice and satay. They continued with their meeting and I continued enjoying my sparkling water. I finished 6 bottles and many snacks lol. The end of the day, they exchanged gifts, photos and I thought it was the end but the VN team pulled me for dinner and drinks. 

Mainly drinks. Beer and Chivas. And they were literally toasting only me because I'm the only Singaporean. I didn't expect them to drink so much because they had to wake up at 6.30am the next day lol but I only had a meeting at 11.30am haha. But yea the guys all got quite tipsy.

The next day after breakfast I started with a lunch meeting at this popular satay restaurant.

I really love the Jakarta team haha all the amazing food.

Then back to the office, continued casual chatting until 5pm, then the driver sent me back to the hotel to put down my bags and sent me to Grand Indonesia Mall for dinner.

After buying my lapis cake, Andrew brought me to this nice traditional Indo restaurant and it was quite cheap - dinner for 2 about $30??? Amazing. The mee goreng was too salty tho, but the satay was nice.

Nothing much to do the next day as well, breakfast, packed, checked out, airport. The airport was quick as well, no queue for foreign passports.  Flight was good and empty, food pretty decent. I was craving for rice.

It's all eating and eating in Jakarta, nothing special except it was raining the whole 3 days and I experienced their famous traffic jams. I didn't spend a lot, I brought about $177 in cash and I only used less than $100 because of all the free meals. Yea it was good meeting the team, they treated us like VIP  until I was embarrassed. I didn't stay another night because there's nothing much to do and I have a birthday party to attend to on Sunday.