I am in Jakarta now for a few days and experienced heavy rains here for the first time. Of course it rained often in Medan where I have been living, but the drainage system seems to work well there. Not so in Jakarta. I was using the free wifi in a hotel restaurant and when I thought the rain had subsided, I tried making a quick dash back to my hotel in backpacker ghetto of Jalan Jaksa.
The street looked more like a river. The footpaths along …

Telkomsel is celebrating its 14th anniversary this month and they are launching a new promotion for the Apple iPhone, cutting the price of the handset by 1 million rupiah. The 8GB model will sell for around 3 million and the 16GB for 4 million, with a 12-month contract.
I just bought an unlocked Nokia E63 here for 3 million. I would have loved to have an iPhone, but I would expect the 12-month contract you have to sign up for, would not be a cheap proposition. The iPhone …

You can’t help coming across some interesting stories in Indonesian newspapers. It’s getting closer now to the presidential elections and all presidential candidates and their running mates are required to undertake a medical examination.
For female candidates which will likely just be Megawati, they must abstain from sex ten days before their examination.
From the Jakarta Post:
The requirement for a female candidate to avoid having sex is to prevent the outcome of her medical checkup from showing “biased” results, IDI chairman Fachmi Idris said without elaborating.
I wonder how having …

While I am sure some Muslim clerics in Indonesia would like to see a total ban of the social networking site Facebook, at recent meeting of clerics or imams, they are proposing a set of guidelines and rules for muslims using the site.
Facebook has seen a surge of users in Indonesia using the website since 2008, with around 831,000 users.
From the Jakarta Post:
The clerics think it is necessary to set an edict on virtual networking, because this online relationship could lead to lust, which is forbidden in Islam,” said Nabil …

After catching our flight to Padang and a bus the next day to Bukittinggi, due to an illness in my girlfriend’s family we had to go back to Medan.
We only had about a half-day sightseeing in in Bukittinggi. All of the flights were full back to Medan so we had to take the economy bus. It was about an 18-hour trip, which was a little painful at times, but an interesting experience.
If you look at a map the distance isn’t so great, but the …