Here comes the photos I took when I went to the Jakarta Java Jazz Festival with Linda 2 weeks ago. We took the evening flight on 7 March and came back on 9 March night. It’s my first time to Jakarta and it was a nice experience.
The 3-day Jakarta International Jazz Festival is a major Indonesian jazz festival and it’s usually held at the Jakarta Convention Centre. The Jakarta Covention Centre is connected with the 5-Star Sultan Hotel(their official hotel where most of the artistes will stay) by a travelator-equipped tunnel. If you are interested to know more about this festival, you can click here to read more about it.
Linda used to work for the boss who is doing all the organising for this festival, which explains why we got Special VIP passes. Haha! We can even go to the backstage to see the artistes. I shall stop here and let the photos do the talking.
Our journey to Jakarta and we were served some light snacks during the flight on Lufthansa.
We reached Jakarta after an hour’s flight. Linda’s ex-boss’s driver came to the airport to fetch us to his apartment where we will be staying. Linda was on the phone with her ex-boss informing him we have arrived.
Taman Anggrek is like our Great World City which comprised of service apartments on top of the shopping mall but they have alot of different towers. Look at the carpark they have. It’s all in tiles de.
After putting our luggage at the apartment, off we went to the festival. And this is the long travelator we have to take from the Sultan Hotel to Jakarta Convention Centre (JCC).
Welcome to Jakarta International Jazz Festival! Did you see the name, DJI SAM SOE? If I remember correctly, Linda told me they are one of the big sponsors for the jazz festival. The name sounds like some clubs right? But guess what? It’s a cigarettes brand lor. Hehe…
Went to their secretarial office to get our passes. Most of the youngsters who helped out in the festival like them are volunteers. To them, it’s an honour to be part of this jazz festival.
Photos taken with Linda’s warm and friendly ex-colleagues
But of course our main purpose to Jakarta is to see the artistes perform for the festival. Both Linda and I, together with her ex-boss, went to different halls to see different artistes performing. One of the best performances I like was from Earth Wind & Fire Experience feat. Al McKay All Stars. Linda and I stood for an hour plus for the whole performance. Awesome! Took a video of them when they were singing the song “September” but lazy to upload :p
After most of the performances ended, we went to one of their popular clubs called X2. Nice music with booze and great company 
By the time both of us hit the pillows, it’s already 6am. After a few hours of sleep, we went to have our brunch at this Chinese restaurant at Taman Anggrek called Huang Ting.
See our exhausted faces.
Look at what we ordered. It’s cheap so we just order and order though we jolly well know we can’t finish. So in the end, we tabao back -_-”’ But the food was nice though.
After eating, we got the driver to bring us to their so-called IT Mall.
Linda browsing through the DVDs for korean movies. 1 DVD is only RP7000 which is about SGD1. Dirt cheap and the quality was really good. They will test the DVDs for you before you pay for your purchase. Good customer service.
Next we went to another big shopping mall with all the big brands. Bought the familiar Quickly bubble tea to quench our thirst. Oh ya, BreadTalk is very popular in Jakarta. Linda asked me to geh geh take a photo of her but actually wanna take the long queue we saw. Haha…
Enough of window-shopping, we went back to JCC for more photo-taking and see other performances for the day. It’s crowded everyday and you can see how much those people love music.
Does this look familiar? Yes, this was what we tabao back from our brunch. We found some nice DVDs at the apartment and decided to relax for the night with some food and liquor. Keke… Shiok!
Woke up pretty early on the next day because Linda had gotten her Jakarta ex-colleagues to book massage for us. On the way, I decided to take some photos of the roads and their so-called ERP system. Certain roads are separated into 2 lanes, 1 lane you can use for free but it’s always jam. Another lane you got to pay tariff toll but traffic is much better. Too bad S’pore is too small. If not at least can give the drivers a choice to pay to use the roads. Unlike our ERP system. Bleah~
Massage time! Both of us chose aromatherapy massage. Shiok!
Took some photos before our massage. Nice place indeed!
Both of us fell asleep during the massages lor. After the massage, they served us some ginger tea and biscuits. Super relaxed.
Feeling hungry after the massage, we went to the nearby shopping mall to find food. Haven’t been to their food court so we went to see see look look. Not bad leh. It’s like mini restaurants.
We bought some indonesian food to try. It tasted just like our malay food in S’pore but more oily.
Since we still have time, Linda suggested we go and try their cream bath. It’s some kind of hair treatment plus head and shoulder massage. Not really good because the guy who did the massage for me seem to be using 100% of his strength, pressing his fingers on my head instead of massaging my scalp. Pain!
In Jakarta, only the rich people will always go to the hair salons to wash and blow their hair. Do you know that they actually charge a fee for blow-drying? Most of the time, the poor people will leave the salon with their hair towel-dry after washing. The poor and the rich are an extreme contrast. To cut the story short, I ask the guy to go ahead to blow dry my hair. In my mind I knew they sure blow my hair until pong pong one. After they are done, I asked Linda to see my hair. She said I looked like “Ibu” (rich tai tai in Indonesia) LOLZ!
It’s time to leave for the airport so I took some pictures of the apartment. Nice and cosy.
On the flight back to S’pore, Linda and I started to discuss on plans to go some other places for holidays. It’s really fun travelling with her
