going downtown

In the 60s, Petula Clark sang about traffic, neon signs, little places that never close. In Jakarta, I would assume such place is the area famously called as KOTA. That's exactly where me and my friends, Ida, Natasha and Lian were heading to, last Saturday, 25 October 2008.

Stasiun Kota (known as Beos for some) was our initial place of meeting. I was 20 minutes late (as usual, nobody really arrives on time in this city, trust me. It's a tradition). There were Ida and Lian. We chatted a bit and then a sms sent to Ida's phone, saying Tasha would meet us at the place we had dim-sum. On our way, I saw this clay-made kitty-bank. I just had to purchase the money box, which cost me 10.000,- rupiahs. Yay!

Located in one of the oldest hotel in Jakarta, Metropole Hotel (around 15 minutes walk from Beos), there was the dim-sum restaurant. We ordered quite a lot of these tiny snacks. For 4 people (that eat a lot), we spent around 130.000 rupiahs, including tax and service charge. The chinese tea is killing. The interior of the restaurant and hotel is a bit old, but hey, we're there for the food. Personally, my favorites are the siomay and the fried shrimp lumpia (yummy!).

From Metropole, we're heading to Pasar Baru. Again, another historical area in Jakarta. We checked out some stores and basically purchased nothing. HAHAHA. Time went by so fast and it's noon again. I remembered someone once told me about this place, Sui Sen, who serves one of the best noodles in Jakarta. This is the first time, we went there and we asked a lot of people to get there and some of them gave the wrong directions. Totally bummer! Once we got there, and had the first slurp of our orange juice, we forgot all the troubles.

Sui Sen Restaurant is located at the backside of the parking building of Metro Pasar Baru (I think so). Well, if it's too difficult to find the place, just go to Gereja Ayam and it's way much easier to find it from there. The famous food is of course, the noodles with grilled pork and sweekiaw (sort of like steamed dumplings). I'm not a fan of the sweekiaw, but I have to say that the noodless is delicious.

We left Pasar Baru and headed to Historical Museum of Jakarta for the Batavia Art Festival. The festival wasn't really that festive (maybe because we arrived quite late), but the scenes of old buildings in that part of Jakarta are just fantastic and we were taking photos like pros. HAHAHA. It was fun really.

If you're wondering how far we would go to pose. I hope the photo above did explain a bit. HEHEHE. Lian, Ida and Natasha climbed onto the window for a shot. I just had to post the photo, I think it's very cute and lovely. Unfortunately, I had to leave at 3, because I had another appointment that day. It was really super-fun and rewarding.