More fun in Indonesia with Grandpa and Grandma!

The fun in Indo continues!

Yesterday we went to Taman Mini Indonesia Indah (translates as Mini Garden, Beautiful Indonesia...or something like that). This was a large park area that had life-size examples of homes from tons of cultures and Islands in Indonesia. Inside many of the houses or buildings were additional artifacts, costumes and such. We drove around the park and looked at many of these houses and learned some cool things about Indonesia's history. For example, there are more than 17,000 islands in Indonesia, with 300 different ethnic groups and 500 different languages. Wow. So, as you can imagine there were many things to see at Taman Mini. We had to pick and choose what we saw. Some of our favorite things from the day were:

-Sulawesi's houses and history
-Papua's history (We talked to a man who grew up there, and spoke dutch because of the colonialism. G&G enjoyed that.)
-Petting the Komodo Dragon and holding a python
-Taking a gondola or tram ride over the park
-Walking through the beautiful National Museum







Today was also a day full of fun.

The day started off with lots of rain, so we decided to go to a national museum near Monas, the national monument to wait out the rain. The museum was pretty good, but not as good as the one we saw yesterday. After that we went over to Monas, which is basically a tower with a flame on the top. The flame is plated in 50 Kg of gold. We also went to the gold room, where there are other things plated in gold. We were going to go to the top of the tower, but it would have been a 3 hour wait. So, instead we went up the stairs to the second floor, then to the basement for a quick look at some historical dioramas.

After this we took a taxi to Batavia, which is the old city were there are some remaining dutch buildings. Overall, the area is very run-down and dirty, with many buildings falling apart, but there were some interesting historical things as well. We had lunch at a nice cafe, went in a museum, walked along a canal and over a bridge, and then went to a ship museum in the harbour area. We ended up walking through some dirty little streets and past a fish market, which was interesting. Nothing like getting right down with the locals. On the topic of locals, we were celebrities for the day. I lost count of how many pictures we had taken with kids. Yay for being white!

We finished off our evening with dinner at a little restaurant down the road, which was actually quite good. I have always wanted to try it, and now I can say I have. Grandpa and Grandma are leaving for Bali tomorrow, but they have had a great time with me in Jakarta.