Highlights from Jakarta

One of the major highlights of my time in Jakarta is a culinary excursion to Bandung that I am taken on by my friend and former cabin mate Roi, who I met at the Yogapoint Ashram in Nasik, where we spent a month together two years ago, and by his friend/ex-girlfriend Melia. Roi wants to be a Buddhist monk. He also feels an obligation to care and provide for his aging parents. Roi is such a sweet man. I can’t guess what will happen for him next.
And that my friends is the long and the short of my Jakarta experience, five days trying to get somewhere I end up not wanting to be, in a fantastically crowded metropolis, with block after block of massive skyscraper apartment buildings looking for all the world like Coop City in the East Bronx, another place it is hard to get anywhere from and that no one really wants to be.