Indonesia PTR - Part 4: Bali

[Gavin]

I went to Indonesia over the Easter holiday last month. Originally, I wanted to make it bit more of a park trip than I ended up with, but after looking into it and seeing how spread out a lot of the parks are, and how they’re not really near anything else I wanted to do, I decided to make it more of a culture trip and just grab what creds I could as part of that. That basically meant that I got a few coasters around Jakarta and that was about it as there was nothing else in the areas I wanted to go to.

Jakarta Part 1

Jakarta wasn’t really on the cards at all, but the flights between there and Hong Kong are stupidly cheap – about a quarter of the price of flying directly to Bali, so I decided to do a couple of days there. There’s not a lot a lot to do or see really; it’s just a large, crowded South East Asian city.

I arrived late, going straight to my hotel and straight to bed. I was staying in the business district, which is really modern with a bunch of skyscrapers and fancy hotels, but since I didn’t really spend any time in the area, I totally neglected to take any pictures.

The next morning, I took a taxi out to some monument and had a wander around there for a bit.

It was in the middle of a huge open area with a bunch of other statues scattered around.

Inside is a museum about Indonesian history, which consisted of about 100 dioramas. You can never have enough dioramas.

Around the outside there was a bunch of tacky sculptures and a decent view over to a massive mosque.

You can go to the top of the tower for about a quid, not that there’s a great deal to see to be honest.

The road forming the perimeter around the place had a bunch of old colonial buildings, a couple of mosques and a cathedral. Nice enough, but I’ve seen better.

The biggest mosque in South East Asia has to also be the ugliest. Hideous thing.

More stuff:

It was only around 12 by this point, but it started pissing down, so I decided that the best course of action would be to grab a taxi and hop between some shopping malls to mop up some creds. I started with the one furthest away, which took about 45 minutes to get to thanks to the roads being quiet, then headed back and picked up a couple more.

The first “park” was called Time Zone and had a Vekoma called Lightcatcher. I can’t remember how much these cost to ride now, but they were cheap. A security guard asked me not to take any pictures though, so I only got a few.

I grabbed some lunch and a local sim card while I was there (total ballache), then got a taxi to the next place, which was again a huge shopping mall with a cred, which turned out to be another Vekoma of the exact same ride type as the last one. African Thunder Coaster had a different layout at least.

Done, and back into a taxi to another mall.

No idea what the life-size creepy Santas were all about.

This place had a custom Tivoli, Ghoster Coaster.

Although I hadn’t done much, it was coming up to around 4pm by this point thanks to the rain making the s**ty traffic even s**ttier, so instead of trying to squeeze in another mall, I decided to head back to the hotel, which was fairly close since I’d been working my way back into the city.

Jakarta traffic is f**king appalling though, so the ride which Google said could’ve been 25 minutes without traffic turned into about two and a half hours. If it wasn’t pissing down, and if I’d had any clue that the bumper-to-bumper traffic was going to last for the entire journey, I’d have just walked.

I were F**KIN’ FEWMIN’! Luckily, I had wine which I’d picked up in the food court at the last mall, so I just drank that.

Next time: Proper (ish) park.

 

[ignace]

Re: Indonesia PTR - Part 1: Mall Creds

It's always nice to read about your adventures. Thanks for taking the effort!

 

[Gavin]

Re: Indonesia PTR - Part 2: Dunia Fantasi

^You're welcome. Since you were so polite about it, I'm going to subject you to some more!

The next morning I got a taxi out to the only “proper” park in the area, which is just one part of a much bigger leisure complex. I was only really interested in the park though and didn’t have a great deal of time since I was leaving Jakarta the next day.

Dunia Fantasi

The place is otherwise known as Dufan, which is also the name of the park’s mascot. Clever, eh?

It was a Saturday, and some kind of holiday. Coupled with some pretty crappy operations and staggered ride openings this made for a less than ideal situation.

It was actually a pretty big park with some nice areas, though nothing standout as far as rides went, though I had to miss a couple of things that could have been interesting due to the long queues.

This Ice Age thing was new. I’m assuming it’s just a 4D thing, but the building that housed it was pretty big. However, it wasn’t due to open until half past one, and when I went back past it again at around 2, the queue was all the way around the building and it still hadn’t opened, so I didn’t bother with it.

The one thing that made me think it might not just be a 4D show, as well as the building size, was the fact that they already had that crappy Happy Feet 4D show here, inexplicably housed in an Egyptian-style building.

The rapids was closed all day, but I don’t think it could’ve been too great considering the possible space it could have taken up wasn’t that big.

I got lucky with the first coaster, Halintar, in that I was walking past just as they started testing and opened the queue line, meaning that I got in first and nabbed a front seat ride. They were only operating one train, and the queue got pretty big later on.

I’d assumed it was a Chinese knockoff at first, but it’s actually an original Arrow Loopscrew. There are only 5 of these still left now.

The Power Surge was closed, not that I’d have bothered, and I skipped the S&S towers because the queue was just too big. They were both running on shot mode anyway. I’ll do these if there’s little to no queue, but I won’t wait for them anymore. There was some kind of stage/stunt show next to the towers, but not until much later and I didn’t feel like hanging around for it.

The second coaster, Alap Alap, was just a basic Tivoli.

The best thing here, for all the wrong reasons, was the park’s Small World ripoff, with a soundtrack that was almost as annoying as the original.

For ages I was trying to put my finger on what made the dolls so creepy and then I finally worked it out. They’d just shoved regular, cheap, adult-sized wigs on them all.

This had no queue, so I gave it a go though I can take or leave them these days since Chinese parks are full of them. Well knockoffs anyway, assuming that this was an original model.

The Western-themed area was decent enough, if slightly generic.

The tilted house thing was just one room and seemed a bit of a waste of an otherwise decent looking building.

The log flume was ok. Again, there was a short queue which I was surprised about. I think it’s because around this time everyone had headed over to get in line for the Ice Age thing.

Out of curiosity, I’ve just done a quick search and Ice Age is actually a dark/boat ride. It looks ok actually, but there’s no way I was waiting in that line for it, which looked to be at least 2 hours. To be fair though, it looks like the best thing there.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVUM7JvLoiE[/youtube]

This “Animatronic Show” was hilariously bad and ridiculously creepy. It featured Dufan, the park’s mascot, and a bunch of other terrifying animal animatronics and went on for about 30 minutes

Given the horrendous traffic the previous day, I wanted to try and get back to the hotel a bit earlier, so ended up leaving the park just before 3 to call into another shopping mall on the way back.

Moiland

Moiland is inside the Mall of Indonesia. The name is genius. This place was a little different in that the rides were more spread out over one floor of the shopping mall, with shops and other stuff between, rather than being stuck in its own corner.

The coaster here was the smallest of the bunch I did in Jakarta.

Considering the coaster was Mexican, I was surprised they hadn’t built a taller fence.

I was only in the place for about 20 minutes then headed back to the hotel, luckily missing the worst of the traffic. I left Jakarta the next day to see a couple of other places. I didn’t go to any more parks, but I might shove some stuff in here later anyway.

 

[peep]

Re: Indonesia PTR - Part 2: Dunia Fantasi

Interesting report. That traffic sounds really frustrating, not sure I could deal with that.

Looks like all of the places have had a good go at theming which is nice. I really like the different angled circles around the lift hill of the first cred you did.

What was your overall impression of Jakarta, worth visiting or a bit bland?

 

[Gavin]

Re: Indonesia PTR - Part 2: Dunia Fantasi

^ I'm in no rush to go back. I wasn't really planning on going there at all, but the flights between there and Hong Kong are really cheap.

I had a fun night out there on the Saturday, but otherwise there's not a lot to see or do apart from craploads of shopping malls. A weekend was long enough.

 

[Jordanovichy]

Re: Indonesia PTR - Part 2: Dunia Fantasi

Fab report as ever, Gavin. I always love reading of these far off places I can only dream (at the moment) of going to! I hope you find time to report on rest of your time in Indonesia. I find the culture side of things just as interesting as the parks.

 

[Gavin]

Re: Indonesia PTR - Part 2: Dunia Fantasi

There is no more coaster/park stuff in here now, and the rest of this could probably go in the “Life Outside” section, but it was all part of the same trip, so I’m shoving it in here.

Yogyakarta

On the Sunday afternoon, I flew down from Jakarta to Yogyakarta, just crashing at the hotel since I was knackered. The next day I went for a wander around the city. There are a few old colonial buildings around – it used to be Dutch.

I had a look around the Sultan’s Palace, which took all of 15 minutes and was a f**king dump.

Then I wandered around the area and saw other stuff.

Taman Sari – the water palace – was nice.

Other stuff:

An old, Dutch army barracks is now a museum.

As with the monument thing in Jakarta, they couldn’t get enough dioramas in there. There were four, FOUR, buildings full of the f**king things. There must have been over 200 of them.

There was also this walkthrough thing. No idea.

Scooters. So many scooters.

There were a couple of fairly big shopping malls that had “Fun City” and “Time Zone” sections as in Jakarta, but they were basically just amusement arcades and had no creds.

The train station:

Some monument:

I’d actually been walking around for most of the day at this point, but headed back to the hotel in the late afternoon since I was waking up stupidly early the next day (3am) to see some other s**t. It’s a nice enough place to walk around though,

I was up at 3am the next morning because I was getting picked up at about 3:30 to go and see some other stuff, starting with a pretty nice sunrise view over Mount Merapi, Indonesia's most active volcano.

You could also see this temple, which I headed down to next:

It was definitely worth waking up for to be fair.

Down to the temple then. Borobodur was stunning. It’s the world’s biggest Buddhist temple and was built in the 9th Century. It’s spread over six levels, all of which are covered with carvings and statues.

I climbed up to the top first and then worked my way back down. Because it was still so early in the morning, there were very few people around. Apparently it gets really busy later in the day though. I’ll just throw a bunch of pictures in.

There was another, smaller temple nearby, which would have been quite impressive if it hadn’t followed the first one.

From there it was onto another huge, 9th Century temple, Prambanan, this time a Hindu temple.

I was back to the hotel by around 3pm and just chilled out there and had an early night since I’d been awake since 3 and had a flight to Bali the next day anyway.

 

[peep]

Re: Indonesia PTR - Part 3: Yogyakarta

Wow, those temples are epic. I love the sheer scale and crazy detailing that goes into these older monuments.

 

[Jordanovichy]

Re: Indonesia PTR - Part 3: Yogyakarta

I'm with Peep, those temples are **** beautiful. And that sunrise too <3

I'm so jealous of the things you get to see, I can't wait to travel to somewhere less basic than Florida.

 

[Pink Cadillac]

Re: Indonesia PTR - Part 3: Yogyakarta

The tattooed elephants <3 That Hindu temple is gorgeous. Would love to visit Indonesia one day, but for its biodiversity.

 

[Gavin]

Re: Indonesia PTR - Part 3: Yogyakarta

I’m just going to throw a bunch of pictures in here since I’ve just remembered I’ve left it unfinished and have another trip report from a few weeks ago that I should try and get up soon before they start building up. There are no parks in this part either. There was a safari park with a Golden Horse spinner about an hour away from where I was staying in Bali, but it just wasn’t worth the effort.

After Yogyakarta, I got a flight down to Bali for a few days. I’ve got a couple of friends down there, so the plan was to just chill out at the beach, drink and be lazy. I went out that first night for dinner with an old friend before ditching her and heading out to a few bars near my hotel. I woke up late the next day and spent it just lying around on the beach until the evening.

After having a day of that, I got bored, so wanted to see some more stuff. I hired a car with a driver for a couple of days at about £30 a day and just asked him to take me to a few popular tourist sites. It’s the most common way to do things there, so the drivers have got an excellent sense of what people want to see.

I can’t remember the names of any of this stuff now, and can’t be arsed to really look it up, but we started with a traditional Balinese theatre thing, which was interesting enough if a bit overly-long, before heading to a bunch of various temples.

This next place had a few footpaths leading off into the jungle, so I had a wander for a bit before realising that there was nobody else around and it was actually pretty dangerous, with some huge drops off the side of the path and f**k knows what living under the leaves and rocks I was walking over.

Onto another temple then. I didn’t bother getting in the water with the tie-dyed hippies bothering the locals and thinking they were having some kind of spiritual experience. Cockwombles.

There’s no sense of scale, but this thing was about the size of my hand.

We ended up at this volcano sometime in the mid-afternoon, so stopped at a buffet restaurant there for lunch. The food was just ok, but you can’t really complain for £7 when the view from the outdoor terrace looks like this.

Then it was onto some rice fields before heading back to the hotel.

The next day, I headed out to another temple that I’d seen pictures of and wanted to see, which was actually miles away and took about two hours to get to. On the way, the driver suggested stopping off here:

I actually preferred this place to the one we were heading to. I was the only person there and it was just really nice.
The temple further way was also lovely, really high up in the hills and surrounded by a lake, but was just soooooooo busy and extremely commercial, with loads of coach trips and supermarket-style tannoy announcements every few minutes. You can’t see any of this thanks to some rather selective photography.

It wasn’t really worth the two-drive to be honest. After that, it was back down to another temple much closer to my hotel, this time right on the beach and famous for the sunsets.

I had another day of just lazing around on the beach before heading back to Hong Kong, having to wait for 8 hours in Jakarta Airport (f**king vile airport) because I’d got return flights to and from there and anything direct from Bali to Hong Kong was just ridiculously more expensive. The return flights between Hong Kong and Jakarta were about £100, with a flight from Bali to Jakarta for about £20. A single back from Bali to Hong Kong would’ve been around £400, so yeah that wasn’t happening.

It was a good trip all-in-all, though obviously more for the country itself than for any parks. There are a bunch of parks scattered around, which I’d like to try and get to at some point now that I’ve done the cultural stuff there. These include a few wooden mouse coasters and some other random, though small, things like a Togo looping mouse and a miniature version of the Mr Freeze coasters.

My next trip report will be very park/coaster heavy as the trip was allaboutthemcredz.