I admit, I fled. I wanted to go somewhere for Golden Week but I didn't want an organized, efficient, clean vacation like I'd have traveling around Japan. I wanted something more spontaneous, more edgy, with a little more risk. I longed for the chaos of a big South Asian city, and people with big natural smiles and pearly whites. So where did I go? Jakarta!
When my foreign friends warned that Jakarta was a big, noisy polluted city, I was hooked. Tokyo would pale in comparison with the chaos of Jakarta.
When I came out of the Soekarno-Hatta airport, the first thing I noticed was the airport road lined with tall palm trees reaching up to the sky -- all plastic! And they never let up: Green and red plastic palms are all over the city, and they even light up at night. The magic of Jakarta had begun.
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