We arrived at the Ritz and it definitely lived up to its reputation. This place was beautiful. Here's the lobby:
Our room was enormous, and yes, the bathroom was even nicer than the last! While it was all one room, this one had a huge glass-encased shower, a big tub by the window that overlooked the city, and a huge vanity with his and her sinks. Definitely my dream bathroom! Here is our view:
Bright and early Monday morning we woke up to have a quick breakfast before Ryan headed off to work. Yes I was a good wife and woke up at 6:30 every morning to have breakfast with Ryan. Breakfast was another amazing buffet, with almost everything imaginable on it. They don’t know how to cook eggs though; I got a really runny omelet the first day and then opted for scrambled eggs which I made them cook thoroughly each time after that.
After breakfast Ryan headed off to work and I enjoyed myself in the lap of luxury. The pool there was huge, and if there weren’t too many kids in it (which generally there wasn’t) you could do some nice laps. Ryan is very proud of this picture:
It is actually taken around 10 pm and it is pitch black, so it really is impressive camera work!
The gym was right next door to the pool and it puts our gym at the apartment to shame. It contained all state of the art equipment, complete with individual screens on each console! They had a decent sized weight room, and a separate room for aerobics and spinning classes. We were going to try a spinning class, but missed both times they were available. Oh well, we still enjoyed the facilities.
I went for a sports massage on the Wednesday. All the traveling was catching up to me and I wanted to make sure I would be ok for Phuket. So I booked myself in at the spa and got my butt kicked by a woman half my size! I felt really good after, but man that woman was strong! I suppose it’s my own fault, I told her I wanted a strong massage. After the massage I wandered into the locker room and found the sauna, steam room and Jacuzzi tubs. I probably could have stayed in there all afternoon, but lunch was calling me, so I had a sauna, a nice long shower and then ordered room service back in our room.
I was also very excited to discover our 40 inch flat screen in the room, and it had satellite! It’s funny how you don’t notice you miss TV until you have one again. Now we do have a TV in Bangkok, but we only get a few channels in English and they play a lot of old movies and reruns so we don’t watch much. So it was nice to catch up on some old shows. I was excited to see my soap opera, GH, but then quickly disappointed to realize I hadn’t really missed anything! (ha ha, they were running tape from about a year ago – I was pretty confused at the start though, I couldn’t figure out why a number of people I thought were dead had been written back into the storyline somehow!)
Oh yes, we did partake in the hotel's laundry service as well. After all the running around we did in Malaysia we needed some clean clothes for Phuket. Little did we know that it cost us more to clean our socks then they actually cost! Oops, I suppose we should have washed those ourselves! Oh well, we were on holidays ;)
We did venture out on the streets of Jakarta once or twice. We joined some colleagues for dinner and then stopped at a mall nearby the hotel to pick up some snack food and fruit so that we weren’t tempted by the mini-bar. It was very odd walking around though. Everyone stared at you, and it didn’t feel like a friendly, welcoming stare either. We were expecting lots of stares when we first moved here, but it never really happened. Perhaps they just don’t get a lot of leggy white girls in Jakarta, but it made me pretty uncomfortable. I think Ryan was happy when I told him I didn’t think I would be comfortable wandering over to the mall myself while he was at work.
For our last night in Jakarta we joined John Demers at The Meridian Hotel for the monthly meet and greet of expat Canadians in Jakarta. We were charged a fee at the door and then got to eat and drink as much as we wanted for the rest of the night. Again I was tempted by the lure of the red wine, and I enjoyed my fill – I had to get my money’s worth! It was neat to speak to the different people and learn what they were all doing here. The consensus was all pretty much the same: nobody liked Jakarta very much. I ended up winning one of the door prizes: a half-day spa package at the Meridian. However, since we were leaving the next day, I gave my prize to John so his wife could enjoy it.
While I would definitely want to travel back to Indonesia, I think next time Ryan has to work in Jakarta for a week I will skip off to Bali and let him enjoy Jakarta by himself!
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