Going Solo
So here I am in Solo, this little internet place at the hotel. It’s a nice hotel, the staff are polite, as they should be. The journey was rather pleasant this time around - left the house at five, went to Blok M by taxi, got on the airport bus and arrived at the airport just over an hour later. Once again, the benefits of leaving Cinere before the sun comes up. This is in stark bloody contrast to the last time I went to the airport, in which I had an 11 o’clock flight and left the house at 6:45 to make sure I had plenty of time to check in. The plan was to go by taxi to Lebak Bulus - closer to home than Blok M - for the airport bus, to save on travel costs.
But as it turned out, an hour later I still hadn’t reached Lebak Bulus and would probably not have made my flight if I had insisted on doing so. At least that’s what the cab driver told me. He then offered to take me through an alternate route, in which he guaranteed I’d be there by ten. Out of options, I agreed. He then took me on a tour of the arse end of Jakarta’s outskirts, heading for Cirendeu, turning right and emerging at Rempoa, going all the way to Bintaro Sektor 9, through Ciledug, and somehow getting to that awful, awful road with all the factories and trucks behind Daan Mogot that eventually leads to the airport. A route that, if I can help it, I will not ever be travelling through again, and spending more than I care to mention just on cab fare.
I finally arrived at 10:45, after three hours on the road. My flight to Solo left at 8:15 and arrived an hour later, so if you subtract the time between getting to Cengkareng and landing in Solo, it was actually quicker. So apparently the difference between sanity and insanity is just under two hours.
