Day 2: Java Jazz Festival 2011

Saturday, 5th March 2011

By the time we decided to leave the Jazz Festival on Friday night, it was way past 1 am. The traffic jam leaving the site was typical Jakarta. We took a taxi, and the driver would not take anything less than 100,00o rupiah. A normal metred taxi which we took on Sunday evening just cost 20,000 rupiah. We were not going to fuss about it at that hour. We were most keen to go back, have supper and hit the sack.

Hotel Batavia, despite of what it is, still had its restaurant open and we ordered for ourselves supper ranging from nasi goreng and fried kue teow.

We had a late breakfast and took a taxi down to Jakarta Pusat and visited the Sarinah Department Store. The last time pakdokter was here, it was somewhat dark and depressing - but what a change it is now! The floors exhibiting batiks are now brightly lit and the selections of batik are great. Pakdokter could not resist the few great designs on themodern short-sleeved batik shirts.

We went back to our hotel for a short nap before going over to the Jazz Festival at around 5 pm. The crowd was definitely much bigger on Saturday. Santana wouldbe performing the second show and George Benson would perform his first concert. At the same time, the remaining 14 or 15 venues had their own shows which made us spoilt for choice.

We spent some time before going into the concerts visiting the trade booths.

some mimes, too... fancy the batik guitar?.... or these violins....

wwe missed the George Duke Big Band which played

on the first night while we watched the Acoustic Alchemy...

Siti's sister, who came down from Germany with her husband,

met up with us at the concert grounds....