Wide World of Sports Fanatics
We made a rare Sunday trip into Jakarta today to attend a Malaysia Airlines travel fair with the Hansons. We left Bukit Sentul at around 1:30 ish and, following a brief stop at a Mc Donald's drivethrough on the way, we made it into the city in fairly decent time. We exited one toll road for another and suddenly all traffic stopped.
It turns out today was the finals for the Indonesian league soccer tournament, and the stadium was directly on our route to the convention center.
I'm not fazed by much when it comes to sports fans. I'm a Husker girl through and through, and downtown Lincoln on game day thrills me. This was no less exciting, except because we were in Indonesia, things got a little crazier on the public transportation end.
On all sides of us there were public buses filled to bursting, hanging-out-of-windows room only, so full that even rooftop space was unavailable. Each bus had a crowd inside and out, sitting or standing on top of the bus throwing confetti, waving banners and singing. Everyone was decked out in orange, the Jakarta team's colors, and some even sported orange-dyed hair. There was singing, shouting, cheering and all kinds of revelry.
At one point, small children crawled from the roof of a shorter bus (not short bus in that sense of the word, just an un-tall bus) into the windows of a taller bus. It was insanity. Sheer pandemonium.
Supardi, our driver, was nervous driving us in all the activity. I was ever really scared or worried, though-I wouldn't have wanted to get out and wander around in the crowd but from the inside of my locked, tinted-windowed car, I felt quite happy to sit and take in the sights.
*********
We arrived at the Malaysia Airlines fair with high hopes. The fair was offering airfares to all over the world for insanely inexpensive prices. $600 US roundtrip from Jakarta to Los Angeles, $500 US from Jakarta to a variety of locations in Europe, cheap tickets to Cairo, India, China, Australia...$700 roundtrip to Cape Town, South Africa.
We originally went with the intent to see if we could find cheaper flights home for Christmas, but were soon discouraged when we learned we'd then have to book our Los Angeles or New York to Omaha tickets seperately, which would cost the same and be more of a pain in the butt in the long run than the tickets we already booked (but could still cancel, theoretically).
I don't know why, but ever since last year I have wanted nothing more than to go to Cape Town, South Africa. We looked into it for our July trip, but because the only airline our travel agent could offer us tickets through was Singapore Airlines, tickets were phenomenally expensive. We opted for Thailand instead, which ended up being pretty incredible.
Still, I want to go to South Africa. My 7th grade Humanities classes had to plan their own expeditions when we studied the Age of Exploration, and one group planned their trip around a stopover at Cape Town, where they would drop off Mrs. Erin so she could see penguins. It was a good thing the rest of their project was great, so I could justify the good grade I have them!
Anyway, the tickets the agent found us ended up being about $788 per person (less than half the price we'd been quoted back in April) and we were just about to give a down payment for our June 17-27, 2006 trip to South Africa. We asked when the tickets would be issued, and the lady said she'd bring them when she delivered our friends' tickets to India this next week.
Wait a second...
It turns out that, in order to have the ridiculous sale price, we'd have to pay for the June tickets now instead of 7-10 days before the departure date, which is when tickets are normally issued here. We'd planned on having until June to sock away a few extra hundred bucks a month, but instead the tickets would be issued Tuesday. Oops.
Technically, I suppose, we could have paid for them Tuesday, but this would have meant severely deviating from our rigid savings plan we set up for our last year here. Or it would have meant putting the tickets on a credit card, which wasn't something we were willing to do.
Darn this being a grownup and making responsible adult decisions crap! *sigh*
It turns out today was the finals for the Indonesian league soccer tournament, and the stadium was directly on our route to the convention center.
I'm not fazed by much when it comes to sports fans. I'm a Husker girl through and through, and downtown Lincoln on game day thrills me. This was no less exciting, except because we were in Indonesia, things got a little crazier on the public transportation end.
On all sides of us there were public buses filled to bursting, hanging-out-of-windows room only, so full that even rooftop space was unavailable. Each bus had a crowd inside and out, sitting or standing on top of the bus throwing confetti, waving banners and singing. Everyone was decked out in orange, the Jakarta team's colors, and some even sported orange-dyed hair. There was singing, shouting, cheering and all kinds of revelry.
At one point, small children crawled from the roof of a shorter bus (not short bus in that sense of the word, just an un-tall bus) into the windows of a taller bus. It was insanity. Sheer pandemonium.
Supardi, our driver, was nervous driving us in all the activity. I was ever really scared or worried, though-I wouldn't have wanted to get out and wander around in the crowd but from the inside of my locked, tinted-windowed car, I felt quite happy to sit and take in the sights.
*********
We arrived at the Malaysia Airlines fair with high hopes. The fair was offering airfares to all over the world for insanely inexpensive prices. $600 US roundtrip from Jakarta to Los Angeles, $500 US from Jakarta to a variety of locations in Europe, cheap tickets to Cairo, India, China, Australia...$700 roundtrip to Cape Town, South Africa.
We originally went with the intent to see if we could find cheaper flights home for Christmas, but were soon discouraged when we learned we'd then have to book our Los Angeles or New York to Omaha tickets seperately, which would cost the same and be more of a pain in the butt in the long run than the tickets we already booked (but could still cancel, theoretically).
I don't know why, but ever since last year I have wanted nothing more than to go to Cape Town, South Africa. We looked into it for our July trip, but because the only airline our travel agent could offer us tickets through was Singapore Airlines, tickets were phenomenally expensive. We opted for Thailand instead, which ended up being pretty incredible.
Still, I want to go to South Africa. My 7th grade Humanities classes had to plan their own expeditions when we studied the Age of Exploration, and one group planned their trip around a stopover at Cape Town, where they would drop off Mrs. Erin so she could see penguins. It was a good thing the rest of their project was great, so I could justify the good grade I have them!
Anyway, the tickets the agent found us ended up being about $788 per person (less than half the price we'd been quoted back in April) and we were just about to give a down payment for our June 17-27, 2006 trip to South Africa. We asked when the tickets would be issued, and the lady said she'd bring them when she delivered our friends' tickets to India this next week.
Wait a second...
It turns out that, in order to have the ridiculous sale price, we'd have to pay for the June tickets now instead of 7-10 days before the departure date, which is when tickets are normally issued here. We'd planned on having until June to sock away a few extra hundred bucks a month, but instead the tickets would be issued Tuesday. Oops.
Technically, I suppose, we could have paid for them Tuesday, but this would have meant severely deviating from our rigid savings plan we set up for our last year here. Or it would have meant putting the tickets on a credit card, which wasn't something we were willing to do.
Darn this being a grownup and making responsible adult decisions crap! *sigh*
posted by Erin @ 7:55 AM
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