After the trip to Bandung, I got up early on Sunday and prepared for another adventure, this time solo and in the city limits. I was going to head all the way north to Kota to the Mangga Dua shopping complex for some quality knock-offs after picking up some coffee at the aforementioned Anomali Coffee. However, my roommate told me that Ambassador ITC is much closer and has the same stuff as Mangga Dua, so save the time and go there. Great!
I grabbed a bajaj to Anomali, arriving around 8:45 AM. Closed. Lights out, no one inside. Really??? No coffee at almost 9 AM? Interestingly, there were many people out and about on bikes for car-free day, a bi-monthly event where certain roads are closed to motorized vehicles on Sundays and people can bike, run, or stroll along the highways. I'm sure they wanted coffee as much as I did.
So, I walked to the (not so) nearby Pacific Place mall, which has a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf (ironically, full of bikers), grabbed a coffee and a cab, and headed for my refined first stop: the Jakarta Cathedral. I got there just as mass was ending, and caught some Catholic mass in Indonesian before waking inside and getting a glimpse of the cathedral itself. Nothing to write home about (although I guess I am kind of doing that here?).
I then crossed the street to the biggest mosque in SE Asia, Istiqal Mosque. It was pretty freaking big, and swarming with people selling everything from food and souvenirs to plastic bags. Yes, two different women tried to sell me empty plastic shopping bags! The most notable thing for me was that EVERYONE LEFT ME ALONE--no one stared, no one cat-called me, and most people didn't even offer me what they were selling. It was actually quite refreshing. I didn't attempt to go inside--there were lines out every door and I didn't have anything to cover my head with.
From there I walked to Monas, the national monument. There, it was the opposite--everyone tried to sell me something (and I was so hungry I did buy some unidentified sweet pastry-like item). When two girls heckled me then asked if they could take a picture of me (not with me, mind you, OF me), I said okay,if they took one with my camera, too. As soon as I handed them my camera, thirty or so children appeared from all directions out of nowhere and started crowding around us and yelling. Somehow they managed to get this picture of me without the children, and as soon as they were done, I fled the scene for fear I would never escape otherwise.
Picture taken by the girls:
I then headed to the corner of the park closest to the direction I needed to go (yes, I had consulted a map ahead of time), to hail a cab. Turns out, because the road is one-way there, we had to circumvent the entire 1 km-square park to drive right past where I had hailed him to get to where I wanted to go. Does this city need an expert to tell them why there is so much traffic? What a waste of gas.
Next stop was Grand Indonesia, where earlier I had spotted a Forever 21--I was eager to pick up a couple of cheap sundresses that I could wear upon my return to the other hemisphere. No such luck. Forever 21 in Indonesia appears to get the stuff that is too poor of quality to make it the Forever 21s in the US (and you thought it was bad there!)--ragged hems, uneven seams, you name it.
But that wasn't the worst part. Forever 21 in Indonesia IS NOT CHEAP. The basic t-shirt I tried on was the equivalent of $30 US, poor quality and all. Disgusted, I headed to Zara, where the prices were the same as the Forever 21, but the quality akin to its US counterpart. Unfortunately I didn't find anything I liked, but I left quite puzzled. Who knows. People don't seem to ask "why" here (see earlier posts!), so maybe they just accept it.
Bear with me, kids. I then went to the food court, which is "New York themed," though the way they decorate it makes it look like Paris more than New York. There were showtunes blasting from the speakers and fake street signs with streets from New York, such as "4th Avenue." Really, guys?
I then finally headed to the Ambassador ITC, a multi-story complex of small stalls selling knockoffs, cheap clothing, electronics, you name it. I was prepared to bargain and bargain hard. The problem was, no one would bargain with me. I went to multiples stalls, each selling different selections of the same fake wallets, purses, and watches. They wuld quote me a price about the equivalent of $50 US, I would laugh and say "Expensive!" and offer a much lower price (multiple people and Lonely Planet advise to go down to a third of the offer and work up from there). They would then laugh, and next they are supposed to come down a little, I go up a little, we meet halfway and all parties are satisfied.
Nope. Not a single seller would come down at all for me. I started to suspect it was sort of a scam--they are all owned by one person who is authorized to bring prices down, or they refused to do it to a foreigner thinking I would crack, but I didn't. After an hour or two, I walked out empty-handed (okay, not really, with a sympathy 50 cent soft-serve ice cream) and disappointed. After experiencing KL Sentral market where sellers will chase you down the street screaming "DISCOUNT FOR LADY GAGA" (okay, maybe the Lady Gaga part only happened once, but the discount-screaming multiple times), I was really surprised and disappointed.
My co-worker said I should have maybe gone to Mangga Dua--there are many more sellers there so maybe it is more competitive. But she is the same co-worker who told Julia and I to go to the terrible coffee shop, so maybe that isn't even true, or it's only true for Indonesians. Looks like I'm out of luck on knockoffs unless Bali has a bunch of good shops.
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