Holiday Time

I am going to the Northern states of Malaysia for 6 days until 1 Jan. 2008 for a 6 day holidays. It's going to be a long 6 hour drive to Alor Star, Kedah. There will be no blog updates until I return next year.

Keep on running and happy new year in advance to everyone.

Jakarta Running Report

I was in Jakarta for 8 days. Jakarta is not a city made for runners. Even walking around the city is not a pleasant experience as there are just too many vehicles and lots of people around. The latter is to be expected as there are 10 million people living in Jakarta. Another 5 million people travel daily to and from Jakarta for work. Although I stayed in a hotel near the Senayan stadium, I never ran there. I ran on a treadmill at the hotel's fitness centre. Out of the 8 days, I was glad to have been able to run 5 days.

Eating out is quite expensive in Jakarta. The prices at the shopping centres food court are surprisingly higher than Malaysia. A meal consisting of just 3 dishes and rice can cost RM 10. The cheapest places to eat are at the roadside warungs (stalls). There are two types of stalls; the semi permanent with tables and chairs and the mobile stalls. The simplest mobile stalls are just carts that have boxes with glass sides. To move these stalls, the operator simply pulls the cart along, so they should really be called "Pull carts".

At every traffic light junction, there will be lots of people knocking on the vehicles. The sellers mainly sell small stuff; a stick of cigarette and snacks. The saddest sights are children begging for money or sometimes food. There are many poor people in Jakarta but step into a 5 star hotel, the crowd will be totally different,. There you can see the minority of Indonesians who can afford to eat and stay at 5 star hotels.

By the way, if you are a guy, Jakarta and Indonesia in general is like paradise. There are many beautiful women around and it must a criteria for women employees at a 5 star hotel to be beautiful. Very few Muslim women in Indonesia are covered up like in Malaysia.

Travelling Here and There

I have been traveling here and there again. Last weekend I was in Kota Kinabalu for a company workshop. Other than the new buildings fronting the beach, the places where I used to walk around and had lunch/breakfast were still dilapidated. In fact, I would say most of KK has changed for the worse with more dirt on the road, more kids roaming on the streets amidst the decay of the an badly maintained city.

Today I am going to Jakarta for one week for work. Today is the Singapore Marathon. The marathon race started 2 hours 15 minutes ago at 5.30 am. Good luck to first time marathon runners.