Food—I’ll admit that Indo food doesn’t really jive with my taste buds thus far. However, there are more than enough Chinese restaurants around that have someone who can speak Chinese, so I’m able to dig up a tasty meal easily enough. There is a very good Sichuan restaurant in between Sparks hotel and TC’s that I highly recommend. While not on-par with the actual Sichuan province, the food is as good as any I’ve had outside of china in terms of authenticity and taste. It caught my eye as there are ALWAYS very HOT Chinese chicks coming in and out of this hole-in-the wall restaurant. The “Chinese mafia” guys who always sit at the first table on the left really know how to take care of business!

If you go and don’t know what to order—these three are the most famous Sichuan dishes:

Shui zhu rou pian (phonetically: sway jew row pien)

Chong qing gi (phonetically: chong ching gee)

Qing jiao rou si (phonetically: ching jiao row seh)

FYI -- you need to speak with someone who of course can speak Chinese…. And they need to have patience to decipher what you’re trying to say.

Hotel:
I stayed at Sparks the whole trip and found everything about the hotel to be exceptional when considering the price. It was the best 27 bucks I ever spent on a hotel. Service was superb, rooms were decent and comfy, location is A+, price is A+, service is A+.

Safety:
I’ve had the luxury of being led around by those more experienced (namely MX) with the local scene. However, I go out for strolls on a regular basis and feel quite comfortable doing so. I find the locals very friendly, although there is a large language barrier for me. As always a little common sense goes a long ways… if you’re going to take a cab, just make sure you have a card w/ location for the place your going and look for a blue bird taxi and things appear easy enough.

Penjay Mamasans
I know many people really don’t like the perceived higher pressure of the mamasans, but I personally enjoy it. I like the attention and with a dollar or two invested, I find service is A+. I gave a couple mamasans a 10-15k rupiah tip once for bringing over some girls and making the effort and they have always gone out of their way to find me who I want and a comfy seat if need be. Their memory seems quite good as well ;) What is important is that things aren’t so crazy that you can’t manage a seat.

Massage
Don’t come looking for thai like massage. One of the items that will always keep me going back to LoS is the massages. I need my daily dose. I tried a local massaged joint, but it was more pain than anything else. This is not to say there is not a massage scene, it’s just not “discovered” yet by us hombres and not of the thai variety.

Girl Personalities
I’ve been very impressed with the personalities here (not just service and looks). Usually not always, the girls are all smiles, flirting, batting their eyes, and pulling on my shirt when I walk into a venue that allows such. I’ve also noticed that MX draws a significant amount of smiles from the locals when he goes for a walk. Locales really appreciate his use of the language and it also really warms them up. When I first went to Angeles, I would walk into a gogo and would get rock star like attention, which was wonderfully flattering (fyi-- I rarely see anyone getting this treatment nowadays) and when I walk into a disco in JKT, I wouldn’t say I get the same treatment, but I normally find it very good for the ego. In addition, the bar and wait staff goes out of their way to be nice to me…. To the point of making me up some special concoctions w/ discounted prices at times.

Venue notes:
I was in JKT for 7 days and I can say that I barely scratched the surface of the scene here. What I did was sample the three main clusters (penjay, kota, and blok M). Many times, I never circled back to the same place, which makes any comments about particular lineups and quality near worthless. I spent the most time in TC’s and found that to be my favorite place. There is just so many hot, young, and reasonably priced girls there I would be content just hanging there every day. The other bars in Kota have some great talent and in fact MX and I banged two of the hottest girls that I saw on this trip from one small bar in Kota.

My Bar is also a blast and is pretty much at my LT price point. The venue is fairly small though and I found that as I spent more time there, it was getting a LITTLE long in the tooth. I left 2 girls on the table though that I wanted to sample--one was quite miffed about the night prior and the other… well I was just too damned tired and literally out of time.

Nice wrap up observations DM, I shoulda figured out I needed to channel the mamasans for the good instead of fight'n 'em. They really do have a memory.

I was also surprised at how good some of the Chinese restaurants were. I randomly went into several very good Chinese restaurants in that Lokasari area, one was Madonnas and forgot the names of the others. All very cheap and great. I'm sure MX and Crazier took you to that one real good one near Mecure Hotel, wow, I still think about their BBQ and scallop dishes.

One thing I'd recommend to guys considering going there is to take an hour or two before the trip and learn some key phrases. I absolutely spoke no word of Indo while there and now that I'm studying up on it at home, it seems like a straightforward language to learn.

Merl, I picked up Bahasa Indo real fast because I also speak Spanish. The whole alphabet is pronounced the same except for the "c". And with very little grammer to boot. Bagus

Belajar, mau bicara dengan chewe`s? Harus belajar, pratek.

Sf4, you're right, it does seem very similar to Spanish, and there seems to be no intonations, which often trips me up.