Jakarta!

Jakarta is huge. It is chaotic in a completely different way to Kuta, with the city spread over a huge area, lacking in pavements and road rules. Even the taxi drivers have no idea where they are going. This was my first experience of being an ethnic minority, and felt slightly uncomfortable with the way everybody would stop to look at us and call out to us in the street.
Outside our hotel was a complete contrast to the inside. One one day a man tried to sell Jess a live goat just down the road from where we were staying. We decided it was probably best if we didn't.
We visited a museum on our first day, although it took a while to find after we got dropped off in the wrong place and then given several different directions as to which way it was to get there. However, this turned out to work in our favor as we got to see the monument national, and arrived at the museum just in time for the free English speaking tour. The museum was completely different to those you would see in the UK, with hardly any barriers to protect ancient artifacts. For example, the first record of writing in Indonesia was just placed in the garden of the museum for anyone to touch. We saw some absolutely amazing things. We then got driven to the backpackers region of Jakarta to check out a few small bars. Apparently it used to be extremely popular with a large amount of tourists, yet there have recently been hotel bombings (although there have been in Kuta also, Kuta has recovered it's tourist economy whereas Jakarta seems to still be struggling).
We visited a huge market selling all sorts of clothes, jewelry, and even Christmas trees, and then crossed the road to an enormous mall selling electricals. I was thinking of buying a small notebook so I could make use of the wifi we can access in our hostels on the way around and also upload some photographs, but couldn't really make sense of them and didn't really know what to look for. My Dad would have been in heaven though!
The next day we wanted to go to a club called Stadium we had heard about. On a normal weekend it stays open from Thursday to Monday. The guy on reception at our hotel asked if it was ok for his friend to come along with us to be our 'body guard'. At first we were apprehensive as we didn't feel unsafe and didn't want to drag somebody out if they didn't want to, but when we arrived at the club it was obvious he was having a great time, and dragged us up to the dance floor when it was still empty to pull some shapes. Willy was great fun!
On Saturday we wanted to go out again, but when the taxi pulled up the club was closed. Typical, we had visited what lonely planet describes as 'the clubbing mecca of south east Asia' on a religious holiday. Yet the next day Willy invited us out again with some of his friends. We had such a fantastic night! The club was enormous. (Strangely showing football on a huge screen whilst pumping house music? - it seems the Indonesians are mad about their 'soccer') Unfortunately, cameras were banned inside the club so we couldn't take any photographs.
Our last day we spent in bed ill feeling very sorry for ourselves. I had been slightly ill for a week, but had been ignoring it and still partying which had taken it's toll, but am now much better and loving Kuala Lumpur.