… A One-Stop Adventure Hotel …
Despite the shady title, our mini-vacation this weekend was refreshing, cool, and quite worth waylaying our plans of going shopping for goggles this weekend. Lido Lakes are two little lakes in the hills south of Jakarta, about sixty miles or so from the city center. You wouldn’t believe the difference between the weather there and the weather here, plus the difference in air quality. Although the humidity is still high, and the sun beats down enough in the middle of the day to make exercise outside a bit tough, the evenings are downright cool, and the breeze is amazing. In the evening, a long sleeve shirt might have even come in handy had we spent much time outside. Surrounding the complex were rice paddies and tons of teenagers on motorcycles. (Pictures to come, probably tomorrow.)
This place is meant for company retreats and has silly teamwork and trust-building activities available. Luckily, our group just ate, sat around, and ate some more, and from what we can tell got no work done. Some of the younger adults (not including us) played pool non-stop for around six hours, smoking cigarettes and drinking soda. It was fun, and the grounds were great. It was great to observe families, although we suspect that these folks represent the upper end of Jakarta’s upwardly-mobile young professionals. The adults actually seemed delighted to have their children around, even if they did pawn them off on the twenty-something secretaries for the majority of the day. The kids were really cute and did not have to resort to being obnoxious in order to get attention.
As a teaser for tomorrow’s posts, we will give a rundown of our food discoveries for the weekend, which include the infamous durian.
Tom Pepinsky 