Back to the Southern Hemisphere: Jakarta, Indonesia Part 1

Mark recently had a work trip to Jakarta, Indonesia and I was able to join him and we stayed the weekend.  One of our stops was the National Museum.  It was under construction – as you can see above – but it was still open and I was able to check out 4 floors of history from the beginning of man through the modern era.  Unfortunately they didn’t really have anything on the Dutch colonial period and I was hoping to learn more about that piece of history.  Maybe next trip at another museum or with another guide…

Instead, here is a shot of an ancient boulder with ancient writing carved into it.  I found it to be quite beautiful.

After that, Mark and I went to Taman Mini Indonesia.  We expected some sort of museum that had miniature representations of scenes or provinces of Indonesia. That wasn’t at all what we found though – instead it was very large!  It was a complex of ~10-20 full museums and 50 houses, built as replicas of traditional houses around Indonesia.  In the middle was a lake with the Indonesian islands in the middle.

After driving around for a while, overwhelmed and confused, we decided to stop at the information centre and get some recommendations.  At the direction of the English speaking info staff (for which we were really grateful!), we went to Museum Indonesia.  More history, but also lots and lots of beautiful artifacts.  Check out this bad boy for example!!

The museum itself was also gorgeous.  Here’s a shot of the outside.

And here is one of the traditional houses.  I’m not sure which province it’s from… but it’s beautiful!

Last stop in Taman Mini was the Komodo Dragon Museum. The coolest part about it was impossible to take a picture of!  The whole building was built like a komodo dragon!!!  It was beyond cool and so giant.  I downloaded this image off wiki so  you could catch a glimpse.

We did see a komodo dragon, but we also saw this giant python!  Yikes!

Sydney Series: Taronga Zoo, Part 1

 Visiting the Taronga Zoo was one of my favorite things that we ended up doing in Sydney.  I felt a little guilty about going because it was pretty pricey and in many ways I expected it to be just your average zoo.  And I had no desire to go to an average zoo.  I didn’t care about seeing the lions or the elephants or the gorillas or any other animals that they had.  In fact, I didn’t care about seeing their typical Australian animals either – the kangaroos and koala bears are cute, but I have seen them a lot in Perth, so I didn’t need to see them in Sydney.

Yet there was one animal that I hadn’t yet seen in Perth and had learned via looking in Perth that the Taronga Zoo might be my one and only chance to see this fabulous creature – a platypus.  There are a few other spots in Australia that have platypuses, but none were places that we are, at this point in time, planning to visit.

But you’ll have to wait for Part 2 of this post to learn more about the platypus sighting 🙂  As it turned out, Taronga Zoo is one of the best zoos we’ve ever been to and we saw so many wonderful animals there!  In addition to this adorable koala bear (I couldn’t resist!), we also saw Tasmanian Devils!  They are nocturnal so the pictures we have are of them all sleeping in a bundle in their burrow.  Not too great in the picture department.  But they had a funny video of what they did during the night and it showed them jumping all over the place and running around like crazy.  It was pretty hilarious!

Then the most impressive… a komodo dragon! Before we went and saw this guy I would have told you that I had already seen a komodo dragon at some point in my life but after we got there I knew I had not. Whatever I was thinking of couldn’t compare to the komodo dragon.  It’s a little difficult to see in my picture, but this guy – and your average komodo dragon – is about 10 ft long and weighs about 330lbs.  We’re talking seriously large here.  And on top of being gigantic, it also is a meat eater that hunts dogs, wild pigs, and deer.  And it can swim 1-2 miles in the open ocean to get between islands in SE Asia.

If you are even remotely interested, I strongly recommend you check out the National Geographic site of info on this animal.  It goes into more detail about it’s bacteria venom saliva and has an awesome picture.

We loved, as usual, the reptile house and the nocturnal house and saw all sorts of snakes, iguanas, bats, rodents, etc. from the Australian continent.  And last but not least, the Taronga Zoo features a sky ride!  It was just like the old sky ride in San Antonio between the zoo and the Japanese Tea Gardens, but the little cars were enclosed and I’m sure the whole operation was a whole lot safer!  This sky ride went from the zoo entrance straight across the top of the zoo – so you could look down and see the elephants and stuff – to the dock where you catch the ferry back to the city.  I loved loved loved it – so we did it twice and then missed our ferry!  Oh well! 🙂

As you can see, the weather wasn’t perfect, but the view was pretty amazing up there!  You can’t see it in this picture, but you could see both the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House from up there.   And coming soon, Part 2, The Platypus….!!!