Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

Bogor

I waffled a bit in the morning about what to do with the day. Sightsee around Jakarta or get out of town for a bit? Traveling won out. I skipped out on most of my errands and caught a train south to Bogor, the site of the Kebun Raya botanical garden.

The garden is huge and lush, with large sections that seem overrun by the plants and many benches to sit on while relaxing and enjoying the greenery. I've talked before in this journal about how satisfying it is to see verdant landscapes. Green leaves in sunlight just make me happy on a very basic level, and it felt great to be outside after all those hours of planes.

There was a cafe overlooking a fountain swarming with dragonflies. I stopped to rehydrate (my body is still adjusting to the heat, so I'm sweating buckets) with a fresh guava juice and a delicious tea called bandrek with a very strong flavor of ginger and molasses.

I met an interesting pair of guys on the train back, one from Laos and the other from Uganda. They're studying business in Jakarta. They had many questions about the US and San Francisco, and some suggestions about where to go on Java.