WE WOULDN'T WIN THE AMAZING RACE

BAJAI

BECAK

There are several forms of transportation in Jakarta.  As mentioned in our previous posting the traffic here rivals anything either one of us has ever seen. The becak was used quite frequently when Russell was here, and is used outside of Jakarta.  Now Jakarta is so congested we never see them here. They are a pedicab which has a seat for two people in the front, and the driver pedals a bicycle in the back.  In the afternoon heat the drivers can be seen asleep in the seats of the becak.  The bajai is the motorized pedicab and a step up from the becak.  The fit in the back is quite tight for two people, but the bajai is definitely much less work for the driver!  The motorcycles are everywhere, and you can take a motorcycle taxi called an ojek complete with a helmet provided.  Ankots are minivans with one side open. People jump on and off as the minivan slows down.  We take a taxi from our apartment everyday to work.  The ride is about 25 minutes to 50 minutes depending on traffic.  There are several cab companies.  The one that we take the most often is called Blue Bird.  We learned that you don't want to take the Silver Bird  cab as it can cost almost double the price. The Silver Bird is a small mercedes benz. Nice, but more than we need.  A typical cab fare is anywhere from 2-4 dollars.  Saturday night we went out with some fellow senior missionaries and grabbed a cab to go home. The driver immediately pulled over to the side and started looking at his GPS system. He wasn't sure how to get to where we needed to go. We ended up getting lost, seeing parts of town that I had never seen in my two weeks here.  Finally we ended up in a large round about with a statue in the middle. Russell recognized the statue and realized that we were going north when we needed to go south.  We were in the center of town and the round about was very busy. Before the driver of the cab could turn around and exit the round about we were hit by a bus.  No injuries to the passengers, but the left front fender didn't look good.  The bus kept going without even slowing down. Earlier in our ride,  Russell had been talking to the taxi driver in Indonesian, and the poor man had only been driving a cab for 1 month.  We felt sorry for him, but not sorry enough to stay in the cab, so we hopped out and found another cab with a driver that knew how to get us back home.

MOM HOLDING BABY

ANKOTS

TAXI

LOCAL BUS

FAMILY ON MOTORCYCLE