Botanic Garden + Jakarta

Catching up on some stuff we've missed!  Weekend before last we spent a day at the Singapore Botanic Garden, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and all-around beautiful spot for a picnic.  It is a massive place and even though this was the fourth time that Elizabeth and kids had visited I still don't think they've seen it all.  Historically, the Singapore Botanic Garden was part of the network of colonial botanic gardens maintained throughout the British Empire, largely to keep colonial governors and staff occupied.  In the early 20th century an actual botanist was put in charge and it served as the laboratory where the first industrial-scale harvesting methods for rubber trees were developed from the original Brazilian seed-stock, leading to an agricultural revolution on the Malay peninsula and south-east Asia which remains the global leader in rubber production.  Today the garden is more notable for it's massive orchid collection, the largest in the world with 2,000 specimens spanning 1,200 species.

 In addition to the orchids there is also this "Valley of the Palms", which is the world's largest collection of palm species.  Of the 400 species worldwide, 200 of them are represented here.

Callie is unconcerned by the botanic wonderland around her, and is simply thrilled to run up the hill.  In the background you can see cages being used to get new palm trees started.

Maxwell actually asked to have his picture taken behind this waterfall grotto in the Children's Garden so I had to oblige.  The Children's Garden is a collection of educational areas, hedge mazes, tree houses, and splash pads.  But all the kids seemed to just congregate in the best climbing tree.

After that bucolic weekend I headed to Jakarta, Indonesia for work.  Here's the view from my 62nd story hotel room.

Jakarta is a lot rougher around the edges than Singapore, but seemed to be a lot more vibrant and energetic as well.  Fewer malls, and _way_ more corrugated-steel-roofed motorbike repair shops with chickens running around in them.  It is a city of approximately 10 million people with basically no mass transit, so traffic is a nightmare.   It was 10km from my hotel to the customer site, which meant between 60 and 90 minutes in a taxi each way.  It was recommended by other travelers and customer folks to budget 2 hours to get anywhere in town, and 3 to the airport.

The population seems to make up for the lack of transit by scaling vehicles out instead of up, and the streets are filled with fleets of motorbikes threading around the parked cars, sometimes in the same direction as the flow of traffic and sometimes not. In addition to the regular taxis and standard configurations for the various car-hire services there was also a "motorbike" option that gives you a single seat and a loaner helmet. You can make out the green-helmeted passengers on the bikes of the Grab drivers, a Malaysian start-up that's working on taking down Uber in the region.  There' even an all-motorbike ride-share app called Go-Jek, but apparently the app hasn't been localized into English so I couldn't check it out in any sort of meaningful way.

 Here's a sneaky shot of my cab driver getting shaken down by a traffic cop!  They had a conversation with lots of pointing, some money changed hands, and we were on our way.

 My hotel was located in the tallest building in Jakarta, the Gama Tower.  From the bar on the 67th floor the city made a pretty convincing cyberpunk dystopia.