Jakarta

[Smoothy]

I find communicating with Jakarta taxi drivers can be a challenge, both because of lack of language skills (both on their part and on my part) and because of the tendency in Indonesian culture to say yes to everything and avoid questions and expressing doubt.

The hotel Shangri-La only has Silver Bird taxis waiting. Those taxis are Mercedes and expensive. They will, however, definitely know where you want to go. It will likely cost you 100,000 rupiah to go to Malioboro from there using a SilverBird even though it's close.

I personally think the worst taxis in town to take are Bluebirds. I know they have a reputation of being safe and the newest and nicest taxis, but they have too many drivers who are young kids fresh out of the village who don't know anything about Jakarta. Unless you know the way, they are lost. I can speak Indonesian, so I don't worry about taking them and telling the drivers which way to go, but I have been in lots of Bluebird taxis where the driver was completely clueless.

Express taxi is a good taxi to take because the fare is cheap and the driver will know Jakarta. Those drivers are experienced drivers. Pretty much any taxi other than bluebird will have an experienced driver. If they don't have experience, and they are driving an old beaten up taxi, they won't make any money.

But the best thing to do if you can't speak the local language and don't want to pay a lot is to install the "Grab" application on your phone and order a grab car. Those drivers don't usually know much, but they all have a GPS and will lock that in and follow that route. It's almost always cheaper using a grab car rather than a taxi. I do not have an Indonesian phone number because I find no need for one, I use my phone from the USA using only WiFi and never the mobile network connection. As long as I have WiFi (which is almost everywhere now), I can order a grab car with no issues.

[Cucumber]

Hey friends,

First time visiting Jakarta in January. I'll be staying at the Shangri La. How easy is it to communicate with taxi drives in English to go to a place like Malio or Classic? Thank.

I find communicating with Jakarta taxi drivers can be a challenge, both because of lack of language skills (both on their part and on my part) and because of the tendency in Indonesian culture to say yes to everything and avoid questions and expressing doubt. H o w e v e are, Classic and Malio are such well-known places that I find there is never a problem with them. With Kings Cross and Sumo there was some confusing the first times I went there (some years ago), probably because they are so far away and not as frequently visited as Classic and Malio, but recently I have had no trouble with them either.

To be on the safe side, I would write down the name of the place and the address on a slip of paper, all in capital letters. Then you can give the slip of paper to the driver. I find some of them who may get stressed talking to an incomprehensible babbling foreigner find that much clearer and easier to deal with. If there is further confusion you could find it on google maps on your phone and hand him the phone to look at at the beginning of the drive.

[Zippos]

Forgot to mention, you can select destination from your location from the app hence no need to communicate to guide the driver. Grab app will do the guidance for you and the driver. FYI, most grab drivers speak decent English to be able to communicate.

Hey friends,

First time visiting Jakarta in January. I'll be staying at the Shangri La. How easy is it to communicate with taxi drives in English to go to a place like Malio or Classic? Thank.

[Zippos]

Why bother with beat up high charged Taxi. Use Grab / Gojek. It's like Uber.

Hey friends,

First time visiting Jakarta in January. I'll be staying at the Shangri La. How easy is it to communicate with taxi drives in English to go to a place like Malio or Classic? Thank.

[Traveling Tom]

Hey friends,

First time visiting Jakarta in January. I'll be staying at the Shangri La. How easy is it to communicate with taxi drives in English to go to a place like Malio or Classic? Thank.

[Harv78]

This time in Jakarta I had all my meetings starting after lunch time, and in the evening we would go to dinner and / or drinks with local partners. Therefore I decided to concentrate on visiting spas and to try make a review of the current spa scene.

To make the review look more scientific alike I followed same routine at all venues: come visit them shortly after opening (approx at 11-30 am or midday), ask for the best room + best massage package, take some time at sauna before going for the session, do not ask a therapist about any extras by myself and wait for their move.

Here is what I can report to you by the results of my experiment, hope it will help some of you:

1) the'Heaven at Grand Vijaya.

Very small lounge area, with disappointing amenities (E. G. Only few cold towels, some of the towels were rather worn or even looked dirty), there was nowhere to hide from other visitors smoking.

Both staff at the reception and a girl spoke very little English.

From the receptionist I got to know (even not asking) that sex is 350 K, and that they had only one massage available. Shiatzu.

Took VIP room and a girl as per receptionists choice (name Maya, good looking). The girl took off the uniform immediately after locking the room but remained in her panties.

Massage was just OK, CBJ was even less OK, but sex was good.

Damage = 475 K (room and massage) to the reception, 350 K (standard fee for FS) directly to the girl + 50 K tip.

2) 108 spa (ex Illigals).

Much much better facilities and amenities. Great lounge area.

Receptionists did not speak English at all (both front desk and inside the lounge where you choose treatment).

The most expensive treatment was "freelance ladies" (975 K if I recall it right). But there were only two of freelancers at the moment, neither of them showed any interest in my humble person being occupied with their phones.

Therefore decide to opt for a 4 hands treatment at VIP room.

Very decent massage, though only one of the girls was doing the job mainly.

I was rather disappointed when the moment came to discussing extras. Only one of the therapists was doable as per my standards (the one who spoke good English and was doing all the massage actually). But she claimed those were her "red days" and suggested to do her friend while the first one would strip and let me play with boobies. They wanted 1,3 M for this action which made me laugh.

In the end agreed for double HJ for 600 K (they said 300 K was the standard rate for HJ at their place) which was satisfactory.

Total damage = 588 K for massage and room + 600 K for HJ.

3) Myplace at Grand Vijaya.

My favorite spa so far. Visited it before and decided to come visit this time also.

Great lounge area, pools and sauna. Best amenities among all visited spas.

Opted for hot stones massage at VIP room.

The assigned girl (Yasmin) did the great massage, with HJ included.

There was no offer for any extras on the table, but in the end she mentioned that she would do "anything" for me whenever I come back to visit her again.

Damage = 995 K to the reception + 200 K tip to the girl.

4) be Fashion Hotel spa.

Went there based on some older reviews on ISG.

Total disappointment. No more massage packages, only traditional massage in the menu. Very poorly looking front desk.

Did not go inside to investigate more.

Unfortunately, I did not have time to visit two more spas from my list (Delta and Fortune at Grand Vijaya), will go there next time.

Also, had a Tinder date. Nothing special to mention about (dinner at Thai place followed by drinks followed by night at my hotel room).

The only reason I mention it is that it made me decide to delete Tinder account at all. Though I had some memorable encounters due to Tinder in the past, I realized that I would spend too much time trying to make a choice among all matches. After that I would spend time for chatting, meeting a girl, doing all that date routine, and in the end what you receive is not up to your expectations.

For me it is easier and less time consuming to got to CJ's or BATS and have a funny good looking FL in her late 20-s / early 30-s for the rest of your night.

Almost forgot to mention. This time I stayed at the Grand Hyatt at Plaza Indonesia. While not the best rooms and very mediocre restaurants, the hotel has some great features: very great pool, direct access to the Plaza, direct access to MRT Bundaran HI station (with Blok M and Blok A in about only 20 minutes way in a very comfortable subway), and evening taxi drive to Nothern Jakarta is not such a big headache. Good choice for those who rely on Tinder and other online dating services.

Cheers.

[Zippos]

To chime in more after Sea, my expertise is no way near Sea or some of our Badoo warriors, LOL. But so far I have fished 2 x in Jakarta (both never asked me any money but some sort of gifts) 1 in Bandung (2 mil 3's 24 hrs) and 1 from Bogor. 3 of them wears hijab 1 of whom said clearly that she doesn't mind spending time with me in my hotel room but if I take her virginity, I will have to Marry her, lmao. I guess I'm going to skip that one.

I swipe / like the ones look appealing enough to me and if it's a match, I start with simple greetings, then move on to when am I visiting (possible date but the exact) and usual question whether she would like to go eat, drink and come to my room to relax and watch tv / movie. From there, just follow the statistics of Sea and you will find that to be very similar. One word of advice, watch out for those tranny. Badoo is well infested by tranny and you don't want to give any details without confirming if that's a tranny or not.

How do you guys even initiate conversation on Badoo? Most of the girls I've seen seem innocent and / or religious (head scarf). How do you determine if they are open to STR or P4P?

[SeaTraveler]

How do you guys even initiate conversation on Badoo? Most of the girls I've seen seem innocent and / or religious (head scarf). How do you determine if they are open to STR or P4P?

It's easier than you think. Surprisingly to me, some number of the "innocent" looking, including those wearing a hijab, are open to meeting and presumably sex. Many are not tho so you just have to chat them and be patient. You will know though pretty quickly. (I'm surprised by the interest, because I'm 65 and fat...ha ha ha...but have a personality that the Indonesians take a liking to - and that plus money seems to be more important than age or looks)

This is by no means the best or only way to do it. This is how I did it and it was an evolutionary process. Perhaps I can save you some of my wasted time.

I started the conversation off with an intro message saying I am coming to Jakarta on such and such a date. I note that they should speak some English. Then ask them to send their WhatsApp number if they are interested.

Initially my original reply in WhatsApp was too subtle. Goffering pointed out that: "If they agree to come to your room without a friend, then you are going to have some form of sex, even if it's just a BJ".

So I altered my canned message to ask them if they will to "meet me at my hotel, Shangri-La, for eating, pool, + watching TV and relaxing in my room".

This generally gets us right to the point. Some will say NO they want to meet at the mall or somewhere outside the hotel. Those are not the quick sex types most are looking for. I will accept dates with maybe 2 or 3 of those, just for a change of pace. In fact, I have one such meeting with a girl who suggested "we go out for beers", but was adamant about no sex. I took this one because she is cute, speaks good English and I want to test the theory that given multiple dates you might get sex anyway.

Most however, will get the inference of sex and agree to meet.

The fork in this road, is that about half will ask for "something". Shopping money, help for family, need money to take care of sister; The reasons are seemingly endless. But no matter because they clearly got the implied SEX message. The others will be those asking "How much you pay me?" I usually ask how much they want and I've gotten anywhere from 1 million to 20 million. I literally bust a gut laughing at 20 million from a fairly plain jane girl in her late 20's. I've generally settled on 1. 0 up to 1. 5 with those who allow me to video the session. Some want 2. 0 or more and those I just ignore. There are too many fish in the Jakarta sea.

The second fork is those girls who agree to meet but never mention money at all.

BE SURE TO CLARIFY LOCATION. This has become a recent problem. Since my Tinder & Badoo are set to Jakarta I assumed all the girls were local. Now I am finding out that some of my favorite picks live as far away a Bandung. This is ok if you want them overnight or for a few days, But all I am interested in is short time. I started asking them how long for them to get from home to Shangri-La. Flags go up when they say it is a 4 hour train ride. I try to limit it to 45 minutes. Maybe an hour during peak traffic.

This is all preliminary legwork, so take it for what it's worth.

I put this all to the test starting this Thursday for 10 days. REPORTS TO FOLLOW.

[Zippos]

Couldn't agree more with Smoothy. That place literally gives you an impression of a contest where they are trying really hard to staff a line up of Fugly and Low-end service. You can definitely get a vive if "we don't give a fuck" the moment you enter and encounter.

Well, I will admit the beers are cheap. But the quality of the girls in Starmoon is low. The last three times I looked in there, I couldn't find a single girl I thought was quality enough to take upstairs. You would think it would be difficult to find unattractive 20 year old girls, but that place seems to be able to find them.

[Randomguy1100]

I started using Tinder, then Badoo about 3 weeks ago because the premium memberships are good for 1 month and I arrive next Wednesday.

FOR THOSE WHO LIKE STATS:

Out of about 150 contacts, I narrowed my list down to 40.

= 2 are real girlfriend material with jobs and cars and interested in a LTR and both seem to be really nice people, young and attractive. I like a few of those too. 2 is about right. No talk or mention of sex.

All the rest have agreed to meet me at Shangri-La and go to my room (which apparently is a sign they are ok with sex or a BJ).

How do you guys even initiate conversation on Badoo? Most of the girls I've seen seem innocent and / or religious (head scarf). How do you determine if they are open to STR or P4P?

[Sydpat]

Heading to Jakarta early next year. How convenient is it to buy quality condoms in the city?

Hi,

Depends how big is your fella, if your fella is normal like Asian one then you have no problem. Also from which country you come if from India then condom is cheaper then Jakarta. I would advise you get your stuff from your home.

[Smoothy]

Starmoon as you all know has a fishbowl. I enjoyed it there way too much and some of the girls. Wow. Large bintang bottles ranged from about 75-85 If I can remember. I had about 6 there.

Well, I will admit the beers are cheap. But the quality of the girls in Starmoon is low. The last three times I looked in there, I couldn't find a single girl I thought was quality enough to take upstairs. You would think it would be difficult to find unattractive 20 year old girls, but that place seems to be able to find them.

[DcTom75]

Heading to Jakarta early next year. How convenient is it to buy quality condoms in the city?

[Stykler]

Damn, you young guys are so lucky.

If it were only so my friend. Was already well stocked up!

[Turgid]

............ didn't need to buy anything.

Damn, you young guys are so lucky.