Jakarta

After a mostly empty and uneventful flight, I arrived to see mumsy at the airport waiting, and after we arrived at the apartment we very quickly went downstairs for a very yummy dinner. It's quite a big apartment block, so there are a couple of restaurants downstairs.
I had this yummy rice with lots of bits on the side - dried fish, beef, chicken, egg, chili sauce. nom nom. And mum had kway teow, which was also nommy.

The apartment is very close to the Ritz, which was bombed a couple of months ago. No visible signs of damage now. The only reminder is very tight security everywhere. At the apartment here there are sniffer dogs, they check under your car for bombs when you come in and look in the boot of the car, you have to go through a metal detector and have your handbag inspected. And it's the same at every shopping centre, office or upmarket hotel.

Mum and Frank are moving apartments soon, and this is the pool at the new pad... their place is on the ground floor and has a spare room for any visitors (and that's an open invite to anyone I know).

You can imagine my total excitement on day one of shopping when I looked up and saw dumpling heaven... Mum was very quickly talked into going for lunch (that's her in the yellow top walking in), and it didn't disappoint. We had green beans with chicken mince, and four different kinds of dumplings. They are definitely on par with the Sydney version, and they have more varieties of soup dumpling. Exciting. So we had chicken, crab and pork. So good.

This was lunch today. You sit down and they just put plates of food in front of you. You eat what you want and what you don't want you don't pay for. There was so much to choose from, but I scoffed on beef rendang and mum scoffed on chicken curry. And each plate cost about $1.50.

Yesterday was a frustrating shopping day - turns out I am a big foot amazon woman, but persistence (in the form of going into the same shop in three different shopping centres) pays off. So, today I got a black work dress and a white shirt from Zara. Four belts (ahem - they were really cheap). A pair of two tone patent shoes. And a wrap dress from Marcs and Spencer. That was mostly to console myself for facing a sale rack of Diane Von Frostenburg wrap dresses in animal print, reduced to about $250, and only being able to fit them around my thigh. It was physically painful to walk away from them all... I wanted them soooo much. Sigh.

Anyway, here's today's loot. Mum ought me the red leopard print scarf which she's confiscating off me to give to me at Christmas.