Getting into Indonesia was simple enough but unlike Malaysia we both had to pay a $25 visa on arrival fee that granted us 30 days in the country. We found a taxi company to take us downtown and then settled in for the long ride from the airport to the city - not because of distance but because of the traffic jams everywhere. ($18 taxi to airport, $9 lunch, $50 visas)

I didn't know it before this trip but Indonesia is the 4th most populated country in the world; this was immediately obvious when we saw the crowds of people on the street and lines of cars not moving. Indonesia is also interesting because it is made up of over 14,000 islands as well as different people groups that speak over 300 different indigenous languages. These days, most tourists just head to Bali, an island off the east coast of Java, because of all the recent troubles that the bigger island of Java has had such as terrorism, earthquakes and floods. Our plan was to explore the capital city of Jakarta for a few days, do a rural homestay in the countryside, train to Yogyakarta to stay for a bit and then finish off Indonesia with fun in the sun in Bali.

Jakarta was a hot, tangled, frenzied mess with loud and speedy tuk-tuks, honking traffic jams and lots and lots of people. We didn't see many tourists at all in Jakarta though there were plenty of hostels and hotels. In the backpacker haven of Jalan Jaksa street everything looked pretty run down and old (though the prices were cheap!). You could get a room for around $5 if you wanted to shower in a bucket and pee in a hole. Sean and I upgraded slightly to rooms for $10 with cold showers with western toilets and plenty of mosquitoes thrown in for free (the bathroom was open to the outside) ($14 taxi to Jakarta, $10 hostel)