Mall Ratz

Week 23

Day 147

Gili Islands

8.3500° S, 116.0600° E

As I mentioned before, we spent out last week in Jakarta living at the Mall of Indonesia (MOI.)

We were literally living in the mall parking lot and due to the internet being down the entire time we were there, we were basically at the mall non stop.

What is living at the mall like you wonder?

Well first off if you’re trying to find WIFI it can be very frustrating.

We found many places that offered free WIFI such as J.Co Coffee, Starbucks, Gold’s Gym, The Tea Garden, Sweet Tea, and The Food Court; but what we later found out was each server only allowed a certain number of users on at a time so we were frequently rotating locations.

We would have tried venturing out of the mall of Indonesia, but the town of Kelapa Gading was flooded for 3 days.

It was pretty crazy to be in the middle of a flood.  We were very lucky because as I’ve said before our apartment was literally in the parking lot of MOI and our side of the building had good drainage, so as soon as the rain stop–which wasn’t too often–the standing water would drain and we would be fine.

We lived it up to the fullest though!

There is a ton you can do at MOI!

First off work was across the street so I had no issues making in to work–although work was canceled one day because no one from Gold’s Gym (The Bikram studio is inside Gold’s) was able to get into work to open up the door for us.

• We went to movies!  I mentioned before in my previous blog on our time in Serpong that it’s very inexpensive to see a movie in Indonesia.  We took full advantage seeing seeing Jack Ryan, our first 4DX movie ever!

For those who haven’t seen a 4DX movie like myself, you don’t know what you are missing!  It’s amazing!  It’s like a movie at an amusement park.  The seats you sit in are attached to a machine that moves and shakes the viewer in time with the movie, so when Jack Ryan got in a car wreck I got a little whiplash myself.  A good amount though, I never spilled my popcorn once.  There were also flashing lights, strobe lights, and smoke when Ryan released a smoke grenade!

Yes there is only one word to describe how amazing the 4DX movie was and that is #4DXISAMAZING!

• We ate Doner Kabobs at least once EVERY DAY!

• We gave into 1 of the 6 ice cream shops and got a Cold Stone Ice Cream Cone!–We didn’t give into the literal interpretation of an ice cream sandwich and get the ice cream between flavored bread.  I’m sure it would have been tasty but I had to draw the line at rainbow flavored bread.
• We went for a run inside MOI.  We wanted to go outside and the rain had actually let up for bit, but the “sewage” smell was a little much to take especially as you run through brown murky water so we took the run inside.  We got a couple weird looks, but we also got our workout in.

  

•  We mucked around.  When the yoga studio was closed for the day I had to find somewhere to do a little bit of inversion work for my 365 day #scorpionchallenge.  The mini stage Moi had setup outside of J.CO proved to be the perfect place.

As you can see, we had a blast being Mall Ratz for a couple days.

Mall life did get old after a while, especially near the end when the flood literally left us trapped.  However, Tom’s discovery that we were living in the Raid: Redemption sound stage (We really weren’t, however, Tom did IMBD Raid: Redemption and discovered that it took place in Jakarta making this trip even better in his eyes. “I knew there was a reason we came to Jakarta!” -Tom Morkes upon reading Raid: Redemption took place in Jakarta.) made any inconveniences seem trivial compared to this exciting discovery.

Wrapping up my teaching gig in Jakarta, it’s time to move onto the Indonesian Islands to finish up our time in Indo.  Next is Bali followed by Gili Trawangan, Gili Air, Gili Meno, and Flores!

Tom’s and my last night also happened to be the Eve of the NFC Championship game.  We just randomly happened to also run into a group of Americans (and 1 English) International School teachers who had Monday off due to the flood.  To celebrate their day off and the future win of the Seahawks (one of the teachers was from Seattle!) they were hanging at the mall as well having some tasty Bintang!

We joined them and had a great time toasting our stay in Jakarta!

Until next time, Peace out Mister Mister!