thats nothing, theres so many people here for so many years. for me it was once in nearly 7 years and i really provoked him verbally hehe

I know you are diagreeing with them on this issue. I just wanted to make that jokes after your post in the Thai thread.

Yeah, obviously it's not like it's happening everywhere all the time, but it doesn't need to happen often to still be worth being careful about because of how bad it can be when it does happen.

Also just like the other post I made the other day to you it's often about context and location.

Broad daylight, in late morning early afternoon I'm going to be a lot more likely to argue and negotiate then when I'm on a darkened street corner at 3 in the morning and there is a group of rough looking guys all claiming to be cops surrounding me and pressuring me for money. Probably just going to give it up in that situation, without much, if any, resistance.


You got to think about the situations where it's more likely to lead to violence and you getting fu cked up and when you are in those situations if you want to walk away ok, you probably need to set your pride and ego aside and be willing to be a bit of a bitch/pussy in the interest of not getting into a pretty bad and dangerous spot.


If the situation doesn't look like that, then by all means I'll go ahead and argue/negotiate with them. But only with people who don't look like they are willing to take things to violence.

i have traveled the world and travelled to south-east asia maybe 40 times, staying for several months on some occasions.

i have never experienced anything as outrageous at what happened to me in jakarta. on a major road in a major city, simply taking a (bluebird) cab to the airport from my hotel.

think about it. this is one of the biggest cities in the world, with ambitions of becoming a global city, with marauding gangs (police no less) of highway bandits robbing people on a major road just before morning rush hour.

it should be a national embarrassment and shame for indonesia.

i discussed this with some indonesians and the feeling i got from them was that they thought it was some how my fault. i think indonesians don't like their people being blamed for something and like to see a bule get ****ed over for once.

i have spent over a year of my life in south-east asia, 90% of nights drinking alcohol and around other people who are inebriated. i stay out of trouble.

are there roads in the city where i can be almost certain there won't be check points. i will be back again one day.

i think deep down indonesians take offense to a bule pointing out something bad about indonesia.

as corrupt as thais can be, if there were police in chiang mai extorting tourists for hundreds of dollars for merely taking an early morning trip to the airport, it would make the national news in thailand.

i just messed up the conversion not thinking about it. it was last year.

he did open at specifically 10 million rupiah. don't go saying "are you sure it wasn't 1 million he wanted.

No no no..don't get me wrong..

I don't even care,if you told me we are corrupted nations with bad cop and official and etc.. because it does..

But like you said,as we try to compete in global world,tourism is also things that we care about..so,I want to believe as tourist destination jakarta,bali or Indonesia generally has to be safe for people to travel..

I just didn't see and ever heard this thing happened before..I know there's a bad and corrupt cop,but to extort and blackmail foreigners without any explanation,that's subject new to me..

think its more likely that he is making up the '15 minute negotiation' and trying the $50's and the whole scaryness of the situation to explain why he did what he had to do

after re-reading the story it appears he paid $400 not $300

also he says he doesnt like losing money on evrey transaction thats why he brought so much cash A) schwab B) indonesian ATM's charge no fee even for foreign cards, you lose a tiny bit in the exchange rate but at most 1%

lol69 - sorry you got got, but glad you are still alive and in one piece. Lots of tough talk here but most people would have done exactly what you did.


Left Raja Ampat this morning, now back in Sorong. Will be here a day or two deciding where to go next. Still have a month left on my Indonesian visa but not interested in Bali or the Gilis due to August crowds, not interested in Jakarta due to pretty much everyone saying it's terrible and lol69 raising the average price of cab fare, already been thru Jayapura. Probably just fly to Manila or maybe Singapore since everywhere is a cheap flight from Singapore and they have lime drink. All the flights in Indonesia are so stupidly expensive - the ones you can find on the internet, anyway. Pain in the rear end finding cheap sriwijaya / lion etc flights but perhaps I'm just not using the right search places. Google Flights, Skyscanner, Vayama, Kayak... something better Indo-specific?

Raja Ampat was a blast but it's nice to have hot water and electricity again.

Time for some cumi cumi goreng

Try Traveloka (app) ,tiket.com or Indonesian flight (app)

Selamat makan !!👍👍

you can get flights cheaper through the garuda site, but they seem to reject US credit cards.

traveloka seems like exactly what I was looking for. Thanks, MDSS!

Booked a flight to Jakarta two days from now. Was going to skip it entirely but almost every intl flight out of Sorong goes through there anyway. May or may not stay there a few days crushing delicious Indonesian food at the warungs before heading to Manila. Will do my best not to get lol69ed by the corrupt cops.

Ended up going with tiket.com, they were super. Ticket price for Sorong to Jakarta ended up being about $115 USD, while the best Google Flights price was $292 USD. lol

Only downside to the flight is that the cabin baggage is restricted to 5kg. wtf NAM air. Hopefully an additional personal item like a laptop is allowed and not included in that weight count.

Be prepared for brutal traffic. I'm sure there is worse in the world somewhere but I haven't been there yet.

This is true..esp now the jakarta in the process of constructing MRT/LRT..

Remember,stay safe..

during the day, is it quicker to take the transjakarta buses (the ones with the dedicated bus lane) than a taxi?

also, i found the train to be useful if going from north to south or vice versa. tickets were only about 15 cents or something silly for well maintained trains.

If it's below 10Km rather use app transport like Uber,Grab car/bike,Gojek(or Gocar) you can pay cash..

Yup the train and transjakarta is cheap,but on rush hour it will be pain in the ass crowded,not to mention pick pocket etc..

Just be careful

taking a taxi in jakarta when you dont have a bunch of bags on you is about the biggest noob mistake you can make

had girls send me there location at 1pm in a taxi, they are 2 km's away, at 130 i ask again for their location and they have moved 500 meters

take an ojek, walk, or maybe us the buses if its not rush hour

hi guys! i am 22 years old indonesian and just started play poker. i am pretty terrible lol, anybody up for a discussion on how to grind well at micro stakes? hit me up on skype:abuzarahmad or lets meet up over a beer.

i really confuse where to start cause there are so many information on the web. it will be really nice to have somebody to talk to over this

How does it compare to Bangkok traffic?

Say Bangkok traffic at it's worst vs. Jakarta traffic at it's worst.

How about the average Bangkok traffic vs. the average Jakarta traffic?

Always limp AA

To me BKK is traffic is like a toll road compared to jkt. Now if you're trying to drive on Suk from On Nut to turn on asoke at rush hour then that has to be pretty bad but that's what Jakarta is like practically everywhere, all the time accept late night.
For me, only Manila can compare to Jkt but it's not as bad.

You consider Manila traffic worse than Bangkok traffic, interesting.

I usually think of traffic being worse in Bangkok than in Manila. But perhaps we are considering different factors.

It's possible there is more dangerous driving in Manila than Bangkok but I feel like I've been caught in more dead standstill traffic jams in Bangkok than I have in Manila. That'a the factor I was considering when I call Bangkok traffic worse than Manila's.

In Jakarta now. The traffic is pretty bad but it doesn't seem that much worse than Bangkok.

bangkok you have the option of the bts, mrt, the river and canals. jakarta you're stuck in traffic.

Agreed and I am from Jkt..bit MRT,LRT are on the way (it makes the traffic worst than normal,till 2017ish)