…a very interesting first night in Jakarta, to say it in the most positive possible way… Typical of course of my usual positivity!
That was Sunday night…
After a great seafood dinner in a bit of remote place in Jakarta north I had to get a bike to go back to my hotel, in Jakarta west.
Amazing seafood
Like in Vietnam I like the motorbike taxis more than the cars, because of the crazy traffic and jams in this overpopulated city! In fact the only Indonesian word I know is “macet”, meaning traffic jam.
On the roads of Saigon
So I sent my request for Uber bike referring to the location given by the Internet signal…
Uber
The first 2 Uber after apparently riding around my position with the time for arrival changing from 2 minutes to 15 than 3 and randomly increasing again cancelled.
I take this as a partly personal mistake since then I realized my position was about 50 meters wrong. So I corrected it and try again..
One of the first 2 Uber driver accepted again but then after 20 minutes he canceled again.. And the same happened with the 4th attempt..
Then I gave up on Uber…
Grab
….and tried my favorite application for my Vietnamese time… but here more expensive than Uber, still… it was time to change!
I must admit that the drivers seemed to get to my location easier than Uber ones, maybe even too easily: the first driver was a little too eager to pick me up, and start drinking.. Maybe he had a hot girlfriend waiting for me at home, or a hot meal or both..
But after not even a minute when I ask him if he was sure of the direction (I know nothing but I can read maps and I know the cardinal points) he showed me his application with the destination and clearly it was not my hotel…
He had picked up the wrong person!!! Bad luck the first 3 digits of the license plate were the same as for my real ride…
…that luckily arrived a few seconds after the wrong one brought me back…
You might think the adventure was over, right? That was my thought.. and of course I was wrong..
I realized that even if all drivers have a special holder for the mobile phone to put on the front of the motorbike, they are not so good at following the GPS! He stopped 4 times to ask indications to other riders until we got to an area I thought to recognize, I took out my phone with my own Google maps and told him where to go…
After about 1.5 hour (instead of 20 minutes max that I took on the way to the restaurant) I was back to the hotel..
FUNNY THING OF THE DAY – Today I noticed my Uber rating is going fast downhill! That is not good: I’ve been rating almost all drivers with a 5, even when they got lost or I had to support with my own maps… And I wonder why hey have been rating me low.. Occasionally I hit my helmet on theirs with the sudden breaks and accelerations (I always think, hypothetically, a Kaya driver turning and punching me in the face) and most of the time I need help to latch/unlatch the helmet straps.. But these are not so negative points I think.. Once I even gave one driver the laugh of the day putting on the helmet from the wrong side (no, I had not the back of the helmet in front of my face, but the latch was not under my chin but over my forehead… I have no idea how I managed..). Today I tip the driver (almost the same amount of the ride,still cheap for us.. but… not common I think) and he gave me a 5 (my rate was higher than before)… I must carry some change for my rating!!!
My Uber rating Sunday
My Uber rating today before tipping the driver (after it was 4.42)
Dreaming of... Asia 