One can safely say that Idulfitri is the most awaited holiday in Indonesia, a Muslim majority country. However, it’s not a holiday for Muslims only. During 1,5 weeks of the holiday season (also called as Lebaran), people in the country seem to just stop working and spend their time to go back to their hometown or simply relaxing. Just like the Chinese New Year for the Chinese majority country. This year Lebaran also coincides with Cheng Beng, the time of the year for Chinese visiting the grave of their ancestors. Hence the main purpose of my trip this time.
I drove with my family to Cibubur Junction in the morning, and reached there at about 10AM, just in time the shopping mall opened. My parents took MRT and LRT from their home in Bintaro, and reached Harjamukti LRT Station around 11.30. We then drove to Pondok Ranggon Cemetery to visit my mother’s tomb. Surprisingly there was heavy traffic on the road towards the cemetery. It turned out that the Muslims also visit their ancestors for the Lebaran holiday.
I drove back to the shopping mall to pick up my kids and my wife Y. We then drove to Sunter area, where my grandmother just opened a Nasi Campur restaurant called Nasi Campur HK. We were served abundant portion of delicious Nasi Campur, and we chatted a lot.
After which, we visited another relative, my aunt W and her family. We recalled many memories of when I was a child. My mom was close to aunt W and we spent a lot of time together, usually for holiday in the Puncak highland. W’s house is interesting. Her husband K keeps and maintains old furniture and electronics instead of buying new ones. W’s daughter J took a picture of us together.
We then drove to Sunlake Hotel, where most of us took a rest and I did some work on with my laptop. I and my family spent 2 nights in the hotel while my parents joined the first night only.
At night we went out for dinner. We planned to have dinner at my uncle K’s coffee shop in Kelapa Gading (see Coffee, Bento, Running and Wedding). Turned out information in Google was not so accurate and it was closed when we arrived. Uncle K was very kind to receive us even when the coffee shop was closed, and he served some paos for us. We were full afterwards and didn’t go for another dinner.
The night went through and we were well rested.
In the morning, my son D woke up at 6 AM, and we headed to restaurant for breakfast with my parents. My dad has a spare phone that he wanted to use as a backup device. He offered D to transfer as many videos as possible from his main phone to the backup phone using bluetooth, with payment of Rp1.000 per video. D managed to transfer 50 photos. The breakfast choices at the hotel was very generous, specifically with Indian food in the menu every day.
The kids then went swimming, my parents took a cab and KRL back home, while I went for team zoom meeting an hour before noon. Just a few minutes before noon, Y called me, informing that a shuttle from the hotel was ready to drop us to the nearest LRT station. Just a few days before I read that the LRT Jakarta ran a campaign where you can visit 6 of their stations to collect stamps, and exchange them with souvenirs.
Upon reaching the station we were slightly disappointed to know that the souvenir for the day were fully claimed. However, we could come the next day in the morning to try again. We then had a lunch at MKG shopping mall that was (almost) connected to the station.
We went back to the hotel afterwards. The kids swam again, while I and Y exercised at the gym. In the evening we planned to have dinner in a seafood restaurant nearby, but again, it was closed. We went for dimsum instead at Kong restaurant. We asked the kids to slept early that night. Because we went back to LRT Station early in the morning the next day, fully prepared!
We drove to Velodrome at 5.30, parked our car there, and walked to Velodrome LRT station. Beside four of us, there were also two people hunting for the merchandise. The staff explained us that with the paper she just gave to us, we had to stop at each of the 6 stations, tap out, get stamped, and tap in. One trip costs Rp5.000, so we had to fork out Rp30.000 per person. She also needed to take picture of us, for documentation purposes. Unfortunately most of the pictures were taken in portrait mode, hence some parts are cropped in weird places here.
The whole journey itself took about 2 hours. But the kids were happy and we discovered interesting spots. One of which was the Pegangsaan Dua station, that serves as LRT car parking space as well.
We drove back to hotel and had breakfast. A few hours left before checkout, we played at the hotel’s playground and exercised at the gym. About 11.30 AM, we checked out and drove back to Bandung.
At home I took picture with the merchandises.
