Partying In Jakarta

On Thursday I miss out on a trip to the traditional markets with Yanti and her Family due to a miscommunication but make up for it by heading to the Stadium night-club with some locals from the pub. The ring leader is Maria, who works 2 jobs - Receptionist in a hotel and also in a factory out of town near where she lives. She is in tow with some old friends who have not seen each other for 3 or more years and intend on partying to catch up. They have gone through an elaborate logistics plan to pull the whole night together, and it makes getting to Kings Cross on a Saturday look like a walk in the park. For starters, they live about 1.5hrs out of town, Maria has only just finished work (1am) and her friends arrived un-announced in town (from the Phillipines and Singapore) so had to go buy some party clothes for her!

Stadium is amazing, its like Marble Bar in Sydney but with good dance music and 3 levels of balconies looking onto an open dance floor and a stage about the size of marble bar itself. The difference is probably the 'spa' and 'massage parlour' on the 4th floor. Its busy but not over-crowded and the corwd consists almost 90% of locals. Plenty of ppl on the dance-floors but plenty of room to move, the music is loud but not to loud you can talk almost normally. Its just how I like my night-clubs.

I've been warned to watch my wallet and phone and mind the drug takers. First impression is that there is a lot of zombies on the dance floor and around, I soon find out that these are the druggies. We have been there about 10 minutes before Maria asks if I want some exctasy, I politely decline. She asks if I would be angry if her friends takes it and I reply honestly that it doesn't bother me. I'm actually curious to see the effect.

So we dance and party the night away and the girls come down off the high after about 2 hrs. In the mean-time the on stage DJ is joined by 6 scantily clad local girls who proceed to become even more scantily clad over the next hour. All up it is a good night but a tad expensive, with entry being 50,000 IRP, which includes a glass a beer and additional drinks costing around 50,000 IRP a glass.

I get home about 5:30am having not trusted the girls to drive me home and am pleased with myself at having successfully negotiated the grey areas and at having picked up the locals sleep patterns - 4am - 9/10am, 1/2pm - 4pm.