Vegan Luxury in Jakarta
Our first ever visit to Java was to start in style with a week of Vegan Luxury in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital city in Java…
Landing at Soekarno Hatta airport we paid $35 for our visa on arrival (this has just gone up from $25) and went to find a taxi, via the praying room which we quite liked as it was called Mushola.
Mushola, is this where Mush go to pray?
As with most airports now worldwide there is a taxi desk in the terminal where you can book a cab avoiding the scrum of ‘touts’ trying to get your custom outside. We done this but that didn’t stop a crazy scramble for our custom which we managed to dodge and found our way to a Blue Bird Taxi – for anyone visiting Indonesia these are a very good option, decent cars, safe drivers and a fair metered price.
However, this didn’t stop the final 500m of our journey to the hotel being the wrong way up a dual carriageway (with hazard lights flashing) because our driver missed the turning…
We arrived safely at our home for 3 days, the newly opened DoubleTree by Hilton Jakarta, and after a brief visit to the executive lounge for a Bintang or two we were shown to our luxurious 1 bedroom suite complete with vegan snacks to welcome us.
Our luxurious suite at the DoubleTree by Hilton Jakarta
The room and the whole stay were top rate and we felt sad to leave after 3 days of luxury vegan hotel living which even included a few visits to the gym!
A review of our vegan meal prepared by Chef Zul can be seen here and a review of our stay at the DoubleTree by Hilton Jakarta can be found here.
Our next stop in Jakarta was the luxurious Shangri-La Hotel where we would be spending the next few days sampling one of the finest hotels in Jakarta and dining at both Shang Palace and Rosso who had specially prepared vegan menus for us.
A quick taxi ride across town saw us safely arrive at our new home and after checking in from the comfort of our Horizon Club Level room we were left to explore this great property.
The public areas were grand & lavish with chandeliers, antique artwork and grand pianos adding to the feeling of luxury.
In the beautifully manicured grounds there was a huge pool with various areas to sit & relax and even their own herb & vegetable garden – this truly was an oasis of calm in the middle of a crazy city.
Days spent chilling by the pool at the Shangri-La
We spent our days catching up with work using the super fast internet, snacking on vegan delights that had been prepared for us and relaxing in the Chi Spa – we could quite get used to this level of vegan luxury.
They went out of their way to make sure that they ticked all of the boxes when it comes to looking for a vegan hotel in Jakarta, a full review of our vegan luxury stay can be found here.
Our 6 course vegan dinner prepared by new executive Chef Paulo was incredible, check out the review & pictures from Rosso here and the following day we were treated to more fine vegan dining in Shang Palace which we reviewed here.
This beetroot gnocchi dish at Rosso was phenomenal
Having spent 6 days in Jakarta without setting foot outside of our luxury vegan hotels we decided to undertake some sightseeing and arrange our train ticket to Bandung.
Collecting our train ticket from Gambir Station was a success but the sightseeing was not that great to be honest.
The National Monument was just OK (sorry) and our visit to the National Museum ended up with us being denied entrance due to not wanting to leave our bags at the front desk – our bags contained MacBook Air, iPad Mini, new Canon camera and number of other tech gadgets that despite travelling for 7 months so far have not been left anywhere.
Just OK…
Oh well, never mind, we jumped in a cab and headed for Grand Indonesia Mall which was certainly grand and possibly the biggest mall we have ever seen. The reason for our visit was to buy a spare battery for the camera (we failed) and check out Dharma Kitchen which is a vegetarian restaurant we had found online.
It was also, just OK, veggie Kung Pao was fresh & spicy, veggie spare ribs were weird and mock fish cooked in a banana leaf was uninspiring, the whole meal was overpriced and a disappointment which left us feeling sad that a vegan eating opportunity had been wasted!
The vegetarian spare ribs @ Dharma Kitchen were weird
The final vegan meal in Jakarta was at Casa D’Oro, the fine Italian dining restaurant within Hotel Kempinski Indonesia. With the largest wine list in Jakarta and a great reputation we were very excited.
It did not disappoint and we were treated to 5 courses of Italian vegan fine dining and a lovely bottle of Reisling which was the perfect match for the food. Taking decent pictures was tricky due to the low lighting levels but we done our best and the pictures and full review can be seen here.
Starter of perfectly grilled veg with balsamic and salad at Casa D’Oro
Getting out of bed the next day at 0430 for our train to Bandung was tough as was saying good bye to a week of luxury vegan living in Jakarta.
Shame that you had so many, ‘just ok’ experiences, but at least you did have plenty of fantastic vegan meals along the way.
I think every traveller will understand your choice on not leaving your bags. As trusting as we might be, we’ll still not leave our bags anywhere unless it 100% feels right.
‘just ok’ is actually very disappointing when you think about it – we want every experience to be ‘amazing’ if at all possible!
when it comes to our bags, Paul has had a back back on for 7 months solid and refuses to let it out of his sight, i get a few days off when i put everything of mine into ‘his bag’ and it becomes ‘our bag’….