My adventure for the day....The Mall

The Mall. An American standard. We love it. All those opportunities to spend your money and dig yourself into a pit of debt is the American way. Well apparently its not too different in Indonesia. At least in Jakarta on a Saturday afternoon the mall is crawling with shoppers. This mall is similar in many ways to the malls we know back in the states, food court, kiosks, escalators, crowds and lots of products. In fact, there was a whole floor for cell phones. The mall is all little booths and it turns into this maze of repetition where entire sections are essentially selling products so similar that you think you are looking at the same thing over and over like a broken record. I think I'll call it the broken record mall. Anyway, I was there to buy a pre-paid phone and miraculously I found a salesperson who spoke English and was able to help me. So now, like all Indonesians, I have a cell phone. I can now call all the local people I know which come to a grand total of 1.
The best part about going to the mall was that across the street there is warung, food carts which I really wanted to eat from. So, I crossed the street, again risking my life through 6 lanes (with a median) to get some homemade food from a street cart. It was great, lunch was less than $1 and they have little stools for you to sit down and eat and we didn't understand each other at all. I just knew what the word for chicken was so I got that. It was hot, spicy and its about 85F in Jakarta so I worked up a sweat eating my Ayam sop.