New Zealand

 ... to view this trip, go to the French blog: https://sophieblaise.blogspot.com/2011/12/

breathtaking sceneries...

sheep

many

thousands of them!

glaciers

volcanic activity

sheep...

and of course kiwis!

day by day trip on https://sophieblaise.blogspot.com/2011/12/

One day in Jakarta

My plane was late at night so I had one day to visit the city. Ariyul, my Indonesian friend from Hong Kong, put me in touch with one of her friends and along with one of the conference participants- Shanghai resident like me- we toured Kota (what's left of the old capital city of Batavia) and the National Museum near the most famous city landmark, the "Monas" (short for "Monument Nasional").

Staying in the same "financial literacy" mood, we visited first the former national bank - a nice art deco building from the 1930s

street life in Jakarta

with Arul

 

a Dutch heritage

chatting with school children

Semar, an Indonesian piggy bank

the extraordinary puppet museum or "Museum Wayang"

a modern version: Dutch vs

Indonesians

shadow puppets- Indonesian school children
learn the hundreds of traditional characters as part of their national heritage. Each one has a specific behaviour

Punch and Judy

the Presidential Palace

Jakarta's legendary traffic

wealth of artefacts in
the National Museum

National Museum

Buddha head in the
National Museum

Kota-old Dutch houses

wooden bridge in Kota

lunch with Alan and Arul

Central Station

Central Station

ubiquitous mobile phones

concert in Kota

Kota- old streets

Conference in Jakarta

All day in conference- and a nice dinner with dancers. That was good to catch up with friends whom I met in previous conferences.

Jakarta

Asia is big... I left home (Shanghai) at 8:15 this morning and arrived at the hotel in Jakarta at 11pm (midnight Chinese time) with a 1hr 1/2 connection at Seoul. Flying Korean Airlines has its plus: I could finally taste the famous Bibimbap !

view from my hotel room -

bye Cambodia

I left Cambodia on Thursday- missing training, trainees and friends already. But longing to see Denzil and the kids after 2 weeks!

The floods are still bad, seen from above, right East of Phnom Penh:

 the Mekong... and flooded fields