We figured a night train saves on hostel costs. We figured a night train means more time sightseeing. We figured a night train means sleeping instead of boredom. What could go wrong?

A very buff, weird frogman statue.  Clearly we were thinking with all our brain cells.

Most of that plan, it turns out. We did save on the hotel costs, but we did not sleep or get to see the countryside. A lose-lose. After staying out late to watch the puppet show and then getting up early to see Borobudur, I was feeling the need for a good night’s sleep. Instead, we were in seats with the flourescent lights and the Adventures of Tin Tin playing at full volume all night. Even when everyone in the car was asleep or trying to be asleep, there was no dimming the lights or lowering the volume.

I slept about 2 hours. Jason slept about 4. I read an entire book.

We arrived at the Jakarta train station at 5 am, well before we could even go drop our bags off at the hostel, much less check in for a nap. We went to Dunkin’ Donuts, because it was there. (And we hadn’t seen a Dunkin’ Donuts in about 3 years.) I fell asleep in the corner. Jason messed around on his phone. At 6 am, we decided to see if the hostel would at least let us drop our bags off. To kill time, we walked there. It took another 45 minutes, carrying all our stuff.

We woke up the attendant who was very confused. We left our bags in a corner of the common room and went for another walk. Anything to stay awake. We ended up going to the National Museum of Indonesia, which under different circumstances probably would have been fascinating. They had an ethnography section that went through each of the major tribes/clans in Indonesia by showing some of their items from daily life like baskets and clothes as well as some of their ceremonial items like religious figures, jewelery and weaponry. We kept finding signs to read that were located in front of benches so we could sit still.

One of the monuments in the National Park

 took a wander through the kastomabodes section. I forget what it was called, if I managed to read the sign at all. At that point, text was getting awfully complicated to process. From there, we went into the textiles, though we gave up shortly afterward. Neither of us could read things longer than a sentence and the logical leaps such as “this sign goes to this display” were getting difficult.