Monas - the national monument. The park around this is Medan Mederka - Freedom Park. It commemorates the time of freedom from colonial rule in the late 1940's when Sukarno and Hatta were the independence heroes. Symbols are important and this one shows the struggle to lift the Indonesian people from the control of colonial masters.

Jakarta

I stayed in Jakarta for four months while delivering the Y2K Risk Mitigation Project on behalf of the World Bank.

A nice view from the Hotel Borobudor, but the buildings next to these had been burned just 8 months before this was taken in riots orchestrated by conservative elements who did not want the free elections to run smoothly.

This is what it looked like on New Years Eve 1999. Looking over Medan Mederka from the Posko Transisi Tahun Dua Ribu. The command centre for the response at the "transition" to the year 2000.

Borobudur

After working 12+ hour days for 37 days straight, I was able to take a weekend off once we had dealt with the critical isses after 1 January, 2000. A model of the Borobudur Temple in the hotel got me interested so I organised a trip to the real thing. Travel was by train and a chauffered vehicle to get to the Temple.

This is looking out from the Borobudur monument or Temple.

Looking at one part of the lower Temple.

An active volcano, Merapi near to Borobudur. We stopped and had a late lunch there and watched one of the heaviest rainstorms I have seen anywhere. The volcano probably preserved the temple by covering it in ash for nearly a thousand years before it was excavated in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.