Quote: (10-11-2013 07:55 PM)Seadog Wrote:
Quote: (10-11-2013 06:10 AM)whozat Wrote:
Moving to Jakarta for work at the end of the month.
Crazy excited to see this myself.
Any forum members living there?
I live there on and off, and for the amount of time I spend there I've seen surprisingly little of the city. Work and traffic largely dominates my life when I'm there, then the remainder of my time is off in god forsaken oil camps. If you work there, depending on where you live it can be hit or miss. I live in the south 3 km from CITOS, small house with 2 other coworkers provided by company. Leave for work 5km away at 7am with company shuttle. Get home usually around 7pm. I'm looking at between 15 minutes to 2 hours to go 5km to work, average around 45 mins.
What is the nature of your work? Where will you be working/living? Will work provide you a house? Housing is expensive here, 2k/month for something decent, and many places want two years cash upfront.
There is a bit of a difference between going here for a week and staying near Plaza Indonesia, going out every night, and living here.
On one hand you are rich here and have superstar status, you can go to the best bars, restraunts, and hotels in a city of 15M and think nothing of it. But on the other life is difficult and after two years here the bad is starting to outweigh the good at least for me. It's hard to have close friends, there's a fair bit of English, but not at the level to have good conversations or banter like you would with a native speaker. It's hard to have real hobbies because all anyone wants to do here is shop. There are some expat communities, but again the people are generally average, haven't met any great friends through it any more than you would by taking any other westerner at random and seeing if you're compatible.
You literally need to plan your day and activities around traffic. For instance with me, if I want to do something after work, like gym or rock climbing, I need to leave work right at 5, then plan on getting home at 9-10, I'll spend 90 minutes doing whatever, rest of the time in traffic. Taxis are cheap and plentiful though, so that's a plus. $20 for a 1-4 hour ride from the airport for instance.
The other thing like someone else said, you're almost like a hot woman here with the amount of attention you get. Most people want to befriend you, but it's usually to their own ends, to show you off, practice their English, I had one guy ask me if I could help him get a visa to the states etc. (I'm from Canada, but all the same in his mind) People view you as rich (and you are) but then they think about how that can benefit them.
It's good for a little while, but I think my issues here stem as much from the fact that i'm technically homeless living out of two bags with no real schedule, as it does from the day-to-day third world frustrations.
Seadog:
I would imagine that the standard of living would be worse in any SEA country, if a guy is trying to live off of the Local economy and off the Local income versus either having a job with foreign company or if your income he is coming from a 1st country and has income from that 1st world income, such as from either Canadian or US dollars.