Indonesian Restaurant in Shanghai

For those who are craving for Indonesian food in Shanghai (which taste also the same with Indonesian food), I recommend you to try this one:

Rumah Makan Borobudur
Line 1896 Hami Road No. 18 Room 104
(intersection between Hami Rd and Qingxi Rd)
Opens daily from 10.30-21.00

Address in Pinyin:

哈密路 1896弄18号104 (青溪路上)

Phone:
13585876789
13817552951

The owner is a lady from Bandung and she cooks by herself in this restaurant. It is a very small place but the variety, quality and price of the food are very good!

Oktoberfest

If there is anything I miss from Germany, one thing for sure is the Oktoberfest in Munich or Canstatterwassen in Stuttgart. For those who are not familiar to Oktoberfest (and I hope that I explain it correctly to avoid complaints from my dear "Bavarian" friend!), this is beer festival held annually in Munich which was first started on 12th October 1810 to commomerate the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig (later King Ludwig I) and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen. Due to its growing popularity, the mayor of the city of Munich decided to continue this festival as yearly tradition. They also decided, however, to move date of the Oktoberfest earlier in Sept (starts normally around third week of Sept and last until the German Reunification Day on 3rd October)


In Shanghai, Oktoberfest is celebrated in all Paulaner's restaurants. Paulaner is one of the famous beer brewery from Munich and they have 3 restaurants here in Shanghai with one brewery house where they brew their own beer in here. To celebrate this festival, they brought one of German band (also said to have played for the Paulaner's Oktoberfest tent in Munich this year) and a lot of people showed up wearing traditional German clothes, singing and dancing German's volksongs. It's unbelievable to see how many Germans are living in this fast growing city.


One downside of the good old jolly Oktoberfest is of course the morning after. So we are soon off to a relaxing & pampering body massage!


Update: I actually asked my German friend at the office today and he told me that there are about 100.000 Germans are registered in the city of Shanghai today.

Back!

We were back last Sunday. It was lucky as we landed at around 5 pm and typhoon Krosa didn't start until around 9 pm and lasted until Monday night. It was heavy rain and wind on Monday and I think it was even worse than typhoon Wipha, although we didn't receive any alert in the airport about this typhoon.

Jakarta was very nice as usual. Waking up late, free days without meetings and appointments, free to do things that you feel like doing for the day. Just the getaway I need. I finally met my new niece (she was born on March this year), met some old friends, catch up of what's going on in the last 10 months since I got home. A lot of things surely have changed in there. You will see more malls happening in Jakarta, theaters have been upgraded to luxurius design but yet cheaper ticket price to beat the black market DVDs, busways (project from old governor Sutiyoso) are now everywhere in Jakarta, causing nothing good but even more traffic jams and people are complaining about increase price of consumer goods. For the last, I actually fear that economic crisis will soon hit Indonesia again soon as I was actually home during the Ramadhan month and I saw less and less people in the food court and restaurants during the breaking of the fast. In the years when I was still living in Jakarta (min. 5 years back), I remember that I had to queue long before I could actually get any sit to eat. Now it is like, come anytime you want! Shops were also not full with people although they've received their Idul Fitri's bonus and supposed to rush to buy new clothes for the festive season. I have to say that I don't have a good feeling about this.

Now I am back in Shanghai. I've managed to go through my first week back at the office. Still the same old shits, lots of emails to answer, meetings to attend, hardly find time to actually sit in my desk and really think of my work. I started to regret buying that return ticket to Shanghai!

One good thing though, we have finalised all tickets and hotels for our holiday in December. Now we need only to apply for the entry visas, in my case, I will need 4 new visas stamped in my passport! The joy of being Indonesian!