Souvik thinks I’ve been trashing the city, but I don’t mean to, really. It’s just that I wish the dull season would pass soon, and we could settle down in the apartment, have our passports back from whichever office they are being pushed around, and hit the hotspots of Indonesia. It’s painful to read the Lonely Planet, without making instant weekend plans.

In any case, last weekend we went to Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, which translates as Beautiful Mini Park Indonesia (?). The park is not mini, it is sprawling across hundreds of acres, with loads of amusement activities. Being summer and blistering hot, we stuck to the cool comforts of the car, only venturing out for a cable car ride across the park, to get a nice view of everything we planned to skip.

Yeah, we’ve saved the ethnic housing and princess castle and swan boats for appropriate visitors (Reva, Bhavna, Shweta, Aparna, please note). What we did see was the bird park and the reptile park. It was such a relief after the concrete jungle we live in! Souvik & I shamelessly posed with every bird that was willing to perch!

We weren’t so brave with the reptiles, keeping a very safe distance from the friendly, (sedated, I believe) Komodo dragon:

We also refused offers of wrapping this python around our necks, but faced our fears by gently running a finger over a few scales:

If you’re feeling all creepy, I’m leaving you with some more pictures of birds – gorgeous colors; I hope Baba gets inspired to paint a few.