In Reply to: Solo posted by kristy on Sunday, 14. November 2004 at 12:24 Bali Time:
Which is kind of odd considering how many hours a day I sit around on my ass.
However, one of the nicest and most helpful people I have ever met is a man named Irawan (but who prefers to be called Colin) who lives in Jakarta but works in Solo, and happens to be in the furniture trade.
His email address is irawan@anjanafurniture.net
The company website is www.anjanafurniture.net
As I said, I know little about the products or comparative prices, but I know the man has a good heart and is honest, so I'd feel bad if I didn't give him a plug.
I also know nothing about getting stuff from Solo to Bali, or from Indonesia to Australia.
And I definitly have no idea why: if you send stuff by car it is called a shipment, but if you send it by ship it is called cargo.
I assume you are returning to Bali after your tour around Java. In general, pretty much everything is cheaper in Central Java, so ideally you'd want to get quotes in Bali and then compare the prices/quality elsewhere and then figure out if it's worth transporting them back to Depasar. How do you go about getting quotes in Indonesia? It would seem odd to haggle and then jot the price on a piece of paper and say, "I might come back later" -- coz if you go back they'll know you want it and the price will mysteriously rise.
Hehe... shopping sounds like way too much hard work for me. I think I'd need a holiday after going through all that. Thank God I realised early in life that I have absolutely no taste in anything and that there are people who are not only prepared to shop for me, they'll thank me for letting them do it.
Solo can seem like a bit of a dump at first. At least, it did to me. And there are some striking differences to the rest of the country that take a bit of getting used to. One is the comparative lack of traffic -- especially in the evening it can seem like a ghost town with lights. And after hearing a million "hello meesters" elsewhere, only to find yourself pretty much ignored by local people in Solo, you can't help feeling that maybe you have a booger hanging. There's not much nightlife -- not that I could find, anyway, but a lot of the best places are probably hidden. There are some interesting cultural sites, and it's not far from where they found Java Man -- but to find the cultural and intellectual heart of the city you have to search for it. A friend of mine loves Solo mainly for this, but I'm still searching. Maybe a lot of the charm is in shopping.
Good luck, and have fun scoring bargains.