Where did you go?

After being here several days, Debbie and I decided to venture out to one of the local malls with the boys last week. I had heard a lot about this mall and having been to 2 others, I was anxious to see how this one stacked up.

It was huge. From what I understand, the mall had recently been added onto so now there were mall buildings, one on each side of the road with 2 bridges connecting them. Each building had at least 4 floors and the bridges were 2 floors each, I think. I say, "I think." because navigating between floors was crazy.

We started using the elevators because we had Jack in a stroller. When you got to the elevator there was no number by the door to tell you what level you were on to start with. Which was hard to tell for yourself because the bottom floor wasn't necessarily the first floor. Sometimes it was the a basement level and in one store they called it -1 (there was also a floor 0 before you got to 1). Anyways, when you got in the elevator, it was a guessing game as to which floor to choose to get you up just one level. And there was pressure from the elevator boy to make a choice quick.

A digression...The elevotor boy was the Indonesian in the elevator that was there to push the floor button for you. This is something you might find in a ritzy hotel, but a mall? Well, my theory is that with so many people in Jakarta needing a job and the labor so cheap, places hire people to do jobs like this just because they can and I guess to help the economy. Okay, back to the mall...

The other tricky part is that the 2 mall buildings didn't seem to have the same numbering system. And to make matters more confusing, the boys and Debbie started taking escalators while Jack and I went in the elevator. So, they would head up and I would head up but somehow we wouldn't manage to come out on the same floor. I think that this was partly due to the funny half escalators that went between the bridge floors. So, anyone confused yet? Yeah, me too.