Waterbom

Our Saturday event this week was a visit to Waterbom.  There are several water parks in Jakarta that go by this name, so I asked around.  Everyone, including my driver, said the one by the airport was the best one.  At $16 per person, versus $5 at the other parks, it was also the most expensive.  Because of the price, and, probably, the time of year, we had the park  mostly to ourselves.  There was no waiting at any of the rides.

We rented a cabana by one of the pools at the back of the park so our nanny had a shaded area and a bed for our son while my wife, daughter and I ran around to the various slides.  The highlight of the park, for us, was the five storey tall inner tube ride.  Similar to "the Loop" in Singapore, only this one was mostly a vertical drop.  My daughter was too small for the ride (she's 104cm and the ride required 107cm), but no one stopped us or even measured.

We climb the five flights of stairs to the top of the slide.  My wife, daughter and I climb into the inner tube raft and the ride attendant pushes us into the tunnel.  For the first few seconds of the ride we are doing turns in a pitch black tunnel.  We emerge into the light to begin our descent down a roller-coast size drop.  We take the first of two drops and my daughter's face goes white with fear.  We take the second drop and she's not sure what to think.

When we hit the water, it slams over the side of the raft and knocks my daughter off her seat and on to my wife's feet.  As the raft comes to a stop at the end of the shallow pool, my daughter gets up and says:  "Let's do that again!!"

So we did.  She wasn't as scared the second time.

When we returned to the cabana, our nanny told us that the woman in the cabana next to ours is a famous Indonesian TV star - one of the daytime soap operas.  No one was chasing her for autographs.  Our nanny said Indonesians don't really do that.

Below are some pictures from the pool by our cabana.  As you can see, my son was able to join in the action.