$200 Hotel in South Jakarta - Is it worth it? 🇮🇩

I finally left North Jakarta, switching my $40 budget hotel there for a more luxury $200 hotel in Jakarta's south. The budget hotel I stayed in was the Holiday Inn Express, which is connected to the Emporium Pluit Mall. It was very basic but in my opinion was pretty good value at just $40 a night, when you consider that it includes breakfast and comes with the convenience of being able to come and go from the mall so easily. I was eating my meals in that mall every day, and on my final day I visited 'Taliwang Bali' a Balinese chain restaurant that I'd been meaning to try for a while. I tried their signature 'Nasi Bali Mbok Jegeg' which is a platter of all sorts of food, and I enjoyed the variety of that. I'd never visited South Jakarta in my past trips, but knew it was the most upmarket area of the city, with loads of nice hotels, condominiums and a central business district where the country's biggest companies have their HQs. Driving into that area from North Jakarta, I could see a big difference. Everything looked so new and modern, with so many fancy tall buildings, and the streets without the skyscrapers are lined with mansion houses. The hotel I stayed at was called 25hours Hotel The Oddbird. It was the first time I stayed in a '25Hours' hotel, or even heard of that brand, but it's part of Accor and apparently they have a hotel in most of the major European cities. Their concept is that they reject cookie-cutter standardised hotel designs, and customise their lobby and rooms to the local area and culture. That's what caught my eye when I was browsing for hotels in the South Jakarta area, the design of their rooms really stood out. After spending thousands of nights in hotels over my life, any hotel that offers something a bit different is interesting to me. Just like my budget hotel in North Jakarta, this hotel was connected to a mall, but this one, Ashta Mall, was super upscale, just like the hotel. After settling in to my new home I went out for dinner in the nearby Blok M area that's supposed to be some kind of trendy hangout area with loads of viral food. Viral in that it's super popular, not viral in that it's going to send me straight to the toilet, hopefully. I enjoyed some Bebek Goreng at a restaurant called Uma Oma Cafe, where the concept is that it's supposed to recreate the comforting feeling of visiting your grandmother's house, with traditional Indonesian home-cooked comfort food and vintage interior / vibe. The Bebek Goreng there was very tasty but there wasn't much meat on the portion of duck so I left still feeling hungry. I wanted to try Rendang, a popular Indonesian slow cooked beef dish, and had a recommendation for a good place to get it, but when I turned up at that restaurant it was unfortunately closed. Then at a big food court I saw "Nasi Goreng Rendang" on a sign and thought that would be worth a try, but to my surprise it didn't contain any beef, just seafood. So I still haven't had anything close to a proper "Rendang" meal - the nearest thing I've had is the microwaved version on a train a few years ago. For dessert I visited an ice cream parlour called Mack's Creamery that has all sorts of weird ice cream flavours, including candied beef. You wouldn't think that would be nice at all, but it was tasty enough that I ordered myself a scoop after enjoyed the free sample. The next day I was woken up early by the awful construction noise outside my hotel and wished I had just stayed in the budget hotel in North Jakarta. The 25Hours hotel was nice and all but I need 8 hours of comfortable sleep, otherwise I'm not having a happy stay. I did a bit of sightseeing in the local area. There's not much to see there, as all the historical stuff is in the north in and around the old Batavia area, but there was a cool police museum and an army museum that was well worth checking out. And I checked out of this vlog with a visit to a nice Unagi restaurant. There's loads of nice restaurants and especially Japanese food in the South Jakarta area, as people there have more money and exotic tastes. Let me know which hotel you would have preferred to stay in. 0:00 $40 Hotel in North Jakarta 14:55 Balinese Restaurant 31:51 $200 Hotel in South Jakarta 56:35 Ashta District 8 Mall 1:05:10 Blok M Trendy Area 1:27:43 Fried Duck Meal 1:51:01 Nasi Goreng Rendang 2:06:51 Weird Flavour Ice Cream 2:15:46 Awful Construction Noise 2:21:18 Police Museum 2:56:06 Es Doger Local Dessert 3:01:37 Army Museum 3:23:56 Ice Coconut 3:31:57 Unagi Restaurant 💗 Help the channel grow by liking, commenting and subscribing. If you want to be extra nice please share my video with your friends on social media. 📱 Instagram:   / daleroxxu   📱 Facebook:   / daleroxxu   📱 TikTok:   / dalephilipvlogs   📱 X: https://x.com/Daleroxxu