went to Hotel indonesia - kempinski today. They showed us slides of how this hotel looked like back then and bla bla about how posh their 512 m2 wide presidential suite is, how theyve got 10 hangout places and stuff i don't care. didnt really listen because i just wanna take a tour immediately, to see how things have changed in this legendary hotel.


the hotel HAS changed. sadly. the first restaurant they brought us in is an ITALIAN restaurant. In front of the Casa D'oro restaurant staff welcomed us in italian. Does this is what you're looking for in a hotel named Indonesia, an italian restaurant? It seems kempinski people thinks it is. Probably they have built a hotel somewhere in France that featured an Indonesian restaurant as their main restaurant. Maybe this is what thinking side ways means in Kempinski school of hotelier.



The restaurant is full of cute chairs, actually cute chairs are all over this hotel, but again, none of them reflects indonesian culture.

far from what i expect, the room theyve been bragging about is horror to my eyes. yes, the one they say as a special room with bullet-proof window. oh my god. "the new order" marbles, the dull elevator area, the terrible work on the wallpaper along the hall, and oh, even their choice of carpet disgust me. the pr who talk nonsense, all the way from ground floor till 8th floor said the interior designer is a malaysian. well, that sort of explain why this is all going on here, no?

and then I went to the presidential room and learned that the hotel have a view direct to bunderan HI. and you know where else can you get this view? from the bath tub and your mini bar. as i see some people gathered to demonstrate at bunderan HI, from the bath tub, i thought this spot can actually be useful for exhibitionist for dummies program.



basically, there are so little spot where you can take a picture and without explaining so much people can tell you that youre in indonesia. or at least make sense of it. what this hotel has is a hybrid identity, that takes a bit of here and there, to be globally fucking trendy.

Fortunately some old stuff remained. like this beautiful sculpture...


or this one... which if im not mistaken used to be near the swimming pool area back in the days



and my favorite. a small spot in the hotel that puts a beautiful black n white pictures in frames. one of them is a photo of a bule, the person they say is hotel indonesia's first costumer, sitting in a becak, cramped besides his luggage. o god, did you remember the better days when becak can still go around HI?



anyways, among the crap i see in the hotel, this one picture kind of ease me. but i still hate the hotel. and if a name matters so much, i think Darmawangsa hotel deserved to carry the Hotel Indonesia as its name. unlike this fusion (or confusion?) type of interior hotel.

i wonder what would bung karno say about this hotel when he's still alive.
i hope he hates the marbles too.