Indonesia is too huge to explore in short period of holiday. You will need several months even years to explore Indonesia which has more than 17,000 islands in its large archipelago. You also need to prepare amount of money to visit at least in 5 biggest island in Indonesia: Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Papua. Of course, money will be nothing compared to the great pleasure from the opportunity to see all over Indonesia by your own eyes. However, for you, travellers who want to see Indonesia completely but cannot afford it due to money and time, Jakarta has a unique place and tool to give you unique experience as if you have passed whole parts of Indonesia:Taman Mini Indonesia Indah(TMII) with its skylift. You can see Indonesia from sky; and surprisingly you just need to take IDR 20,000 during weekdays or IDR 25,000 during weekends.
TMII or "Beautiful Indonesia Miniature Park", located in eastern part of Jakarta, is famous with its cable car or commonly called by travelers as kereta gantung/ skylift which has been operated since 1975. Even though it cannot be called as super modern transportation device in tourism area, visitors still use it as favorite tool to see almost whole parts of TMII. One skylift hanging in the strong well-maintained cable can be used by four people. You will “fly” about 15 – 20 metres from the ground. By using skylift, you can see miniatures of Indonesian traditional houses from various provinces, map of Indonesia in the shape of mini imitation of islands in the middle of artificial lake, and many other tourism attractions in TMII. That’s why many travellers mention that using skylift is a cheap way to “explore all over Indonesia” in very short time of vacation.
Okay, let’s begin to travel….
The first basic step to do before enjoying skylift is buying the ticket. In the ticket counter, you will see the taglines: friendly, care, helpful, and sustainable as representation of service type for sklift users and taglines: safe, comfortable, and trusted which areto ensure that skylift is really the cable car that truly represents those three taglines. After that, be ready with your breath. You need to pass several stairs to go to the upper level of TMII. During walking through the stairs, you will see red as dominant color of that area. Maybe it has psychological meaning to cheer up the people who may tend to feel tired in walking on stairs. When you have been to the top, you will be greeted by an officer to guide you to enter the skylift and he will make sure the door of skylift has been precisely closed (the system of door closing is skylift is still manual). At a glance, you may see how skylift works since that area is like the terminal as the center of all skylifts operated. The terminal has big machine as controller of all the movements of all skylifts.
