During long weekend in Mar 2012, my mother with her friend, my sisters and myself visited Mekarsari Fruit Garden JI. Raya Cileungsi – Jonggol Km. 3, Cileungsi, Bogor, West Jakarta. We stayed in my sister's home at Raffles Hill, near to the place, anyway around 10:00 we still experienced traffic jam to reach the garden, my friend already waited for us in front of the gate. The entrance fee was IDR 15.000/person
The area was quite huge, there were some trains with car engine and wheels, to bring the visitors around the place, a guide would inform us the plant that we passed by during the ride. Before riding the train, we bought ticket to see Pongo show where there was an interactive movie with audiences. The Pongo monkey in the movie will call and talk to the audience facilitate by MC. Children would love to see it, some children would be selected from the audiences to dance together with some beautiful teenagers to perform in front of the audience. No food, drink and photo are allowed during the show.
Train ride is a good option to explore the most comprehensive tropical fruit garden with plant types around ± 78 family, 400 species & 1438 varieties. If you join the train ride, you will stop in 5 different stations. In each station you could change your ticket with some souvenirs, most of them are fruit. The first station was Melon garden, in the picture it shows different shape of Melon, unfortunately we only saw the normal round melon in the greenhouse, there were some slices of sweet melon that visitors could try. The first stamp could be changed for a small bottle of fresh juice.
The second stop was at snake fruit garden, there were many variants of snake fruit. The second stamp could be changed to 1 basket of snake fruit, the basket was very cute. My mom's friend loves it and she would like to take home to Surabaya for souvenir. The tree was full of thorn, so you have to be careful to take picture near the snake fruit tree. In this garden we found a real long green snake on the tree.
Star fruit garden was our next stop, here you also could buy other fruit such as papaya. You also could taste the very sweet star fruit, the third stamp was changed with one big star fruit. The train left us here around an hour, the weather was nice, some benches were provided for the visitors, also a couple restrooms. We sat on the bench enjoy the breeze, scenery and also eating our fruits while waiting for the train.
On the way to the next stop, we passed by the marvelous Mekarsari office with water fall. The huge lake with many air attraction was our next destination. There were live music at the field next to the lake. On the other side there were some children playground for small outbound. Some sellers were also available here providing snack, drinks, also souvenirs. Giant Bubble, Floating Donuts, boat, canoe and aqua bike were some options that you could select to go around the lake.
It's been around 14:00 o'clock and we were starving, we had to walk along the lake to reach the train to go to the last stop. At the last stop we could change our stamp with the souvenirs (sandals). There were some food stall crowded with visitors, we prefer to select KFC which's already having a standard for taste and quality. To stay overnight there was Leo’s Tree House located in the middle of the garden. The 5th stamp could be exchanged to a fruit plant that we could bring home to be planted at home. On the way to the parking lot, there are many fresh fruit stalls, there was also art stage with 2 persons play pantomime.
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