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Lounge Review: Pura Indah Lounge Jakarta Airport (CGK)

It took me about an hour to get to the airport from the Grand Hyatt by taxi. I was flying JAL out of CGK, and at check-in, I was told that JAL uses the Pura Indah lounge.

Entrance to the lounge
Entrance to the lounge

There were a lot of different lounges at the airport, including a Citibank lounge. I didn’t realize that Citibank has its own lounges, but I also remembered seeing tons of Citibank advertising and deals at Plaza Indonesia, the mall connected to the Grand Hyatt. It seemed that many of the lounges in the international area of the terminal I was in (Terminal 2D) were accessible via Priority Pass, including this lounge that JAL (and many other airlines) uses.

The lounge has separate first and business class sections, but first class is just a room that’s less crowded. There was tons of seating and not that many people using the first class side.

Lounge seating
Lounge seating
Japanese newspapers for JAL passengers
Japanese newspapers for JAL passengers

In terms of food, there were a number of sweet options like cakes, pastries, fried bananas, and desserts wrapped in banana leaf, but savory options were limited to some chicken curry puffs, penne with eggplant, and soups. I thought the fried bananas were pretty tasty, but I’m a fat kid at heart and a sucker for most fried and/or sweet things.

The food options overall looked a little sad. It’s still a better food selection that you’d get at many US domestic lounges (although that seems to be changing), but because there weren’t that many passengers on the first class side, the food turnover was slow. So it was a bit unclear how long some of the food had been sitting there.

Drinks and refrigerated foods
Drinks and refrigerated foods
Sandwiches
Sandwiches
Pastries
Pastries
Soups
Soups
Fried bananas and banana leafs
Fried bananas and banana leaf desserts
More hot food
Hot savory food (chicken curry puff and eggplant penne)

The wifi in the lounge was quite slow, and there weren’t enough power outlets in the lounge, so it’s not a great place to sit and do work. There is a shower in the bathroom that looked reasonably clean, but I didn’t see any towels, so you might have to ask for those. But it didn’t seem like the shower got a ton of use.

Shower
Shower

Overall, this lounge is disappointing for a lounge at the airport of a major Asian city, but it’s better than waiting in the terminal. It’s also nice that it’s accessible via Priority Pass.

5 Comments

  1. Agree this is not a great or even acceptable lounge for this part of the world, but the airport terminal itself is totally Third World and hardly becoming of a major city like Jakarta. Then again, Jakarta is a sprawling urban disaster area, one of the worst developing cities on the planet. There is nothing to commend this dump to any visitor so why should the airport be any different? I’ve used this lounge and, yes it is better than waiting in the general gate area, but compared to other airports/lounges in the region (KUL/SIN/BKK) it garners a score of about 2 out of 10. Even makes LGA look spectacular! Other than as a (Status) Mileage Run, don’t know why anyone would bother with this destination?

  2. could you write up a piece of what to do in this city or is it true to what the commenter said is true and the city is *****it

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