theworldisgrey

Indonesia: Jakarta

Finally back to writing again. Now for part two of my Indonesia trip, Jakarta. I spent most of my time while in Indonesia in Jakarta. Its an interesting city, take old, new, rich, and poor, put it into a blender and you get Jakarta. The city has 12-13 million people, making it the largest city and capitol of Indonesia. Weather was generally hot, it was dry for most of the time I was there, but in the last few days, the city had some of the worst floods of 5 years.

I stayed at my fiance’s parents house in South Jakarta. Just on the edge and not far from Depok a suburb of Jakarta. The neighborhood is middle class by Indonesian standards. Houses are very tightly packed together, and gated. The streets through the neighborhood are hardly wide enough for one car, but yet it gets much more traffic than that. Most houses don’t have much for a front or back yard, and if they do, its usually tiled. Helps drain the water during the rainy season. Throughout the neighborhoods, there are small shops, called warungs, food stalls, and restaurants. I didn’t really have the courage to eat as the locals do as far as that goes, but I probably will try it next time I’m there.

Getting around in Jakarta is quite interesting. I didn’t ride any buses since I had access to a car while there. The only roads that are even close to western standards, are the toll roads that go around the city and too the airport and the streets in the business/wealthy districts. Everything was generally too small for the amount of traffic it handled. Every drives small cars, SUV’s or motorcycles. The biggest vehicles on the road are buses. Most signs and road markers are more or less a suggestion, there are no cops to pull you over. Even roadwork that has the entire road dug up, doesn’t stop traffic (floods don’t either, more on that later). With this chaos, getting anywhere can take quite awhile. But amazingly, I saw no accidents while I was there, better than rush hour on American freeways

The city itself is a mix. Modern gas stations and convince stores next to warungs converted from peoples houses. Food stalls outside of 5 star restaurants. Supermarkets and open air food markets. Bmw’s and Yamaha motorcycles. Modern malls, selling counterfeit designer goods. Polluted air, but with beautiful parks. Jakarta is diverse in pretty much every way. By the rivers you have slums with people who can barely make enough to survive. Downtown is as modern as any city, but available only to foreigners and the wealthy. You can by a meal for 25 cents from a food stall, or $25 from a high end restaurant.

I visited some of the malls in Jakarta and Depok. Generally with the lack of space, malls are built upwards. There are malls for every income class. Podok Indah for the expatriates and wealthy, Blok M Plaza for the middle class. You can find places even cheaper. Most malls, supermarkets and office buildings have their own security checking your car for bombs or other contraband when you enter the lot. Parking is rarely free, but cheap relative to what you would pay to park in downtown Minneapolis.

My time in Jakarta was mostly spent with my fiancee, but we did go to visit some of the tourist attractions. Monas is 450 foot monument in central Jakarta. Sort of Indonesia’s version of the statue of liberty. A large park surrounds the monument. Nearby the monument is the National Museum. Relics from all over Indonesia are stored in a dutch colonial style building. Although the items contained in the museum are very interesting, the museum suffers from poor facilities and lacks good presentation.

During the last few days I was in Jakarta. The city was hit by incredible amount of rain. Some parts of the city were under 10 feet of water. I was generally unaffected where I stayed, but roads throughout the city were under quite a bit of water. Including toll roads and roads throughout the business district. That didn’t stop most of the traffic however. What would have been about an hour drive to the airport, became a 2-3 hour ordeal as the main toll road to the airport was under several feet of water. At one of the toll points, we waited for an airport bus to take us the rest of the way to the airport.

I found the city to be quite fascinating. I will likely be going back later this year once the visa goes through for my fiancee. But thats it for part two of my Indonesia trip.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 8th, 2007 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Life, Travel, Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.