Jakarta :: Indonesia

What happens when you revisit somewhere a second time, only with an expense account.

Places: Jakarta

Coolest thing I did: Spent my Sunday mornings walking (that's right, walking) down the main north-south thoroughfare of Jakarta. In the middle of the road.

Coolest thing I didn't know: Jakarta used to have a castle but the north half of the city became so diseased that by the 1800s the Dutch started demolishing it slowly, to use to build another city to the south.

I've been coming to Jakarta on and off for nearly 4 months now but this morning was the first time I felt inspired enough to try and retrace my steps through the city last time I was here. It's kind of frightening that it's been 8 years since the last time I spent 24 hours here, but I wasn't sure I'd remember much anyway. Jakarta only impressed itself on me as the poorest of the Asian megacities and I barely touched it last time.

Like many car-clogged cities in the world Jakarta has taken upon itself to shut it's main north-south street to car traffic on a Sunday morning, so people can walk, run or cycle down it as novelty. The only other place I've witnessed that happening in person was Bogota, but having spent enough time in Jakarta now I appreciate what a big deal it is here. You can't really get anywhere here on foot, and I spend a couple of hours a day in taxis getting to and from the office. You can't actually get into the shopping centers easily unless you're in a car. You can even buy a phone credit top up in a drive through. It's hard to imagine the balls it took to actually say we're doing this, but to judge by the crowds that walk down the street on a Sunday morning, people have embraced it. This is the first and only time I've encountered Indonesian MAMILs.

This morning I got inspired to walk down the side streets to go and find the backpacker slum along Jalan Jaksa where I stayed last time. I remember a hotel with windowless rooms and the usual open bars and direct-sales hawking that you get in all of the backpacker streets around Asia, but even back then Jalan Jaksa was small time. The Indonesian government limits tourists to 30 days and no-one wants to waste any of that on Jakarta, so even as a transit point it was dying a slow death.

Fast forward 8 years to this morning and it's almost sad how little is left. There are two major high rise constructions going on along the short street and many of the bars and travel agents look shuttered for good. Where as Khao San Road in Bangkok has expanded and gone slightly upmarket since the days of The Beach this place looks to be simply fading out of existence. The hotel I stayed at is still there, though I don't recall it being painted hot pink last time, so maybe they're going in for a different market these days.

After my year-and-a-month traveling to Auckland for work I was back in Sydney for a whole week before I found myself sold on to a project in Jakarta. Due to to it being too far to realistically do a week at a time I'm spending two weeks here and two back in Sydney and have been doing so since last November. However I haven't really felt inspired to write about it much, mostly because my experience of Indonesia this time is so very different to the carefree 30 days I took going through it last time.

Working somewhere is a completely different travel experience. You don't have to worry about where you're going to sleep each night for a start, and the room I'm sitting in writing this right now has a window, overlooking the swimming pool. And air conditioning. I didn't care that much back then, but of course I had nowhere to be so it didn't matter if I showed up places sometime after lunch, covered in a thin film of dry sweat. The founder of modern Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew was on record as saying he thought air conditioning was the most important invention of the 20th century and if you're trying to do business as a proper grown-up country you can see why.

You also have to be far more cautious with food and less determined to maintain fitness by walking everywhere. If you're just here traveling around you can eat your bowl of mie goering from the guy with a cart and if you get food poisoning you don't really have much to do anyway. These days it has you stuck in a hotel room working. I live in taxis these days, because even a 5 minute walk in business attire has you carrying your sweat with you. You find things to do, because on a bad day you could between 30 mins and two and a half hours to the airport.

The first time I walked into Plaza Indonesia I had a serious flash back to the last time I was here - the bright white signage of Dior blinding you as you walk in hasn't changed a bit. The difference this time is I kind of look like I belong most of the time now in the high end of Jakarta. I've sat in rooftop bars that are obviously pirated versions of the ones in Bangkok and this time no-one asks me to pay upfront. And they call me "Pak", which is like "Sir", only more so.

You spend most of your life here in taxis or shopping centers and it's a different world to be moving in the circles of the Indonesians with money, as opposed to pressed against the masses out in the streets. There is that certain superiority rich people in the West don't go in for anymore - no-one here pretends to be the Everyman if they have money. I can't get used to the sight of the women with sunglasses perched on their head, tapping away at their phones while women looking either too young or too old to be doing the job, in maids uniforms, look after their uniformly misbehaving children. We simply couldn't maintain the level of income equality where that would even be possible in Australia. I guess there is a certain level of wealth where it becomes uncouth to look obviously wealthy, but people here haven't reached that level yet.

On an earlier trip here this year there was a bombing and subsequent shootout with the police, involving some off-brand Islamist militants or other outside of a Starbucks a block north of my hotel. Today was the first time I've gone and had a look, and they've totally demolished the police post that was partially destroyed by a grenade, killing three officers in the process. What struck me was it was also the first time people in the street were actually saying "Good Morning" to me in English, just to be polite. Even with the grind of trying to be sold things constantly out in the country outside Jakarta it was nice to actually be addressed in a non-subservient way by Indonesians again. With the exception of work it seems like the average worker in places that service both rich Indonesians and white people the clientele go in for scraping and bowing. That makes me kind of uncomfortable.

I haven't been back to what's left of Old Batavia, even if they tell me they keep trying to get money to renovate more of the old Dutch colonial buildings. I guess someone cottoned on that tourists love looking at that stuff. I remember walking there last time but I can't see myself crossing several kilometers of office blocks and no footpaths to look at one square of buildings. Interestingly they are now building a subway down the middle of Jakarta, but there is now some concern it will flood during the wet season. I suggested perhaps they should just embrace that and run submarines through it?

I guess the reason why places like Jalan Jaksa are slowly dying is tourists simply have nothing to come here for. If you have to work here, you kind of make your own fun but it's not a city that lures anyone in with it's beauty or history. There's so much potential buried out there in those old colonial ruins but everyone is too busy working here. I guess a city hasn't ever recovered from using it's castle as building materials to have that kind of mentality.