Hot Java
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday April 12, 1996
WHEN you look down from a plane at the great curling grey nurse that is Jakarta, there don't seem to be any green spaces, let alone any airfields. Gradually one becomes apparent through the murk: Sukarno-Hatta. We wouldn't consider christening Badgerys Creek airport Howard-Costello, but once you stop relating everything to back home you can begin to enjoy Jakarta.
On first impression, it might have seemed wiser to join the other tourists heading for Bandung, Jogjakarta, the south coast or Bali/Lombok. The lights in the wisma, or guest-house, are dim, people stare at you from the shadows and the wallpaper is straight out of Barton Fink, the most depressing film ever made. Outside, it sounds as if someone has turned on the tap in a giant public laundry. The rain clouds that gave the city its greyness are emptying.
Jakarta is a morning city and it gets under way at 5 am. The mornings are usually bright and clear, especially if you are staying in Menteng, the central but beautiful suburb graced by President Soeharto himself.
Jalan Imam Bonjol is one of the great boulevards of the world. Wide and light, with rows of camphor laurels giving regular pools of shade, the street is lined with steep-roofed, two-storey houses, mainly brick and gables or plaster and veranda, with paved front yards and florid brass gates adorned by a thousand slanted moons. It combines the best features of Amsterdam and Cairo, right down to the food stalls and canal a block away. The great waves of recent years, the yuppification of the '90s, have left a positive mark on Jalan Imam Bonjol.
Not every suburb of Jakarta has this Dutch/Arabian charm, it has to be said, and the modern Indonesian love affair with the bag of cement has not produced too much in the way of beauty. The city is very flat, too, which only helps in the sense that you can't see these modern horrors from the older suburbs like Menteng.
While many embassies have moved from Menteng to the bright lights of Jalan Rasuna Said, many remain, such as the Egyptian, Saudi Arabian and the New Zealand (and yes, the New Zealanders call this place "Minting"). There are a lot of other expatriates here, too, but not so many tourists who have come - voluntarily - to experience the delights of the Indonesian capital. Perhaps they have heard about its traffic.
"Wear plenty of block-out during the month of Ramadan," an expat told me. I couldn't work out why if Muslims went on a fast I would get sunburnt. "It's like this," he explained. "They all go home to their villages for the month, the city here is deserted, the number of cars is dramatically reduced, there's much less air pollution haze, the sun can finally get through, and bingo! It's red nose day."
Despite all the traffic and its problems - every chauffeur I met had a bad cough - much of the life of Jakarta is centred on the streets. I was fascinated by the separate society that thrived there ... the outdoor barber with a bench on the footpath and a sheet of plastic for a roof was calmly snipping away at heads of thick black hair. There are some shops, but not many. Everything you could want to buy comes past eventually, sold by a street vendor on wheels. As they pedal along, they bang on a hollow stick or ring a bell - a different sound for each product. After a few days I didn't even have to look up from my copy of the Jakarta Post; I knew from the sound whether they were selling bread or umbrellas.
Walking about these streets in hot but not unbearable weather produces, of course, the predictable armpit avalanche, so I took a taxi to where I was going and saved walking for the journey home, where I could hop straight into the shower. The footpaths have improved since the Sukarno era, when some pedestrians were "swallowed up by the ground". It is still no place for the white-shoe brigade, however. The red dust, which becomes red mud after rain, is waiting for those walkers who stray off the straight and narrow.
If you know where you're going, the train is the best and quickest way to get around, especially to an outer suburb.
It takes two hours by car to get to Depok - the Baulkham Hills of Jakarta - and 25 minutes by train. The only inconvenience is that they can get crowded, and every carriage is "business class" - ie, vendors come bustling down the aisle selling something every minute or so.
The best thing about the streets of Jakarta is that they are safe, as well as friendly. There are no pubs, no yobbos, no fights. Everyone looks at you and most call out "Hello, Mister!" Crocodile Dundee would be right at home here ... there is no New York froideur. If, however, you are fond of saying "What are you lookin' at?" or an Ian Botham-style "Eyes front!", you will not enjoy Indonesia. Staring is not considered rude, nor is laughing openly at someone. I brought the house down when I appeared in public wearing shorts. Despite the climate, only school children wear shorts, so seeing an adult dressed as a child was what seemed funny to them, not my legs - although that could have been the icing on the cake.
Although everyone is friendly, this is a Muslim society with a similar larrikin/wowser duality to Australia. The women are more reserved, do not smoke in public, and the pretty ones look at you coldly as if to say "I know exactly what you Western men want - and you're not going to get it!" The Indonesian people never show anger in public, having been brought up on the "halus" principles of harmony, and they regard many Westerners as not only decadent but angst-ridden. When I missed a train and swore - under my breath - the other people on the platform stared at me with pity. I soon learned to "hang halus".
Two groups of Indonesians are exempt from the general praise about their politeness: queuers and taxi drivers. There are signs everywhere saying "Mohon antri" (please queue) and even some sheep rails to encourage the practice, but you will soon find that you are not dealing with instinctive queuers. There is no penalty for "use of the elbow," either, so be warned. As for the taxi drivers ... if you can imagine a combination of Adolf Hitler, Squizzy Taylor and Arjuna Ranatunga ...
The phrase "He only speaks taxi-cab English" does not apply in Jakarta. None of them speaks English, and they don't even know "right", "left" or "next door to Dunkin' Donuts". Hardly anyone speaks good English in Indonesia, and tourists will need their trusty phrase book at all times. Even the English speakers are hard to understand, as they give equal stress to each syllable. "Capacity" comes out as "Cape Assity"; "deposit" is "depot-sit" and "lobby" is, on one level, "Low B".
When some locals were showing me around I asked if I could stop off at the hotel and change my shirt. I must have taken longer than they were used to for this operation, because the phone rang and the desk clerk said, "Your friends are waiting for you in the Low-B". Was "Low B" the lower basement or something? No, it was lobby, but that was where I left them ... then I realised. "Your friends are waiting for you in the lobby" means "Hurry up, you dickhead!"
The English language daily, the Jakarta Post, is an excellent paper and indispensable reading every morning. Apart from telling you what's on and what is happening in the world, it fills in the gaps about what is happening in Indonesia. For example, I saw on TV an interview with the "Smiling General", President Soeharto, who seemed to be pretty pleased with the state of things. Next day in the Post, it turned out he was giving an almighty bucketing to opposition politico Sri Bintang. "Bintang" is the Indonesian for "star", but my guess was that particular Bintang would not be a star for long.
The writing in the Post is accurate and concise, and is let down only by its TV guide, which regularly listed "Mighty Morphine Power Rangers", "Louis and Clark" and James Mason in "The Dessert Fox". You have to be quick, though, to get your copy of the Post; within 24 hours newspapers are recycled or are lining beds in the poorer suburbs.
The other major source of information is the Insight Guide to Jakarta, which is "written and presented" by Janet Boileau. This travelled with me everywhere, becoming something between a companion and a crutch, as I did the rounds of all the sights. As Jakarta is a capital city, there were a lot of them.
At Sunda Kelapa, on the waterfront, I went to see the giant-prowed Buginese cargo ships from Makassar, and I was not disappointed. These magnificent vessels are used to transport timber around the archipelago and I was marvelling at their design when I was approached by a hawker. Would I like to buy some postcards? No, I wouldn't. Well, then, how about some spoons. I had plenty of spoons, I told him, and continued my impersonation of someone with a death adder in his pocket. He looked at me without affection. "Are you Australian?" he asked. I reflected that Australians like to think of themselves as the Irish of the Pacific, but others see them as the Scots of the Antarctic.
Sunda Kelapa also boasts the Bahari Maritime Museum. Located in a giant Dutch dockside warehouse, it offers the most complete vision of what Indonesia was like when it was the Netherlands East Indies. The photographs of shipboard life during "the Dutch times" (which ended in 1949) are unforgettable.
A DIFFERENT perspective is provided by the Merdeka Museum in central Jakarta. The long diorama depicting life in the archipelago since the dinosaurs portrays the Dutch as colonialist oppressors, but this is perhaps what you would expect when you know that "Merdeka" is the Indonesian for independence.
The Adam Malik Museum in Menteng is more neutral, as you would expect in the home of a former ambassador and foreign minister. As is usual in Indonesia, the art is patchy but the pottery is interesting and the ceramics come from - you guessed it - the Island of Ceram. For more lively arts, the 55-piece Jakarta Symphony Orchestra does a great job. It's certainly the only way you'll get to hear any Bizet in this part of the world. In drama, Theatre SAE is the most powerful and original performance group I have seen for many years. It actually lives up to the cliche and "blows your mind".
Other forms of recreation are not favoured by the locals, and Indonesia ranks with Japan as nations of more than 100 million without a medal prospect to their name. There are hardly any sporting facilities and I contented myself with playing cricket under lights at the Australian Embassy grounds every Wednesday. This was most enjoyable, especially when followed by satay and chips ("the multicultural meal") and a cold Bintang (beer) at the Platypus Club. The expats, by the way, love Jakarta and the opportunities (on all fronts) it presents. I found out all kinds of local lore from them, including the reason for the dim lighting that makes so many interiors needlessly sinister. For a start it saves money in a poor country to use less lighting, and the Indonesians are pioneers of the five-watt bulb. They also siphon off other people's supplies. Electricity detectives have been employed to stop this, but they are often ineffective and retire rich.
On other evenings, a cold Bintang at 6 pm is pretty mandatory, and the staple food, chicken and rice, is more than edible. Public health is in much better shape than it was in the glorious but impractical Sukarno era. Everyone washes their hands and drinks bottled water and the restaurants are generally clean and safe. Just the same, I didn't see any constipation remedies on the shelves at the apotiks (chemists). Nervous yuppies stick to the Sogo department store and restaurant complex and never leave home, er, I mean never have a problem.
Not a great deal happens in Jakarta at night, as everyone is exhausted by 7 o'clock. But the next morning you are sure to see the unique sights that make the city so special - the brooding realist statues of Sukarno and his Steady-Eddie deputy, Mohammad Hatta, in Proclamation Park, a flock of bantams roosting in a building site, a collie (!) dog being walked past the giant paintings of Suropati Park, the crafty gecko that lives under the toaster in the dining room, the sign offering "cat duco" ("cat" means paint), the sound of wailing imams and howzats in the Wednesday night air and the bright calls of "Selamat pagi" (Good morning) that deflect your guilt and anger at the poverty. Jakartans do not say "the rest of Indonesia ... it's just camping out" yet, but they might in the future.
© 1996 Sydney Morning Herald