The First Day in Indonesia

After numerous stops (Boston –JFK-Anchorage-Taipei-Jakarta), almost two days since I left Boston, I finally arrived in Indonesia. There are many things I need to adjust to, such as the hot and humid air, switch of time zone, and the numerous 0s I have to count for money (1 USD = 9000 Rp).

After lengthy waiting for landing visa and luggage, I walked out of customs one hour after our landing, but nowhere was I able to find the local agent I expected to meet. Luckily, it turned out that our assumed reservation is at the airport hotel, which is just above the terminal. But the bad news is, there’s no reservation for me here tonight! I guess my local agent must have been suffering from jet lag.

So I decided to venture into the downtown area to enjoy my only day in the city. I got a cheap hotel called Sparks in a low-end section near the old city. It turned out to be very nice inside, and they are very thoughtful – not only do they welcome guests with tasty drinks in the lobby, they also supply ample condoms of various flavors and lubricants in each room!

Thoughtful Supplies in my Hotel Room

Jakarta is a big city. The urban sprawl is comparable to the major cities in the world, and the modern part is just like any metropolitan cities in the western world. Though drivers do cut through the traffic at will like they do in China, they do respect police a lot! For example, the taxi driver dare not stop to pick up clients in departure zone at airport, so I ended up jumping into a moving taxi when no policeman was in sight.

Poor and Rich of Jakarta, view from Hotel Sparks

My hotel is located on a busy local road, like the one that crosses an old farmer’s market, such as Xin Jiang Village, in Beijing 10 years ago or even worse. The surrounding area looks like residence for a poor labor class, which is in sharp contrast to the modern high rises in the back drop when looking out from my hotel window. Despite my initial nervousness about safety concerns in Indonesia, I ventured out for dinner after 6pm, and it was already dark outside. To be safe, I didn’t even carry my camera.

I actually felt quite comfortable and soon relaxed while I carefully picked my steps over dirty puddles, holes, and bumps, to navigate through food/merchant stands, random round-ups of stuff or properties on side walk, and intimidating traffic that was not afraid to cut by within just an inch of pedestrians. Each side of the street is lined with all kinds of not-so-tidy shops and street venders, and numerous motorbikes cut between the traffic to make the two-lane street wide enough for 10 motor mobiles. My biggest challenge was crossing the street, which takes a lot of courage, patience, and luck among this no-rule no-light river of traffic.

Three-Wheeled Taksi in Jakarta

What impressed me most in this area is the creativeness and pervasiveness of the “taksi” system here. At a hotel or airport, you can see the standard taxis like those in any other city; then there are numerous three-wheeled little motor carriage that can stuff in 4 or more people in a space as big as one square meter; yet, there still are numerous motorbikes providing individual “taksi” services. When I was in Russia, I was afraid to look at men on the street because I was afraid of arousing troubles with those ubiquitous drunk guys; Here, I also had to avoid looking at men on the street, because almost every brief glance at them would get an offer for “taksi”!

This entry was posted on November 4, 2007 at 12:22 pm and is filed under Carstensz Pyramid Blog. 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.