The Indonesian Way

November 5, 2007 by Lei.

Shortly before 5am, I woke up to the prayer chanting in the neighborhood.

I finally studied the city map to orient myself, and called a taxi to visit the famous Plaza Indonesia, an upscale mall in the heart of downtown. The flawless design and luxurious decoration, the shining display of jewelry and brand name merchants would qualify this mall as a high end mall in the US as well. Well, my main purpose was to come to have lunch at Sari Ratu, an Indonesian restaurant recommended by my colleague Petty.

Plaza Indonesia, a modern shopping mall in Jakarta downtown

The moment I sat down, several waiters came up and dumped nearly 20 plates of various dishes on my table, including a large bowl of rice that was enough for 10 people, then left me with just one smiling waiter, who was holding out a menu to me. “These are all for me?” I can’t believe it! He nodded with a smile. “You are not joking with me?” He sincerely replied “No”. I took a quick glance at the menu, then pushed back to him, “Then I don’t need to order anything. This is too much for me already!” He still insisted on handing me the menu and pointed at the prices on the menu. I finally figured out that he does not understand English that well, so I resorted to guessing plus gesture language to communicate.

It turns out that they serve lunch in the opposite way Chinese dim sum is served. Instead of you picking what you want from a cart, you choose what you don’t want on the table and tell them to take it away. Out of my habitual curiosity, I picked dishes that I never had, including a plate of brain! “What animal’s brain?” I asked. “Ah, yes, animal.” He was happy to catch the key word. “Is it pig? Sheep? Cow?” He shook his head and tried hard to think, then finally found the right word, “Yes, Beef!” “Ah, cow! Mad Cow?” I jokingly asked him. Again, he happily nodded his head. Even though I knew he probably didn’t get what I was joking about, it felt kind of scary to me, especially since I just read “Deadly Feast” a few weeks ago. I took a bite from each of the two pieces of brain in the plate, and calculated my chance of catching Mad Cow disease. The thoughts made me less excited about the dish.

Once the city wakes up, its traffic seems to be in rush-hour mode until late night. When I hired a taxi to go back airport in the mid afternoon, the highway was jammed all the way from the city to airport. So my taxi driver took some local roads to bypass. Now I finally see why Indonesians have so many motorbikes. A two lane two way local road is often monopolized by the vehicles from the dominating direction. In this case, there are three or four outbound vehicles on this little two lane local road so that only motorbikes can pass from the opposite direction. Occasionally a car that tried to come from the other direction would cause deadlock for a while. But drivers are really skillful too. They often quickly jump onto the side walk of the opposite direction to make room for the opposite traffic, then continue back in the wrong lane.

Jakarta Traffic

Traffic also causes bad air. Like many cities in China, Jakarta is a very populated city with a large urban/suburban area, but the public transportation appears to be very limited or not efficient. In this big city, nothing is really close to other things. Thus, the motorbike is as popular as the bicycle is in China, and many people cover their face with a bandana while riding; so do traffic police and workers at toll booths.

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