JAKARTA, INDONESIA

2016-04-12, 13:56, JASON

BUDGET, STAY: SIX DEGREES HOSTEL

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It's one of the cheapest places you can get to from Singapore. But, as sufferers of proximity syndrome where we never end up going to places near us, we decided to cure ourselves. Jakarta here we come!

The reputation of Jakarta is that there's not much to do. A lot of people brush it off as a main transit point to more interesting parts of the island. While I agree with the latter point, it definitely has a few sites to offer as well as some of the best street food we've had in Southeast Asia. Spend a weekend here, at least, and you'll see. There is a lot of colonial history, as well as a rich history of different tribes and ethnicities given the fractioning of the country into small islands. As it also boasts one of the world's largest populations, I definitely think Jakarta, and Indonesia at large has a ton to offer.

Flying into the airport, we find the bus terminal Damri and take it into Gambir station. Probably one of the smoothest transfers ever. Clearly marked signs, easy ticketing, and jump on a bus. Traffic at this time is bustling: 6:30pm night commute back home. Took us about 1.5 hours to get into the main center, and we got our fair share of Jakarta traffic in us. However, it's not so bad, you get to soak in various parts of the city as the bus rolls by. Getting to Gambir station, it's 2km more to the hostel. Naturally, we walked. By the time we get into the hostel, it's already pushing 9 and we are starving, so we ask for a recommendation on a place to eat. She says, "There's a 24h place across the street that sells good stuff." Taking her advice, we end the night with some good Indonesian dinner. Soto soup with stomach, Ayam (chicken) something, and another dish we don't know the name of. It was all in Bahasa. Great food, and great sauce mixing and flavors. One of the chicken dishes tasted like sweet and sour pork; I'm a big fan of that too. I wonder if Panda Express stole the recipe off of these guys.

Since Jakarta's all about the food, we've kept a running food diary here all-inclusive of ridiculous pics. We start off relatively normal: 

Returning across the street (which, actually takes a bit of time since the traffic here moves at varying paces and it's hard to jay-walk), we went back for a Bintang Beer at the rooftop bar and humbly planned our next day.

We departed the next day at 7:30 to be sure we could get it all in. Starting off Cikini Raya, the street our hostel was on, we walked back to Gambir station. There are some statues sprinkled around the place so we checked out our first "Farmer Statue" which commemorates the farmers that fought for Indonesian independence. A bit gendered in the statue, with the damsel and the hero. The weird part was you couldn't go up near the monument, it was all fenced off. Actually, this was a trend in Jakarta. We constantly had to ask for the "Masuk (entry)" since it's oddly gated off everywhere. Anyway, we continued on north towards the National Monument area. Along the way, we also came across the art museum. You can spot these things from a mile away. Usually in the S. E. Asia setting it's the building that looks the most colonial. That, topped up with a weird sculpture in the front, then you have an art museum. We're not particular art enthusiasts, so we just walked around the grounds and snapped up some pics. After, we continued up north.

Indonesia is one of the worlds largest population holders, and given its Muslim majority, it also houses a majority of the world's Muslims. As a result, you're not without a mosque. But, they go all out. It's not only a mosque, it's Istiqlal Mosque, the largest one in Southeast Asia. It's quite difficult to comprehend exactly how big it is. You're standing outside admiring the huge marble columns, and then you go inside and it's such a tight, small community. The huge, central praying room, wide halls, and 60s style architecture give it a historic touch. The mineret is unique, and so is the drum that they beat prior to Azan (call to prayer). Children are sitting together in traditional Indonesian Muslim garb -- separated by gender -- and having a Quran study session. There is a religious school inside that takes children from K-12. It was like a small village. 

The other interesting this is despite a Muslim, Indonesian majority, there are places where Christianity and minorities pop up. On the former, directly across a bridge from the Istiqlal Mosque is the Jakarta Cathedral, boasting your traditional churchy exterior. We went and there was a wedding that day so we couldn't go inside, but interesting enough it was a Chinese-Indonesian wedding (more on the Chinese later). Still, we could explore the grounds a bit and found it to offer all your general church staples: an outdoor praying shrine to Mary, a nice garden, good craftsmanship of stone, and, I guess you could also say a wedding. In an attempt to religiously harmonize Indonesia, Soekarno, the "George Washington" figure in Indonesian politics (for whom the airport is named), had the mosque built next to the church in its conception. Also, he had a Christian architect design the mosque. He must've had a motive to completely dwarf the church in size.

Stepping out of the church, we found ourselves near a public park, with a big statue in the middle so we take a look. It takes us a good 15 minutes to actually get in to the park since we can't find the entrance. Usually, parks are not fenced off but maybe for reasons of traffic control, only one entrance is open. When we find it, we go in. The statue is a man breaking free from chains (it looks like me after I've taken a number 2 after not being able to find a toilet for so long), which celebrates the annexation of West Papua to the Indonesian country from the Dutch. Apparently, that caused problems of their own, but let's a-politicize it and take the statue for what it is: a guy that was so happy he ripped his chains (and clothes) off. We've all been there -- the happy part, not necessarily the man or chains bit. 

Around the area is also the famous "Monas" area, one of those mashup inspired areas standing for the Monumen Nasional. It was built after Sokarno's death and is the most important symbol for Indonesian Independence. You can queue up to go to the top but we hadn't time for that. What we did instead was spent a legitimate 30 or 40 minutes looking into the entry into the square, almost having to circle the perimeter, and then taking another 30 minutes to walk from one leg of the square to the actual monument, only to find it fenced off within the park, and having the entry on the other side. By then, I think walking in the heat was getting to us so we just snapped a few pics and said, that was nice, we saw it. A half effort is still considered one, right?? Funny enough, this place is often called "Sokarto's Last Erection" since it was built after he died. Biggest erection I ever saw. Pointiest one too.

Not too short thereafter we had learned from our mistakes and instead of cutting down one side of the park directly to the national museum, which we assumed was not possible, we were smart enough to exit the park and go the long way. Getting to the national museum, we didn't see any exit in the Monas park area so we knew we had done well. You celebrate the small things.

The museum was nuts. You think, "What good history does Indonesia have to offer?" and then find yourself quickly correcting yourself. There are a bunch of early history rock statues for when the Buddhists were still around and before modern Islam took place. Then, you actually get inside to all the different halls and there are exhibitions among exhibitions about the hundreds of tribes in Indonesia. Not just on Java island, but, like, all of Indonesia. You have a country of 18,000 islands, and all of the main ones (Sumatra, Java, Indonesian Borneo, Paupa, etc) are fractioned into smaller ones. Within each one, they have their own architectural housing style, food, way of living, etc. We spent a good hour or so just wandering the halls and taking a look at the different constructions and conceptualizations of ethnic culture in Indonesia and were blown away. It's a country as diverse as India or China; you'd have to spend a hefty amount of time to take it all in, and this museum made me wanna do that. As you head into more modern history, there are many artefacts from Dutch rule and presence, Japanese rule, as well as China and various other SE Asia nation states. It made me want to spend some more time in Indonesia, but, seeing as we only had two days and were starving from all that walking, we had to peel ourselves away.

We stop by for lunch at a random place on the side of the street and order a Soto Ayam, a soupy dish with chicken in it. They put in some rice at the bottom too. The soup was superb, and we washed it down with some dessert at a local bakery that had some Dutch-inspired chocolate goods. They also had some traditional Indonesian kueh (rice based dessert popular in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore) and we got some of that too. Hailed a bajaj, kind of a tuk-tuk in Indonesia, and went back in the hostel to freshen up before heading to North Jakarta. Up til now, we've only really explored the central bit and barely scratched the surface. 

Walking down towards Cikini Train Station from our hostel, we bought our train tickets and boarded the train. The train came at some irregular interval in the Kota direction but it didn't get crowded at all. The police frequent the trains every once in a while and are pretty harsh when it comes to nonsense. Not sure if it's always like this or in response to the recent attacks, but traveling as a foreigner (i.e. going with someone that is white, ha ha) generally is fine. We get off at Kota, and again, as it is with Jakarta, you can't walk into the street right away. They siphon you off into an underground bit where you can safely journey through the underpass, with the underpass itself filled with activities and food. Heading further north towards the docks, you pass by an open-air street market filled with street vendors, selling everything from Mee Goreng to random Frozen trinkets. Walking further past, you come across the main square, Taman Fatahillah, witth a lot of old colonial dutch buildings. 

As we are taking a picture with the old Dutch government house, we hear a voice, "Hello Misterrrr!"

A group of Indonesian kids come up and greet Thorin and ask him where he's from. They say they are from university and need to ask a foreigner some questions about some stuff, meanwhile, some of the other kids are filming and some of the kids are recording his answers. They ask him things about what he's doing in Jakarta, what he thinks of the food, how the people are, etc. They look at me but pay no attention. Reading up on it a bit after, it seems that a lot of Jakartans (Indonesians, if I may generalize) are fascinated by westerners, read here as white folk. Even if you are considered a foreigner of a different nationality (i.e. me), you are considered quite standard, not that you're not special, you're just not interesting. Especially as a Chinese-looking person who can pass as Indonesian, they probably assume me to be the tour guide. Anyway, some of them will end up asking me where I am from, and when I tell them the U.S. they are perplexed. If I tell them Taiwan, they are still a bit confused but I'm not entirely sure what they think. So, these kids ask Thorin the question and roll on by, but afterwards, another group hollers at our attention and they do the same thing. Also university students. They are quite open and friendly, and ask very similar questions as the previous one, but there's a bit more dialogue. Again, they ask me where I am from, and upon telling them "The U.S." again, they all insist on shaking my hand and asking me hello, but, still, the focus is mostly on Thorin. We manage to just barely escape, and then a third group comes up to us, and we're both patient with the responses. I strike up a conversation with one of the girls in the group in English, asking her, "So, are you all university students and studying here? There seems to be a lot of groups!" The girl happily responds and holds a conversation in her (really good) English, saying yeah, this is for an assignment to find foreigners. I don't have the heart to ask her why she only approaches white people as it is a loaded question, but I make a friendly chat with her and she genuinely responds and is interested. Some of the other girls begin chatting, and they realize that I am a foreigner, and slowly begin to chat to me a bit. It's the most fascinating thing. Also, in true Jakartan style, I suppose, I used the encounter as a photo op also! 

OK, reading back on that, it sounds like I was just a jealous, embittered minority who wants some attention. That's not the case, I assure you. Rather, I'm curious as to the conceptualization of a "foreigner" in Indonesia. Is it something that is perpetuated in the schools that only white folk can be foreigners? What was the nature of the assignment? What about the legacy of colonialism? I admire so much how open these kids are in approaching foreigners and using their broken English to carry a conversation; I'm not sure I'd have that courage in a foreign country with foreign language X. These kids go up in groups and are very open, laugh a hesitant one, are a bit awkward and shy, yet carry through and are naturally curious. It's really cool to see. If anything, it's interesting in the fact that the main, biggest modern city in Indonesia still has this phenomenon (and, from reading and hearing others' experiences, it seems it's magnified a bit in the smaller towns). It's that old-school fascination with the 'ethnic foreigner' that arrives on the shores in the antecolonialist era that lives through until now, and we got to witness it first hand. Never has Thorin's position as a white person in Southeast Asia been more tangible to him than then. Anyhow, after the third group of kids -- which, by the way, asked weird questions like "How would you say 'how are you' in your native language?" to which Thorin replied, "How are you." hahah. I guess he threw in a few "You alright?" and "Hiyas" in the mix. -- we finally made a silent getaway and slipped into more of the north, along a lazy, dirty, smelly river which would flow out into the docks.

There are a couple of old Dutch buildings that are not used anymore but still make cool buildings. One was the VOC Café which was an old café sitting near the dock ports. It has mostly changed into a nice, small place where you can get a drink with an old model of an Indonesian house, and some Chinese sculptures. Venturing further along across the river, you see an old Dutch watchtower that is fallen in disrepair. Nevertheless, you can still go inside and climb the stairs. No entry fee, no regulation, just some shoddy wooden stairs that are great for the thrill-seeker in you. You climb up. We see some laborers just sleeping on one floor. We climb further up, and we see some policemen just chilling. The view from the top is great, you can see all the urban squalor in its glory, the lazy river we just walked past, as well as into the harbor. Boats are parked along the docks, and you can see the real shipping/port aspect of Jakarta come out. It has all the essentials of a port town, from the laborers to the grunge, and the construction. On our way down, the laborers we met on the way up want a picture with Thorin. He willingly agrees and throws a smile, and the guys are happy they've gotten their picture. Again, I wonder, where does this fascination come from? We walk a little bit further down past the guard house, and it seems like the whole place is just under construction. We're not sure exactly what it is they're building but all the buildings are gutted and hundreds of men are just hammering away at the place trying to make sense of the rubble. But, I will say, it had a lot of potential. Maybe if they built it up a bit, it could be a cool street walk place. There was a museum directly across the way; it'd make a historic and cool area. I'm calling it. Give it 10 years. 

So with all that activity, we say to ourselves that we've had enough of North Jakarta. We walk back to Kota, see a performance, only to be approached again by a girl from the same university. She approaches me first this time. She says, "Excuse me, are you with that foreigner?""Yes, did you have a question for him?"Then she goes on to explain her task, to which I ask:"Did you want to ask me questions, or ask my friend?". At this point, she's a bit lost since I'm talking too fast, so I slow it down and ask her with more gestures, and she smiles and says, "foreigner." I smile and said, "OK, you can talk to my friend." I poke Thorin. He answers another round, gets another picture, and then we're on our way back to Kota station.

Back at the hostel, we wind down. It's only 7pm or so and we're already exhausted. So, we lounge around and then head up to the bar for some beers. These two guys end up sitting down, and so I ask them where they are from and they are Dutch. Great, love a few dutch guys, they're always down to party. We get chatting to them, they tell us a bit about their lives, and we ours, and we just get to drinking this Bintang beer. We make it through about 4 bottles, and by that time, we had congregated with some Finnish folks (one who lived in Mt. Shasta of all places...) and tried to play some drinking game that went horribly wrong. I get a chance to meet the hostel owners who are a lovely couple, and I chat with them a bit about their running the hostel, how the guy from Yorkshire made it to Jakarta, and how his wife enjoys the city. Naturally, I remember none of it. They're all extremely open and fun to chat with, a good hostel indeed. These are the best hostels: the ones where you go in expecting not to have a party, then having one. Thorin and I walk outside to the front just reflecting on our day. Luckily, a guy making Martabak is open so we order a portion from him. We also stroll along, deciding it's not enough, and eat some more mee goreng. Indonesian street food is excellent.

The next day we kind of roll out of bed without a purpose. Not sure what we want to do, really. We decide to go stroll around Cikini a bit. Popping over in some corner popup stall, we get some noodles. After, we walk down an old market street that is selling all these old stone antiques and Buddhas and stuff. The building and architecture is quite cool: the brown, thatched traditional Indonesian roof styling. And, the guys working there are still carving all these crafts as well as polishing their merchandise. It's crazy, they hack at the stuff with a blade and just cut out their designs and are making their stuff to sell. Of course, we're not lugging a big stone centerpiece back to our flat here in Singapore so we're just there to observe. We also come across some cassette and CD shops, which seem to have some resurgence in the area. We decide that we can't just spend the rest of our short trip here in Cikini, so what do we do? We go back to Kota. This time, we go to the Glodok area -- or, Chinatown.

Chinatown in Jakarta is a bit depressing. If you read into the history of it, they are the minority that gets it in the shorts. In the riots of 1998, they were used as a scapegoat by the government to blame national problems on. As such, there's been a lot of rioting and ethnic tension in Jakarta and in other smaller cities, with the Chinese being the main target. As a diaspora community, they have little support within the country. But, although in the past they've sworn allegiance to Indonesia during Communist China's rise, they had have mild support from international communities in Taiwan and China -- kind of a 'looking after their own kind' mentality I suppose. Anyway, the point is, a lot of Chinatown (Glodok, hereon) has been the target of destruction, so it has worn out a bit in terms of Chineseness, making it quite a unique 'Chinatown.' Most of the people speak Bahasa Indonesia, and have Indonesian-sounding names as well. We duck into some of the side streets and are fascinated how much they look like old school Chinese cities like Macau with the small winding paths, songbirds hanging in the front of the yard, etc. Of course, we come across one of the oldest temples in the Glodok area, dated at about the mid-18th century, that has sufferd some burns on the roof from fireworks. This is the Jin De Yuan Temple. It carries all the essence and air of a Chinese temple, with Han-Chinese looking people worshiping. Candles are stacked right at the altar, with signs bringing fortune, wealth to the home, happiness to the heart, and healthiness to the body. It's a strong testament to a dwindling Chinese identity. All along, you're able to come across even smaller temples, and some quiet streets that are guarded by a small temple-ish looking gate. And, just like with Istiqlal Mosque, there is also a St. Lucia-or-other church just behind the old temple. So, you have a Muslim-Christian mix, and now a Buddhist-Christian one. The church is great, it looks exactly like a Chinese temple, only with a large cross at the top of it. A great mishmash of Chinese architecture with non-Chinese beliefs. Unfortunately it wasn't open so we weren't able to get a glimpse inside, but the outside told enough of a story. To the left, a crucifixion of Jesus, to the right, a praying altar. There was a certain charm there. 

Crossing over a few streets, we come across something more familiar. An outdoor market. And, this market is more Chinatownish. Thousands of street vendors, selling anything from animal parts to fruits. There are ones that have frogs and turtles lying about. Apparently some of them cook it, but we did not know where to go to get this. All along the way, you see the friendliness of Indonesians, trying to say, "Hello, welcome to our country Indonesia, we hope you have a good time." We stop by one of the stalls to get some food, our last meal of the trip. We come across a Chinese stall and have Chinese-Indonesian food, and are impressed by the flavors as usual. Chinese-influenced, but still with a kind of Indonesian flare. Getting out, we head back to Kota. To burn some time, we even walk into an old Bank museum near Kota station that is literally just walking into one of the first banks that the Dutch set up -- Mandiri Bank. They kept the original interior of the bank, then traced the history of the bank until the modern day, all inclusive with old money printing machines and ATMs. Since we only had 10 minutes, we walked around and just admired some of the old bank architecture. It was a 1930s inspired bank - one where you could see a robbery taking place, you know what I mean? Bars and all at the desks, wooden everything, some mauve-ish colored tiling, and all of that fresh colonialist air. 

They often nickname the city "The Big Durian" -- occasionally smelly, big, and you either love it or hate it. Either way, it does have something unique to offer. 

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