Hi Everyone:
Spiking above and below the equator like a heart monitor, Indonesia possesses more superlatives than you'd expect. Its 17,000 islands make up the world's largest archipelago, and its 241 million-strong population makes it the world's largest Muslim country. Some anthropologists maintain that half the planet's languages are confined to Papua, its Eastern fronteir. When the volcano Krakatau blew its top in 1883, 125 foot tsunamis pelted Java and Sumatra, and wave effects were said to have been felt in the English Channel: In fact, its eruption was so violent that the police chief of Rodriguez island reported "heavy guns from eastward" (Rodriguez is off Madagascar). For centuries, the West lusted after the "Spice Islands" -- their stock of cloves and nutmeg tickling tastebuds from Amsterdam to New Amsterdam.
Jakarta is the central nervous system of the former Dutch East Indies, a city of 10 million perched in the northwest of the island of Java. The city assaults the senses -- while not aesthetcially pleasing a la the grand European capitals or as overflowingly pulsating as old Manila, riding its streets is befuddling and captivating. The sheer volume of cars is mind-boggling, and the fact that none have striations along their sides even more so. With seemingly no traffic laws and the lane markers mere suggestions, one would conclude that Jakartan traffic would be gridlocked amid a cacophany of honking horns and the Indonesian equivalent of middle fingers.
But it works. Traffic is as dense as any US megalopolis, but it flows. In my four days of trekking around the city, from office to office on and off the Jakartan K Street, we have sat in traffic for several hours -- but the traffic is always moving. Drivers consistently weave in and out, ignoring the lanes and honoring the de facto right of way of the millions of motorbikes that cut in and out. But it works. And I'm at a loss to explain it.
The most apt description of Jakarta will fall easiest on the ears of the Sim City generation -- if you've ever played it (and have had the second best city of all time, next to my Paris), you can picture Jakarta. There is no true downtown -- skyscrapers and residential shanties practically interspliced, wide boulevards parallel to one-lane roads. My hotel, on the southern edge of downtown, sits behind a grassy knoll, across the street from a mega-mall, behind which is a street of pushcarts and shacks. Small shops and kiosks dot the most major and minor streets, each merchant setting up shop where he or she pleases -- the malls are plentiful and affluent, but there is hardly a 5th Avenue or Champs Elysees. (They even sell coats. The country is on the Equator -- who the hell buys a coat?) There is no true Embassy row, since all are spread out over town, each planting its flag wherever it can find land. Next door to our hotel there is a large building housing the embassies of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and ... Peru.
Jakarta, and even Java for that matter, hardly epitomize Indonesia. With about half of its population crammed onto an island the size of Great Britain, the land is literally bursting -- of course, though, this means that the rest of the islands are filled with wide open rice fields, untouched jungles, white-sand beaches, and cultures you only read about in obscure PhD theses. Lest you try to exploit it, though, the Indonesian Customs authority puts you in place with the first sign you see when you enter customs: "Welcome to Jakarta. Death Penalty for Drug Traffickers." Nice to meet you too.
Off to Mongolia tomorrow, where Saturday's forecast is for snow.
Ciao,
Matt
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