I just spent a couple of days in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, The city is huge and its downtown is hyper modern with giant boulevards, high rises, and large plazas and parks. Jakarta is full of gorgeous trees and vines. It is also sinking! Parts of the city are sinking at a rate of 11 inches a year. In response, the city is installing some innovative dams and building a new capital in Nusantara on the island of Borneo. Within the next 20 years, many of Jakarta’s 33 million people will have to relocate as well.
On the periphery of downtown are older neighborhoods, some built by the Dutch who colonized Indonesia between the 1600s and 1945. My hotel was in one of those older neighborhoods, divided by boulevards moving a lot of traffic past strip malls and small food stands. And street cats — there are a lot of them and they are very friendly.
A highlight was my visit to Chinatown. At the Buddhist temples, hundreds of local people were paying their respects to the gods and their ancestors as part of the Chinese New Year’s observances. Most of them there were wearing red for good luck.
Lighting candles and incense is especially important at this time of year.
They burn joss paper as a gift to the ancestors. I love joss paper, which comes in many shapes and designs, but a lot of it looks like this.
The other highlight was meeting Jar, who took several of us on a walking tour. Jar is 17 and has been doing his job since he was 14. He taught himself English after he dropped out of school so he could go to work. Jar is very attuned to the distinctions between formal and informal English, and says he can’t guide tours in Indonesian (called “Bahasa”) because he only knows the street patois of his native language. His favorite place in the city is the National Library. He even met his girlfriend there.
Like so many other young people in Jakarta, Jar is trying to figure out a strategy for a new life in another place. I think of Jar as the hopeful face of Jakarta.
Camino Milagro 
What a trip! That Jar has a lovely face! Hopefully, he’ll succeed at whatever he ends up doing.
C
I am confident that he will!
👍
🙂
Bravo, Kim. Such an inconceivably large task, to relocate an entire megalopolis of 33 million people….! Thanks firctakingbuscwoth ypu on your travels….
Thanks for this post Kim. The pics are great.
I’ve never visited Indonesia and it seems to be a unique country in so many ways… but Jar’s ambitions and wonderful facial expression show me that people around the world are all fundamentally connected to one other.
Yes they are (did you know all of your posts are showing up twice? That’s ok with me! But just so you know)
After writing a comment the site asks me to re-log in again using my Word Press account. Maybe this is causing the duplication? I tried posting this without logging into Word Press and the post didn’t appear. I’m stuck. Any ideas?
After writing a comment the site asks me to re-log in again using my Word Press account. Maybe this is causing the duplication? I tried posting this without logging into Word Press and the post didn’t appear. I’m stuck. Any ideas?
Thanks for this post Kim. The pics are great.
I’ve never visited Indonesia and it seems to be a unique country in so many ways… but Jar’s ambitions and wonderful facial expression show me that people around the world are all fundamentally connected to one other.
Fascinating post, Kim. It’s incredible to see so many motorbikes on a city street. Having to relocate to a new location must be quite daunting for the population.
Yes, it’s hard to imagine. I don’t see that there is any grand plan.
I had a fascinating trip to Jakarta about 10 years ago for work. My job was to lead a proposal team working to get funding from USAID to address HIV/AIDS impact in the most vulnerable populations of Indonesia, including the LGBTQ+ community. At the time, being gay was against the law so meeting with the activist and care groups we needed to talk to involved some risk for them. Particularly as two of my colleagues (one American and one African) were openly gay. Yet the people we met could not have been nicer or kinder – they were also fearless.
I was there over Ramadan so didn’t get the full impact of Jakarta traffic. But I thoroughly enjoyed the city, its food, and it people. And I was able to do a day trip to Borobudur which was absolutely amazing. It’s a country and city worth so much more time to explore!
Wow, so glad to get this report — I also heard about a woman who wrote a thesis on the hipster community in Jakarta, which I also didn’t find. It’s such a big city with so much going on.
Thanks for the memories have plenty on it and Indonesia in my blog i visited the city and country every year from 2012 to 2018. Cheers
I’ll check out your blog, thank you!
Thanks you are welcome