Jakarta

We arrived into Jakarta domestic terminal an it was very new and shiny and first impressions of Jakarta were good. However that didn't last long. We got a bus into town and we very quickly saw a city of contrasts between the big high rise buildings and malls, and large areas of very poor, slum like neighbourhoods. Also the smog and polution was incredible. You could barely see the buildings through the haze. We soon saw the reason fo this...the traffic in Jakarta is worse that I've ever seen. They have big 8 lane highways biscecting the city and they seemed to be perminantly full of cars, and the cabbie on the ride from town said there was no traffic as it wa the weekend!
We were staying in a 'homestay' and once the cabbie had found it (3 u-turns and lots of asking directions later, meter still runing) we were happy enough with the place. It was very quiet, but mainy as it was right in the middle of nowhere ,well as much as you can be in a city of 10 million people. We tried to go for a walk that first afternoon but there are hardly any pavements and the pesky moped riders just swarm everywhere like a buzzing liquid, following the path of least resistance, even if that is on the pavement, we didn't feel very safe as pedestrians so didn't stray far from the house. We were reminded that Indonesia is a very muslim country at 5am the next morning there when the call to prayer started, it was so loud and lasted about 30 minutes! From then on we used our heathen/christian earplugs.

I read in the paper that Jakarta is the biggest city without a subway and it is a huge problem, as is the growing middle class who refuse to give up their cars for anything. They have started the transjakarta (a big AC bus in a dedicated lane) all over the city but basically it's a 3rd world, inadequate solution and it's still mercy to the traffic so not much quicker, even it is more comfortable. Still we caught a local bus and that was reminiscent of India or something so I guess it's an improvement on that.



We went to the old town, but there's really not much to see and by the time we'd spend 2 hours getting there by bus we'd lost any enthusiasm we may have had anyway. For the rest of our thankfully brief time there we got with the locals and stayed in the mall, ate good food at the food court and watched a movie. We could have been anywhere, which felt like a beautiful fantasy until we stepped out in to the street again, .

There were 2 reasons that meant we were able to endure a day there, it's quite safe for tourists, and the cabs are cheap but I honestly cannot think of a single reason why anyone would go to Jakarta, definitely a contender for worst city on our trip.

MandB