Jakarta, Jumat (Friday)
Last Sunday I tootled around the Golden Triangle on the motor scooter with sayang belakang. That is, with the “beloved behind.” I should rephrase that: With the beloved behind, and all the rest of her, on the back. She has a morbid fear of motorcycles owing to an early unpleasant experience of being pitched off in an accident and doing damage to her behind — that is, lower than her lower back. Over the years, I have worked quietly to entice her back onto the horse, so to speak. She now claims to enjoy the ride, for which I may well be eternally grateful.
To be even more accurate, we didn’t so much tootle around the Triangle as squeeze in and out of its juicier nooks and crannies, the ones that are tucked away in the not-so golden bits. The Golden Triangle, for those readers who are not fully cognizant of lame, copycat, real estate terminology, refers in this instance to the “financial district” of Jakarta, that is, an area roughly encompassing Thamrin in the north to Senayan in the south and bulging out to Kuningan in between and off to the east.
In most cities, it would be characterized by a dearth of life on weekends, the sort of district that has death rays that sweep the streets to ensure no animals or vegetables intrude amid the calm and reassuring mineral life that slowly accretes wealth. However, in Ibu Kota, life goes on, in, around and behind all the shining palaces of capitalism. It does so exuberantly, albeit a little less exuberantly than during the week, but exuberantly and idiosyncratically nonetheless.
For example, did you know that in a narrow street in Kebon Kacang, tucked in behind Tanah Abang and Plaza Indonesia, you can buy seemingly any sort of nail or screw from a lady operating a tiny streetside stall? And that nearby, Pasar Gandaria, not to be confused with the new mall a few kilometers to the south, still does some business on Sundays? And that there are a lot of wisma or hostels near Tanah Abang textile market and more being built as you read this, which are presumably used by visiting traders to the market?
Or that Guntur, also known as Halimun, has a very quiet suburban area that seems like it could have been airlifted in one piece from a sleepy but well-off kampung? And that Setiabudi has not only a fully functional weekend and evenings street market, but also a restaurant with a low-key street frontage that opens out through an old Dutch-era house into an outdoor dining area under shady trees complete with small swimming pool converted into a sailing and display area for model boats and other artworks?
Be that as it may, after about three hours of this, the sayang belakang had had enough and declared that next stop was visiting friends at Taman Rasuna or, to be more precise, visiting the swimming pool by the side of which there would be friends and food and drinks. And, in the way of sayang belakang the world over, she was right.
Taman Rasuna, as some of you may know, is on the edge of the bulge of the Triangle and currently consists of 19 residential towers with more on the way, totaling around 4,000 residents from all over the place: It’s like a mini-United Nations and Taman Mini combined, with representatives of the nations of the Earth mingling with citizens from across the archipelago. And they mingle mostly in or by the pool. It’s a novel place to cuci mata (wash your eyes), that is, do some people-watching while enjoying the sun setting between the towers and the call to prayer issuing in a splendid cacophony from the surrounding 16 or more mosques, all of which have invested in top quality public address systems cranked up beyond “10.” Exquisite.
It’s a unique Jakarta experience that is rarely, if ever, mentioned in the guide books. To be fair, the guide books usually only mention Monas, Kota Tua, and Jalan Jaksa before directing the delicate creatures to Yogyakarta or Bali as soon as possible.
Oddly enough, even the Jakarta Administration’s own tourism department has little faith in its charge’s ability to retain the interest of visitors. If I recall correctly, their sad claim was that Jakarta was hard to sell because of the traffic jams and floods. Seems to me that it should be a selling point given the neighborhood competition, such as Singapore or Kuala Lumpur, both of which are intent on turning themselves into theme parks of what they thought they once might have been and what someone else hoped they would become.
“Truly Asia?”
Hardly. I prefer sayang belakang and a curious Sunday.
Salam
White Monkey News Bureau 