I Tagged Along With a Bunch of Tourists In Jakarta... Sorta

Frank Sinatra's famous ode to New York contains the line "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere." We have a similar saying in Jakarta, but it's a bit more depressing. The old adage is: "If you can survive in Jakarta, you can survive anywhere." That might look like a slight difference, but "making it" is worlds apart from just "surviving." Yet, it's probably the best way to describe what it feels like to live in this megacity.

There are like 10 million people here. Ten million people living in a congested, traffic jammed, sprawling city where the best thing to do is spend another night at the mall. It feels pretty sad sometimes.

Then there's everything else. The Indonesian capital has always been chaotic, but it feels worse after six months of protests, elections, politics, and terrorism. My foreign friends keep asking me how I'm doing all the time. "It's so messed up there," they say after probably watching another negative news segment about something that happened here.

I was lamenting the lack of "fun stuff" to do in the city when the notion of tagging along with some tourists came up at work. We have a phrase for cities like Jakarta in Bahasa Indonesia; we say the city is "kurang piknik," or recreation deprived. Most Jakartans leave the city for their "recreation time," heading out to Bandung, Bogor, Thousand Islands, Bali, anywhere really, as long as it's not here.

But tourists have to know about the fun stuff to do in Jakarta right? After all, they're here to see the city and have a good time. So will riding along will help me see the city with fresh eyes?

Here's how it went:

In 2014, the capital started to run a free tourist-friendly bus called the Jakarta City Tour Bus. The idea here was to shuttle tourists around the city's more popular locations, from Kota Tua to the National Monument (Monas) to the Senayan complex. I tried to use the free bus as much as possible on my tour of the city, figuring that it would be the easiest place to find a bunch of tourists in their natural element.

But there was a problem with this idea. A lot of people who live in Jakarta just take the bus because it's free. I started to suspect this because the bus was often full. My suspicions were confirmed when I overheard a woman sitting behind me talking on her phone. "Yes Mom, I just got on the bus… I mean it's free… When I get there, I'll let you know," she said.

We were both fake tourists, it seemed.

On my way to Senayan, I tried to stay awake and act like the views out the window were interesting. But really it was just cars and more cars. Distance is measured by time, not kilometers, in Jakarta, and, as expected, a ten-minute trip took about an hour. So I had a lot of time to stare at my fellow passengers. Most seemed to be people looking for a free ride, or just an air-conditioned room to hang out in for a while. I figured this out because a lot of them were asleep. What actual tourist would come all the to Jakarta and then fall asleep in the middle of the tour?

I did find Daniel Hutabarat, a Jakarta resident, who was nonetheless on an actual recreational tour of the city. He's just like me, I thought. His two sons were probably the most amazed people on the bus. They stared out the windows at the city's skyscrapers and the (seemingly) never-ending MRT construction.

"The traffic jams aren't a problem," Daniel told me. "I mean we're just enjoying ourselves. We're not in a rush or anything."

I asked Daniel what he liked about the tour so far.

"You can see many buildings, roads, and sometimes even road construction can be a source of entertainment," he remarked. "My sons love watching the heavy equipment in action."

Thank God for Jakartans like Daniel who can find something worthwhile in a traffic jam. I couldn't help but think that I would be a little better off, as a person, if I had the same outlook on life.

And maybe there are others out there who can still see something "exotic" in all the horrible infrastructure and messy electrical cables. Or maybe there are people out there, inspired by Seno Gumira Ajidarma, who can see something romantic in the city and its population.

Conclusion: It was a waste of two-and-a-half hours of my life. I've already spent a lot of time sitting in traffic, but at least then I am on my way to somewhere else. This is only worth doing if your air conditioner at home is busted.

The National Monument, or Monas, has always been a popular tourist attraction. But it's popularity has grown since the anti-Ahok protests kicked off back in December of last year. The 132-meter-tall monument is both a symbol of Indonesian independence and a popular protest site. It's something a lot of Jakartans see every day, and therefore probably ignore.

So I figured why not stop by and see what all the fuss is about. When I walked in the door, I immediately felt a bit freaked out. The place is poorly lit and old, so it has a bit of an unsettling vibe. But no one comes to Monas to wander around the base. It's the monument's top, and the view, that's apparently worth the visit.

When I got to the top, I saw very few local visitors. There were some foreigners, a few out-of-towners, and a gang of teenagers goofing off. The youths occupied an outsized portion of the observation deck, taking dumb selfies and re-enacting the Jack-and-Rose on the deck of the Titanic scene. I guess I should also mention here that I'm short (160 cm) and it was impossible to see the view over all of these people.

Then something weird happened. As I was sitting down when a tourist from Kendari, Southeast Sulawesi, sat down and asked me to be in a photo. "Let's take a picture together on my phone… I'll send it to you if you want…" He then quickly sat down and snapped a wefie before I could respond. Dammit, I thought things like that only happened to white people in Indonesia. I asked him to delete the photo right away. The last thing I wanted to be was some random dude's Facebook profile. My editor laughed when I was bitching in Slack. "Now you know what bules feel like," he said.

Conclusion: I hate teenagers and "recreation spots."

So this is a sign of how much Jakarta has changed. A few years ago, you would get some serious stares if you said you were going to head over to Kalijodo. Back then, it was a notorious red light district, one of the grimiest in a city with more than a few underground brothel areas.

But the administration of former governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama razed the whole thing and replaced it with a skate park and some much-needed green space. He even got a company, PT Sinar Mas, to build the thing and cover the Rp 60 billion ($4.5 million USD) in costs.

All good right? Not really. Kalijodo looks more like a sea of people mashed together than a skatepark. Maybe it was just too packed when I went there, but I have no idea how someone could actually skate this thing.

I did like how inclusive the whole park is. It's sort of rare to see toddlers, teens, moms, and grandparents all hanging out together in a public place.

Since skating was out of the question, I decided to take a seat in the grass. But them I caught a whiff of piss and noticed a little kid taking a leak right next to us. The toilets were out of order and the grass was good enough for some people, I guess. And just like that, ambience killed.

Conclusion: The park is really a breath of fresh air. Until someone starts pissing all over the place.