Idul Fitri in Jakarta

These last few days are lazy days. It's the end of Ramadhan, with the feast days of Idul Fitri and Labaran making for a whole week of slowed business and an air of vacation and many take off work for the whole week.

Most of this time I have been doing preparatory work for the new project in Bali, whence it looks like I will be moving in the first full week of October.

In the free time, and when Ilham was free from his own family obligations, we biked around Jakarta looking at some sights that I hadn't seen or hadn'te visited for a while.

On the Thursday (September 24th) Ilham suggested we go and see the old Dutch era cemetery, which is now a museum (or as he cleverly says, a 'musuleum'. Many havy old slabs, heavily engraved in Dutch proclaiming the qualities and origins of directors and captains of the Dutch East India Company. All of these mostly dead by the age of fifty, just as in Malacca. Other than these, the Victorian cast iron monuments to piety (as perceived by the pastor), the fine marble plaques of the Belle Epoque and simpler cement ones cast around with no sense of care.

We also stopped by the once-Dutch, now Catholic, cathedral. There is an active Christian community in Indonesia that dates back to the first Portuguese traders. A distinct minority, their descendants are quite evident at the church here.

The structure is still austere as the few baroque ornaments the Catholics have fixed to the walls barely impact the somber Dutch feel. What does stand out is the chocolate brown wooden ceiling, its planks arching overhead like an upturned boat. The one touch of lightness is outside as the two spires are a white painted open lattice of iron fretwork.

I jumped off the bike to go inside a park and snap a foto of what Ilham told me is the liberation struggle of/for Papua. A desolate park of cracked concrete and unhinged marble tiles, used now by some equally abandoned souls for god knows what purpose. Reminds me of many other liberation monuments set up by liberation governments who then moved on to the next theme of the political season.

On Saturday (September 26th) we went to old Batavia once more as I wanted to take some sunset shots of the harbor. Just a bit too late in getting there, but having a look around sunset isnt the right time to be here - dawn is.

However, sunset and the early evening is a great time to be in the main square of Batavia. It was full of students and street traders, just as I remembered from my visit last year. Ilham went one way, I went the other and managed to take a couple of OK fotos.

In the course of my wandering around six teenagers came up to me and asked if I would speak English with them. This doesn't happen frequently, but for sure most times when Im out many teenagers will shoot phrases at me to practice. Good sign, that. So these six girls pulled me into the light of a food stall, started to ask me questions and even began videoing the whole 'lesson'. I'm famous!

Sunday dawn (September 27th) found me back in the old port of Sunda Kelapa, shooting for the warm pastels of the fishing vessels moored against the harbor wharves. Timing is OK, but its way too early for most people so there's almost nothing going on. Just boats at rest, the occasional fisher with his craft in the breakwater beyond and one or two sailors caulking the hulls of their boats.

Sunday evening brought us to the obelisk in Merdeka Square, Jakarta's iconic tower with viewing platform that dominates the center of the city. The park was absolutely full of families spending the last day of the holidays in picnicking, kite flying and general relaxation. It was too late to join the queue to go up the tower - and anyway the queue was way too long.

As we walked around the park, the late afternoon turned quickly into sunset, twilight and night. Still the children played, the music played, the muezzin chanted in the distance.

For me too the long period of preparation is over. One more week to set some things moving, sort some other things out - and then I'm set for Bali.

Day trip to Bogor

I had no business on Monday so Ilham came by again and we headed off by train to another Jakarta weekend getaway called Bogor.

This place was once called Buitenzorg by the Dutch, and from time 'immemorial' it has been one of the preferred places for Batavians, Jayakartans and Jakartans to spend time in. Its only an hour away from Jakarta by train, so very convenient for everyone.

We had time to wait at the station in Jakarta, so it was interesting to see the people come and go. Mostly they were commuters, but some were families visiting and others were local traders bringing or taking their bagged produce from one stop to another.

The train we took was a simple commute train with narrow wooden benches along the carriage walls and a large open space where the start and end of the daily grind of city work plays itself out. Traders strode up and down the train offering their wares - drinks, snacks, gadgets and things.

One trader offered up a poem to the passengers in return for small change. Didn't understand a word but his delivery was most exuberant and effective. To me it brought back a memory of what I've read in tales of old Islam - the ancient appreciation and respect for literature and poetry - and for those who recount them.

After a few minutes waiting at the station in Bogor, the surrounds of which are the exclusive domain of street stalls and a cascade of motorbikes, scooters and rickshaw taxis, we met up with XXX, a friend of Ilham's from his college days.

She jumped into one of the minibus taxis; these have room for about eight people but most times the driver manages to squeeze in ten or twelve. The roof is low, so for someone like me, who jumped in straight after, legs are pinned and head is not far from knees.

We zoomed around the center of town, past the main shopping street, square and entrance to the President's summer residence, finally stopping beside the gate of the large park that surrounds the residence.

This park was first laid out by the Dutch (the residence was once the Governor's) and has been maintained through time. As before, its serves as the lungs of the city, a place to break away from the constant clash of commuting and a place to see some plants from other parts of Indonesia - and indeed the world.

The gate we were planted by the minibus at was closed, so after my attempt to climb over the spiked railings failed (I was told to stop, I would be arrested and I was embarrassing everyone, not that they would say), we walked up the hill to another entrance that was open (with payment of ticket) and headed over to a bungalow set on a low hill that serves as the park's restaurant.

Great beams of teak comprise the greater part of the restaurant, from its columns to its railings, all standing on a cool grey stone floor. There were some guests - Dutch and Australian if I heard them right - otherwise the place was mostly empty.

In fact I was surprised it was open at all, given that we are in the middle of Ramadhan. Again, the relaxed way with religion - those who want to observe, may; those who don't, need not - impresses me, and is a pleasant counterpoint to the in-your-face variety that Malaysia pushes. Not the Indonesia is one whit the less religious.

Lunch over and the resident cat suitably disappointed at not receiving any, though it did lounge most cutely at my feet for a while, we walked through the park with one purpose - to find the rotten-egg flower.

This flower is a monster, almost 2 meters across, it rises out of a thicket of leaves like a dark pink bomb, only to break open and with its stinking sweat scream 'Feed me!" like some freak creation in a florist's shop.

You would imagine we just needed our noses to find this one, but apparently this is not the flowering season. Over a bridge that crosses one of the streams that run through the park, itself fetid with the detritus thrown in from city streets above the park, we asked several people who I think work there.

The result of their counsel was to walk a giant pretzel shape around the park, admiring flowering shrubs, fans of palm trees, the back entrance to the Residence and even a swinging liana which I did my best to Tarzanize (to the exasperation of the others), but no flor horribilis.

No luck then. We could see the horizon darkening with rain clouds so it made sense to head back to the streets and grab another knee-cracking minibus back to the station. A commuter trip back to Jakarta and I was ready for a long shower and a lazy evening.

Train ride to Bandung

Saturday morning Ilham came by. We had no specific plan so in the end we decided to grab a train and head out to Bandung. I had been reading something of the history of Java and thought we were heading to Bantem. So for me the voyage turned out to be a ery pleasant surprise - we were headed into the interior of the island, through valleys and across hills, higher and higher until the air of the Jakarta plain gave way to bright, light, exhiliarating fresh air of the central highlands.

All around the hills were greener, the flowers more colorful, the buildings more spacious and the villages more beautifully set than i would have imagined.

Ilham told me that most people from Jakarta head for the hills every weekend in order to relax, visit family and generally get away from the constant buzz of the city. I can understand.

At the station Ilham negotiated a taxi for the day - all of 250,000 rupiah (less than 25 dollars). We jumped aboard and headed out of Bandung for a restaurant he knew of further up in the hills behind the town itself.

We were in the period of Ramadhan so I wasn't sure that there would be much on offer. It turns out that Indonesians are less rigid about observing the daily fast than in the Gulf, so, embarrassingly, there was plenty to choose from, although the number of guests were few.

Lunch over, I asked the local manager what there was to see in the area, other than some much-quoted, totally forgettable conference hall that was built for an international summit many decades ago. Not much, was the answer.

Ilham hit on the idea of heading for the place where the strawberries we had eaten for dessert were grown. Evidently these are grown locally and the area is famous for them. That really surprised me, so it sounded like a great, totally off-the wall way of seeing something.

And we did - the taxi driver got delightfully lost on the roads that wind through and over the hill tops behind Bandung. So what I saw were the beautifully kept villages and verandahed houses with gardens of mangoes and papayas that seem to be a hallmark of Java. The people were well dressed, well fed and obviously content. Kids played in the open spaces between one house and another; in one more open area monkeys were cavorting.

Up and down we went, past nurseries full of all the plants and flowers that you normally buy in the supermarkets and garden malls of Europe. So this is where they come from, al those ficus, alanchoe and red leaved climbers. Only here they look so much more natural, sheltered by veritable halls of 'geenhouses', here made of bamboo and used more to shelter the plants from the direct sun than to encourage then they are back on a warm, tropical island.

Every time the taxi driver asked if anyone knew the way to the strawberry plantation they smiled and pointed over the next hill. Eventually we saw some signs and, continuing our way through this open labyrinth, we eventually came upon a steep hill overshadowing a small, deep and narrow vale. Here it was, Rumah Stroberi, the source of our luchtime strawberies.

Rumah Stoberi knows how to market its strawberries. Here there is a garden restaurant where you can have a dish of them, drink strawberry sharbat or have them as a milkshake, following if you like, with strawberry tart or ice cream. Or both, whichever takes your fancy.

The garden is obviously used for parties - and I suspect very good ones too. There's a store where you can buy fresh, conserved and frozen strawberries, in a basket, in a box, in a jar and in a bag - all with strawberry designs and logos. There are strawberry trinkets, magnetic buttons, lamps and other souvenirs that are at the same level of commercial excellence and pushiness as ever I've seen at Marineworld or Disneyland. What great vision and purpose in introducing a (strawberry) slice of the entrepreneurial spirit here, in a quiet, almost idyllic, vale in the heart of Java.

The afternoon quickly muted into evening, then evening into night. We were back at the station, a little bit early so we went to a snickets store Ilham knew of, bought a whole bunch of stuff that ruins a diet and headed back to the station. The train turned up and left on time (something I've gotten used to in SE Asia is that the infrastructure, even if modest, works). Most of the time I dozed, as I always do when I'm a passenger in something and there's nothing much to see out.

Back in Jakarta we jumped into a rickshaw taxi that works more or less like the ones in India, headed to the hotel and, since it was too late for dinner, crashed.

From Manila to Jakarta

Another day, another flight. This time early in the morning (again) back to Singapore. I didnt have a ticket to Jakarta but fortunately there was space on midday flight so I jumped aboard and was in Jakarta by the middle of the afternoon.

Headed for my usual hotel, the Millenium Sirih, mostly because it as a good swimming pool, sauna and masseurs. Dumped the bags, headed straight for the maseur so I could have the six flights in three days rubbed out of me.

In the evening I just stayed in the hotel, ate a curry and - you guessed it, crashed out.

Jakarta