Move It or Lose It

In Indonesia’s capital, the journey from Point A to Point B is not for the faint of heart.

After one week here, neither Danielle nor I are brazen enough to ride most of the buses swarming around the Kampung Bali neighborhood in central Jakarta. You need a little spring in your step even to board, since these vehicles approach intersections without ever really stopping. The driver slows just enough to allow exiting passengers to jump and hit the pavement running, while a porter peeks out the bus’ back door and shouts stops and prices to potential riders massed along the sidewalk. If the parties reach satisfactory terms at this still-moving transportation bazaar, the porter herds a few more riders on to the bus, sometimes offering a hand to pull up the few last stragglers. Others wait to see if they can get a better deal with the next bus.

It all happens in a flash—which is fine if you know exactly where you are going. But as there are no posted routes at the different impromptu bus stations, those of us new to Jakarta shell out a few rupiah for the Transjakarta Express. This air-conditioned bus fleet has standard rates and stops and zips through special reserved lanes in most places in the city, but it’s hardly luxury travel. Crowding can be such a problem that the bus line has to post beefy guards at the doors to ensure that maximum occupancy limits are observed.

That mostly transfers the problem to the platforms, where there’s much jockeying for position. Indonesians are famously ready with a smile in almost every situation, but that comity largely disappears on the boarding platform. At the Kota station last week, a group of teenagers seemed genuinely annoyed when I stopped to allow a pregnant woman and her child step in front of me toward the train rather than squashing her against the railing. That just meant these kids pushed a little harder when the next bus approached. It’s easy for everyone’s sense of polite decorum to evaporate when you’re waiting in line as a fourth full bus pulls away from the platform.

Much of the time, taxis are affordable enough alternatives for short trips through the city, but they come with their own attendant risks. On several occasions, Danielle has warned me that taking Bluebird Taxis is the only way to be sure to be on the safe side. That seems easy enough, until you realize that there are hundreds of taxis painted blue and white to look exactly like Bluebird.

And when you are suffering from heat-generated hallucinations, as I was on the way to the Jakarta Cathedral yesterday, anything can happen. Accustomed to the New York City or San Francisco taxi protocol—where you have to flail wildly at the first sign of a taxi to have any hope of getting a ride—I flagged the first blue-and-white blur I caught out of the corner of my eye. It stopped, but Danielle flashed me a look of horror as we suddenly realized it was a Bluebird impostor. And the headlines flashed through my head: “Americans Found Dismembered at Bottom of Jakarta Industrial Canal.” Fortunately, after a little exchange in Indonesian, Danielle realized we were in safe hands and we rode the taxi to the Cathedral without incident. Crisis averted, but you can be sure I won’t be so quick on the draw next time.

When you actually do get to your destination, of course, there’s much to marvel over here. At the Bogor Royal Gardens, we were dwarfed by bamboo shoots that were more than 30 feet high (see Danielle in the photo for a sake of comparison). At Mass among hundreds of Indonesian Catholics in the Cathedral, the Body and Blood of Christ were heralded in with a gong as well as the customary bells. And speaking of marvels, I’m eager to travel soon to Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, a theme park that contains scaled-down traditional houses from all the major islands of Indonesia. The story is that Suharto’s wife created the park in the 1970s as a sort of vanity project. When I ask if this is like the Indonesian version of the Disney “Small World” ride, Danielle rolls her eyes.

We are also here in the middle of an election in the world’s third-largest democracy — more on that in the next post.