Jakarta

Whether you adore it or hate it, there's no escaping Jakarta, Indonesia’s overweight capital. This ‘Big Durian’ is filled with all the excellent and unfavorable of Indonesian life.

At first glance, this hot, smoggy city, which sprawls for miles on a featureless plain, feels like absolutely nothing more than a waiting lounge to your millions queuing up to make their fortune. Jakarta’s infamous macet chokes its freeways, town planning is anathema and all attempts to forge a central focal issue to your city have stuttered and ultimately failed. The very first – or only – notion on most travellers’ minds is how easily the city and its polluted streets can also be left behind.

Beneath the veneer of glass fascias, concrete slabs and shabby slums, however, that is a city of surprises and a city of several faces. During the steamy, richly scented streets of Chinatown to the city’s thumping, decadent nightlife, Jakarta is a Pandora’s box, filled with unexpected gems. The following it’s feasible to rub shoulders with Indonesia’s future leaders, artists, thinkers, movers and shakers, and to determine first hand the deep-seated desire so quite a few Indonesians need to rise over the poverty they were born into. Populated by Bataks from Sumatra, Ambonese from Maluku, Balinese, Madurese and Timorese, Jakarta can be a vast cultural melting pot exactly where the larger Indonesian identity is forged; it is Indonesia inside a nutshell.

Jakarta surely isn’t a principal tourist destination, but parts with the old city (Kota) provide an useful insight into the capital’s long history, and there are a handful of excellent museums scattered about. But in case you want to get under the skin of Indonesia, a visit to this mammoth city is an absolute must.