Jakarta Logistics

We have been busy sampling the “delights” of Jakarta, a city which seems to have a terrible reputation as a dangerous place but really doesn’s strike us as being too different to any other big city. The main problem in Jakarta is getting around: you have to get used to a whole new way of organizing your time as you could be disastrously stuck in traffic for hours at any moment! Therefore, if you’re actually going to go to Jakarta and brave the smog, heat, congestion (far worse than Bogor) and general chaos it might be advisable to stay for the weekend. We did make the mistake of actually trying to walk around Kemang (an expat area with lots of restaurants, cafes, bars and shops selling imported goods), and soon found that this is a bad idea when it is 28 degrees, 100% humidity interspersed with monsoon-like rains, there are hundreds of cars and mopeds everywhere and either no pavements or pavements with person sized holes into the drains which run below!! We are now resigned to getting a taxi or a bajaj, a modified 3 wheeled motor bike with a two stroke engine where you sit in the back on a little bench under a cover. Although convenient for a quick hop too short for a taxi, the pollution from a bajaj is substantial and I’ll be walking for the rest of my life to make up for it!