South East Asia on a Hamstring – January 28

Jakarta – January 28, 2000

An early morning minibus took us for a six-hour ride to Bandung, a busy little city with horrible traffic. From there we caught a 12:10 business class train to Jakarta. The Business Class seats were nice – it wasn’t freezing like the First Class cars had been, but wasn’t as over the top as the Ekonomi Class train. This was good, because we were almost more tired after our several days rest than we’d been beforehand.

We rolled into Jakarta at 3pm. The skyline was attractive – modern, medium-height buildings and vibrant, green trees, all under a faint smog. I was happy to see a real city.

I treated myself to a grand tour of our hotel’s street, the local department store and the original Indonesian McDonald’s. Sarinah, the department store, was heavily overplayed by Lonely Planet, but I did score a number of goofy wooden Bali souvenirs there. My hope was that the post office of Singapore would be open on the Saturday afternoon that I was to arrive there and I could lighten my backpack up. Otherwise, I’d be pretty sorry to be carrying all those windchimes and wooden monkeys around.

Our final group meal happened at a crummy little restaurant at 7:30. The rest of the group went back to the hotel for sleep, but Andy and I went to a nearby bar.

Andy had found this bar on Christmas eve. It was down the block, up an alley, and up a staircase at the back of a building. It was a fantastic bar, airy, with giant playing cards painted on the ceiling and dark vinyl couches up against the wall. We ordered a beer to split between us and put up our feet on the low table in front of the couch.

The bar was empty, the same as it had been on Christmas eve. It was a Friday night, and we speculated on the true purpose of the cute little bar. How could it stay in business if it had no business?

We found out within a few hours. Young Indonesian women in tight jeans, thick black leather belts, and tight t-shirts kept showing up. One or two would go out onto the dance floor at a time, and would “shake what her momma gave her” as a harassing man on the New York street once put it to me.

West African drug dealers showed up. Apparently there are a lot of West African drug dealers in Jakarta. I don’t have a clue as to why these two specific regions are meeting up this way, and apparently a lot of the drug dealers are being shot in locals attempts to dish out a little Javanese justice.

We watched the interactions between the few men and the many women for a few hours. It became quite clear that the bar was basically a brothel and we were the only people in the whole place not involved. We watched until we got the creeps, and then skipped out, dodging the rats and cockroaches of the Jakarta streets on the way back to the hotel.

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