Weeks 11 and 12: A Tale of Two Cities

After living in Jakarta for three months I can attest that it is a city of extremes. It is almost as if there are two separate Jakartas; one dirty, cogested, full of noise, people and pollusion; the other empty, sanitised and strangely characterless.

The area I live in, Tebet, falls firmly into the first category. Primarily a residential area, it is comprised of a dense labyrinth of streets with back-to-back houses and a few makeshift shops, their proprietors lounging outside enjoying a game of chess or an afternoon snooze. The main street is a different story. Walking out onto it you are hit by a wave of noise, pollution and general chaos. The traffic is perenially static except for those cars brave enough to negotiate into the paking spaces haphazardly placed at the side of the road. Designated attendants do their best to control the traffic, their shouts and whistles adding to the immense noise. You have to be constantly on guard for motorcyclists weaving in and out of the traffic, some of whom get impatient and drive along the pavement. Sometimes the pavement is so damaged that walking on the rubble is actually more dangerous than walking in the road and some stretches of road simply have no pavement at all. Even negotiating the short walk back to my boarding house sometimes feels like an enormous effort.

The most striking thing about the scene is the sheer density of people. In Tebet there are people everywhere. Visitors flock to the main street each evening to frequent the area's numerous restaurents and cafes and impromptu stalls spring up selling cheap food and pirate DVDs. A number of beggars roam the streets and children playing miniture guitars busk for diners whether they like it or not (in Indonesia you pay buskers to go away rather than to express your appreciation for their playing). It is this aspect of the environment that I find most difficult; the constant stream of bodies pressing into you, the complete absence of personal space. Although the locals have become familiar with us, the attention we engender as foreigners has not abated. Whenever I venture out into the streets I am greeted by constant stares and comments. I understand that the comments are jovial and innocuous, that it is inevitable that I will be the object of curiosity to the locals, but I continue to find the attention both imposing and irritating. It frustrates me that I am unable to move beyond what is in essence a culturally conditioned aversion to attention from strangers, but I cannot.

Thankfully, there is a way to escape the chaos. Central Jakarta, just a short taxi ride from Tebet, is a million miles away in cultural and economic terms. Central Jakarta, for me, will always be defined by what it is not. The first thing you notice is the absence of crowds and the distance between you and other people, which seems vast, even comically so, exaggerated by the contrast with everyday life. Central Jakarta is a few square miles of unadulterated, unapologetic capitalist enterprise; an impressive collection of designer shopping malls, expensive restaurents and luxury apartment blocks. Perhaps the most interesting thing about these spaces is that when you are inside them you could be anywhere. The other day I was in one of the malls when I realised that all I could see were British shops: Topshop, Debenhams, Marks and Spencer. However, it would be wrong to dismiss these spaces as acultural or non-Indonesian. Last weekend we ended up doing a grand tour of shopping malls, visiting 5 in 2 days, and afterwards we joked that we were finally acting like native Jakartans. Other cities have museums, galleries, temples and palaces; Jakarta has shopping malls. However, you can't help but be aware that the places you are visiting are accessible only to the wealthy minority and are hardly representative of how most Indonesian people spend their leisure time.


The incongruence between the two Jakartas suddenly dawned on me the other day when I realised I had taken to showering at the gym almost every day. I had good reason: the gym has a power shower, hot water and - joy of joys! - a hairdryer whilst my room at home has only a bucket, a cold tap and a hole in the floor. However, there was something about this set up - the contrast between the austerity of my living accommodation and my luxury gym membership - that struck me as absurd. And, indeed it is absurd, an absurdity symptomatic of living between two parallel cities. At home the concept of value is relatively straightforward; there is a consistant and fairly predictable scale of value associated with various commodities. But when you have a situation where vastly different scales of value co-exist, things are not quite so predictable. In this context it becomes entirely rational to spend on a night out what you normally spend on food for the week; the costs simply aren't directly comparable because they derive from different systems of value.


Living in a foreign economy, where different goods are defined as luxury, can be confusing. For instance, at home eating out is an occastional treat, but here I have to buy every meal. I might be an extreme case given that I cannot so much as boil a kettle in my boarding house, but eating out does seem to be the norm. My trips to the supermarket reveal that it is possible to eat out for less than it would cost to buy the ingredients yourself and cook from scratch. At the same time, however, it is possible to spend rather a lot on food and drink, particularly if you have Western tastes. In Jakarta, a coffee at Starbucks is a weekend treat (yes, I realise how weird it is to start drinking coffee in a tropical climnate) and a 'Western' breakfast an occasional extravagance (I have yet to find a good fry up but, at the danger of sounding disloyal, American style pancakes are even better). I often find myself justifying purchases - say 30,000R for a coffee - on the grounds that this amount would cover two meals in Tebet. I am aware that some of my choices would seem irrational or inconsistant to an outsider, or to someone who resides exclusively in one or other of the Jakartas. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that if you live like I do, negotiating between the two Jakartas, then there is no cohesive system of value with which to assess the relative expense of each purchase. The only way to make any sense of it seems to be to pick a weekly or monthly budget and consider each purchase as a proportion of that amount. Alternatively, you could bury your head in the sand, throw all caution to the wind and refuse to check your bank balance (not that I've done this, you understand . . . . )

Weeks 9 & 10: Yogyakarta

I have just returned from a long weekend to Yogyakarta (pronounced 'jog-jakarta'), a city in central Java famous for its temples, arts, crafts and volcanoes. Jenna, Kamran and I decided to go as a final holiday for Kamran, who leaves Indonesia at the end of the month. Hannah very sensibly decided to stay at home on the grounds that she did not want to die (more of this later).

After spending Friday morning in Yogyakarta's Batik markets, we headed to Borobudur temple to watch the sunset. After finding our way to the entrance (fee 12,500R) we were promptly guided round to the 'international visitor/VIP' entrance (fee 125,000R) (the only difference between the two being a complimentary cup of coffee on arrival). After we had finished grumbling about the price discrepancy, we started to make our way up to the temple. Among other things, Borobudur is impressive for its sheer size. It has 9 levels, each representing different planes of existence, and no less than 504 statues of the Buddha. In stark contrast to heritage sites at home, visitors are free to clamber all over the statues, which makes its preservation even more impressive.

One of the best things about Borobudur is the view it affords of the local scenery, the skyline dominated by the imposing silhouette of Mt Merapi. From the top of Borobudur we could see the top of Merapi rising out of the clouds, a somewhat intimidating sight given that we had agreed to climb it the following day. When we decided to climb Merapi we were aware that it was a bit dangerous. Merapi erupts every few years, often violently, and since it has been a couple of years since the last eruption experts recommend against climbing it. However, a friend of Jenna's, Andy, agreed to be our guide despite the imminent threat of eruption and the seasonal danger of what he described as 'deadly storm winds'. Until we saw it with our own eyes, however, I don't think any of us really appreciated the scale of what we had signed up for. Merapi stands at 9,738 ft, an intimidating prospect, especially for novices like us.

The climb began when we were picked up from out hotel at 9.30pm the next evening. Our guide Andy drove us to a village part way up the mountain from which we would start the trek. Andy is obviously one of those people for whom the danger of voncanoes is part of their appeal (we are talking about a man who called his firstborn child 'Lava'). In the car he was excitedly explaining how dangerous Merapi is, telling us how many people have died climbing it etc. By the time we arrived at the village we were all visibly nervous.

In retrospect it was a good decision to climb Merapi at night. Although we had torches, it was difficult to see far ahead, which forced us to concentrate on each individual step, rather than thinking about how far we had to go. Much to my surprise I didn't find the climb too physically demanding, although my legs did start to ache as the climb progressed. We took a couple of long breaks - one planned and one necessitated by the aforementioned deadly storm winds - during which we ate chocolate sitting round an impromptu campfire. During the second break we realised that the sun was rising, and climbed up on a rock to get a better view. I can honestly say that sunrise was the most beautiful thing I have seen in my life; deep oranges and intense yellows spreading across an open horizon - it just knocked all the breath out of me. The three of us didn't know what to do with ourselves. We just stood there, laughing, taking photographs that would inevitably fail to adequately represent the incandescent beauty that stood before us.

Unfortunately we still had a way to go before the summit. After a short distance we reached a plateau from which it was possible to view the top of the mountain. It was a demoralising moment. The terrain was intimidatingly steep, comprised of hundreds of crumbling limestone rocks. We ended up pretty much crawling up on all fours, holding on for dear life. As we were climbing this precipitous terrain, the ridiculousless of what we were trying to achieve hit me. Here we were, complete novices, dressed in cheap platic raincoats and old trainers, with no safety equipment, climbing a mountain that might start spurting hot lava at any moment.

But reach the summit we did, and it made everything worthwhile. The view of the surrounding countrying side was just astonishing. There was a bit of an other-worldly feel to standing there above the clouds looking down on the world. At the same time, however, it was impossible to forget we were standing on an active volcano. The smell of sulphur was overpowering and the rocks around us were billowing out steam (the first time I caught a glimpse of some steam I thought we were doomed for sure, but I was soon reassured that it always did that). At the summit Andy suprised us all by unpacking a small camping stove. We were soon presented with a sandwhich and a hot cappachino, which after a 7 hour hike tasted absolutely amazing.

Suprisingly, I found the journey down more challenging than the climb up. No doubt exacerbated by sleep deprivation, I found myself slipping and sliding everywhere, and I became terrified of falling down and breaking my legs. Reaching the bottom was a relief, not least because we had been walking for 12 hours. That day the three of us were just exhausted. Even now - after two decent meals and a good night's sleep - my limbs still feel like cotton wool. The physical pain seems to be a small price to pay, though, for an experience like that.

In other news in the last fortnight . . . . I went to my first Indonesian wedding. I hadn't actually met the bride or groom before - they both work for the same NGO as me - but I was assured our attendance was welcome. On arrival we went to meet the wedding party, posed for photos, had some lunch, and then it was time to go. I think it was a pretty typical experience of an Indonesian wedding - they certainly don't have receptions that go on into the evening like we do - still, I did feel a bit bad about that.

I also spent two days at a conference organsed by UNIFEM about women's rights in Muslim societies. I'm not really sure why I was asked to attend because I don't work on any gender related projects, but I was grateful for the opportunity. It's a subject I find really interesting (I wrote my dissertation on Islamic feminism) and some of the speakers were great. For instance, there was a talk from a female MP from Afghanistan, about what it is like to be a female politician in a country that does not approve of women's political participation. However, the conference reinforced my perception of the development field in general; that is involves a lot of talking and very little actual doing. There were a lot of descriptions of the situation in such-a-such country, and little effort to address wider questions about how to promote women's rights in a more pragmatic sense.