"Hello, Mista!"

Picture a quaint city, on the coast of Java, a sweet smelling breeze floating in off the sea, highly organized streets and simple to get around. Ok now you can forget that, I made it up...it's actually exactly what Jakarta is not. Jakarta is one of those cities you read and hear about, but you never really understand until you experience it.

On the eve of Valentine's Day, I sailed from Singapore to a nearby island (Batam) where we caught a plane for Jakarta (much cheaper than flying from Singapore). No worries, Mom, this wasn't one of those Asian ferries where they overpack the boat, the boat sinks, and everyone drowns. It was quite comfortable. From the moment we stepped off the ferry, it was obvious we had left Singapore. The small, simple buildings, the poor sidewalks, and red, dirt roads reminded me more of Africa. After a quick walk around we headed to the airport and headed to Jakarta.

Flying over Jakarta immediately gave a sense of it's monstrosity. Offically, Jakarta has a population somewhere around 9 million. From the air, you could see the miles of small shanties on top of each other. Upon walking from the airport, we were greeted with all kinds of friendly people...turns out they were all taxi drivers and they quickly lost interest when we asked where the bus stop was. It was a very confusing bus system. The bus we were convinced that we wanted kept driving by without stopping, no matter what we did. We weren't the only confused people, finally an attendant told us he'd tell us when the bus was arriving. Eventually we made it to the city. It took us a little while to find the backpacker district, but after a few wrong turns, we found a decent hostel. By this time it had grown dark, so we grabbed some Indonesian food (Nasi Goreng for me: fried rice and chicken) and headed to bed.

Next day we did a lot of exploring. Perhaps Jakarta's coolest, and arguably only real tourist attraction is their national monument, Monas, called other things, but you'll have to google that. It was a tall tower in one of the few green spaces in the city. We went up to the top where we got a good look at the city. Throughout the day, we friendly greeted by all kinds of people, mostly kids who were walking around the city. They were eager to practice English and take photos with us. Possibly my favorite part. Everywhere we went, we'd here "hello, mister" followed shortly by giggles...especially if we responded.

Other things we saw were the old town with the remnants of the Dutch colonial days, museums, and even a club. Yep, lonely planet said it was possibly the most hard core club in SE Asia, so when in Rome. This was one of the more interesting experiences and maybe the most disturbing. The club contained 4 floors with a club on each of them, more or less. The first floor, no one was in, so we sat and had our "free" drink by ourselves. The second had live music, which was cool. Every few songs were even in English. The crowd was much older than I expected here, but there was a decent crowd. When we walked in, we were shown to a table where we were approached by several women. At first I thought them to be waitresses or servers or something. The oldest woman held out the hands of the other two and introduced us. "Friendly people," I thought, being from the midwest I shook their hands. Then it started getting weird. (Ok, maybe it was weird we were approached by three women right away, but hey we are a couple of good lookin fellas I'm sure this sort of thing happens all the time in clubs, right?) The oldest woman, the only one who had spoken up to this point then began offering us massages by the two ladies. I didn't really hear this part, but I started to catch on when the girl next to me had latched onto my arm and was standing oddly close. It then hit me what was happening. After a short, inward giggle about the irony of a small-town farm kid in a huge club being approached by prostitutes I turned my attention to fixing the situation. After some forceful insisting we pursuaded them that we indeed didn't need a massage. The rest of our time, the older woman brought several girls by out table, in case we changed our minds...we didn't.

All joking aside, it was very eye-opening to see the things we read about up close. To see prostitution, begging, hungry children, people living in the street, even a naked man wandering the street in the middle of the day was sobering and heart-breaking. To add to these problems, Jakarta is the third most polluted city, attested to by the fumes spewing from every vehicle and raw sewage being dumped straight into the river. Indonesia is also the largest Muslim majority nation in the world. All new experiences for which I wouldn't trade, but wouldn't mind if they never existed.