ABoyInJakarta’s Blog

It’s quite usual to see people directing traffic – usually guys aged mid 20’s.

The other Saturday during a long journey up a very congested road the car was held up by someone directing traffic. It was a kid – probably about age 9, with 2 younger siblings by his side. The age was in itself unusual, but the thing that made all four of us in the car call out was the cigarette he was smoking.

In unison we all asked “Is he really smoking?”

Smoking rates might be well down in the developed world, but big tobacco is making the most of developing markets in the developing world.

Being in lockdown, if you get an offer to go somewhere – you do it. Anywhere – I don’t care where.

Saturday afternoon I was offered a visit to the Jakarta Fair. I’d read a little bit about it in the local newspaper, and one of the guys I went 10 pin bowling with on Friday night mentioned it. Subconsciously I cringed – it wouldn’t be my sort of thing.

The Jakarta Fair runs for about a month and has 3 million people visit. For those from Melbourne – imagine the Royal Melbourne Show without animals and rides. Add a huge dose of a “home maker” show – with endless kitchen gadgets, loads of furniture and bedding. Add a healthy mix of a motorbike and car show and you’ve got the Jakarta Fair.

The fair held at a former airport – with one of the roads the old runway, while all the exhibits are in the old hangers and main terminal building. We’re talking vast sheds!

To summarise – I think my subconscious cringe was pretty bang on!

After wandering for 3 hours my mind had also wandered off, imagining sitting in the hotel bar with some fajitas sizzling in front of me. My host had another idea – and so we went to “Ancol Beach” and one of Jakarta’s biggest seafood restaurants. We’re not talking seafood restaurant with steak for the non seafood eaters – we’re talking 100’s of fish, crabs, clams, prawns swimming in tanks. An equivalent number of whole fish sitting in eskies (a.k.a cool boxes) on ice.

You select your fish, weigh it, get charged and then it gets delivered to your table with rice and a few condiments. I’m not the worlds best fish eater, so tiger prawns it was. I wasn’t even game to pick them out of the tank, so I let my companions order and select on my behalf. At least they were fresh – too fresh to think about.

Meanwhile in this massive center courtyard things started heading down hill, with a graduating high school year celebrating, their teacher getting on stage and singing to them. The nights nadir though came when tinkly keyboards started up and someone in a pretty wobbly voice started singing “And Iiiiiiiii, will always love youuuuuuuuuuuuuuu” in quite possibly the most ordinary rendition of a very ordinary song. To paraphrase the Australian band Weddings, Parties, Anything… “When I listen to Whitney Houston I wonder what I’m doing here”.

The other day I was being driven to the office, zipping along (yes the traffic here can zip occasionally!) slowly catching up to a motorbike in front of us.

I looked at the motorbike, the back of which was covered in a sea of white fluff – a metre each side of the bike and piled about half a metre high.

What was the fluff I wondered, as the car slowly gained ground – it looked so soft, like duck down stuck down.

The closer we got, the white looked more alluring, lightly flapping as the motorbike moved. What was it?

The bike stopped at traffic, and we pulled up close behind. I got a good look.

Yes – it was about 100 unplucked chicken carcasses, nicely laid on a board across the back of the bike.

One of those “I need a camera moments”, although suddenly wasn’t so fascinating to look at…

One of the reasons I haven’t been posting much recently is that I’ve had a quick trip home.

It was a bit of a flying visit and I didn’t get to see everyone I wanted to. Even though I’ve only been here for 7 weeks you still suffer some culture shock when you get home.

Things I noticed

• People walking around (yay!)
• Air quality
• My special Jakarta cough mostly disappeared
• Multiple hair colours (Blonde – what’s that!)
• People from different subcultures walking along the street
• Less conservative clothing

I’m sure when I got back on Thursday morning and walked a bit that I was doing the tourist head spinning 180 degrees left and right thing.

All of which proves – normality is relative, and normality varies massively.

Standing around, doing nothing?

Bit short of a dollar?

How about directing traffic?

That’s what the locals do. Mostly local guys between about 18-25, they stand in the middle of the road, or at intersections where people would otherwise not get into or across the stream of traffic, put their hands up and stop the traffic – and everyone tends to obey them – in the local half pushy, half time will wait manner.

In return about 50% of the time most drivers will wind down their windows and handover a coins – remembering the biggest coin is worth about 6 cents – and the smallest about 0.6 cents. These part time traffic directors take particualr care of buses – most of which have “conductors” (I’m not sure -there’s no uniform and they could be doing a similar made up job) hanging out the back door. The conductors make sure people get on and off (an achievment given there are no formal bus stops) and also hand over coins to the traffic guys.