New World Shopping, old world ambience

Day one was a rousing, if tiring, day, and so we approached the next day with enthusiasm and it did not disappoint. Nurul and Indry suggested we go see the old city and to look at another place to buy the shirts we wanted. So two elevator rides later we met the hot blast of outside air but quickly into one of the fleet of “Blue Bird” Taxies which line up at the outside of the mall/hotel complex. Our $5, 40-minute cab ride was met with the same bewilderment and amazement that I got every time we went for a ride. Every form of individuality and conformity would be seen as we inched our way across town. We had plenty of opportunity to observe since we spent more time stopped than moving. The traffic lights are tediously long, up to two minutes which gives ample time for the swarm of bikes/scooters to weave in and out in front of you to get closer to the front….there is no void at a traffic light. It is occupied space. And the remaining seconds are counted down so that on the count of 3, the motor bikes/scooters can take off. But in the mean time, I had the opportunity to look at the praetorian guards of bikes/scooters which quickly surrounds us and prevents anything else getting near to us…families of up to five members, chic females with flowing scarves, grandmas who can be as daring and aggressive as anybody on the road, and lots and lots of just regular people going somewhere, albeit slowly.

The girls wrote down the names of our two destinations so that the taxista didn’t have to untangle our bad pronunciation Tanah Abang was another 8 story tall, full city block wide emporium of clothes with literally thousands of small individual stalls all seeming to sell the exact things as the stall on either side and across the narrow passageway …we only wanted a shirt or two but the problem was that it was a wholesale place where they only sell items in quantities of 6 or more. That accounted for the number of men carrying large bundles bumping their way down the aisle and woe be to anybody in their path…with our massive language skills we were finally able to discern that on the 8th floor we could buy individual items where once again key words “Bigger” accompanied with hands going further apart we managed to get what we wanted. ….mark one item completed on the check list. - The place was an absolute teeming mass like leaf cutter ants carrying their prizes home, these men and women who run the thousands upon thousands of street stalls buy their wares and hawk them on the streets of Jakarta and probably nearby suburban outposts all of which are end to end without empty space separating them. Push carts loaded to the gills with bundles of whatever all wrapped in white plastic worked their way to the doors and out to waiting vans, motorbikes/scooters with large baskets or just another person to handle the unwieldy bundle while the other person whizzed across town. Amazingly the traffic deaths in Indonesia are not that bad. They have 15 deaths per 100,000 population compared with the 10 for the US and the 19 for Russia…I truly don’t know how they stay alive, but they do. With bags in hand we hailed another taxi, looked at each other and rolled our eyeballs to the top of their respective sockets as the cool air of the car sent its blessed relief across our faces. The ride was the same scenario, different street. Same chaos, different helmets as we headed to Kota Tua, the old colonial center of Batavia, the old Dutch name for Jakarta stemming from Colonial times when the Dutch controlled the spice trade and got themselves so rich in the process that the Brits needed to get a piece of the action. We arrived and were pointed down a narrow street where cars couldn’t go….of course this didn’t stop the two-wheelers from doing their thing. A sharp ear tuned to what’s behind you but getting louder is always a good thing to keep in some level of consciousness. Stone buildings, with old wooden doors showing their age were portals to souvenir shops, museums, businesses, were topped by that stair-stepped roofline that is so old world is can be seen throughout Europe but certainly the Dutch were leaders in this form of architecture. The street led to the huge block-wide Fatahillah Square with large white buildings surrounding the square. This was THE place. This was “oud Batavia,” old Bativia, the old city. Here would be found the headquarters of the Dutch East India Company, the controllers of the spice trade and the center of the Dutch government offices. It was here that all commerce and government business was contracted and it is not difficult to imagine the scene as it must have been. Mimes, and actors portraying old Dutch settlers roamed the square wanting to pose for tourists, for a fee, of course. If the Dutch actually wore these costumes their life must have been nasty, short and brutal, as Hobbes would say. They wore heavy robes with full wigs and the heat would have dropped then like flies, and no AC… But it was a charming square. Multi-colored bikes lined the racks and one could ride, for a fee of course, around the square and look at all the different buildings, restaurants and activities going on. Here we saw more tourists in one place than we had seen in the entire month we had been in Indonesia.

A building facing the square had a decorative sign signaling the “Café Batavia.” Entering was a jump back to colonial times, teak and mahogany tables with padded chairs filled the room with old world elegance. The building was turned into a restaurant 23 years ago after undergoing different owners over the two hundred years of its existence beginning with the headquarters of the East India Tea Company. It’s the 2nd oldest building in central Java. We were asked “smoking or no smoking, which is a no-brainer in a country which has the largest number of male smokers in all of Asia, at 67%, and were led upstairs, past the wide staircase that would have made Downton Abbey proud. Mahogany handrails, lush carpeting, and an array of photos that spanned the enormous wall stretching two floors in height and highlighted the “A list” of Pre World War icons…Hollywood actors’ and actresses’ photos, high profile politicians and public figures were a quick scan and recognition from one face to another. Literally hundreds of them filled the wall. We walked past the long curved bar which looked like something out of a classy turn of the century European hotel to our table overlooking the square. Our waitress handed us our menus with Fred Astaire dancing with Ginger Rogers on the cover. I asked her if she knew who he was and, of course, she had no clue. “Some movie star,” she said. I showed her some Fred and Ginger videos clips that I googled and she just stared wide-eyed and giggled.

The menu was a combination of Indonesian and Western. Carol chose Gado Gado, her favorite dish, a combination of steamed veggies with either tofu or tempeh chunks and a peanut sause. I had chicken and lamb satays. Both were certainly a cut above even the good meals we had enjoyed. Their flavors matched the ambiance.

On the square below, people strolled around, mimes performed, people rode the multi-colored bicycles and there were lots of selfies. I asked the waitress if they had coffee for sale and she said she’d check. A little later out came a white-aproned, tuxedo-vested man carrying a tray of 10 different coffee blends in pint sized containers. He asked me to smell them and he described each as I did…”this one is stronger, this one has a smoother character. I’m not a coffee buff, I’m a one big cup of some non-Folgers and no instant coffee please kind of morning coffee guy. But I was fascinated that there was such a variety of coffee in Indonesia. My son-in-law mentioned that he liked Sumatran coffee and my neighbor, Bill, mentioned the same thing so I was very interested in his words. Later I looked up the coffee scene in Indonesia and was fascinated by the variety of what, and how, coffee was done here. It is the 4th largest coffee producer in the world and is grown on many different islands, each with their distinctive style and method of processing as well as different beans…some are dried with the skin and “cherry” still intact, some with the skin off, some with just the bean…..some are dried in kilns, some are dried directly on dirt, some on tarps or concrete…each differentiation means a different flavor to the coffee. I choose two different kinds that smelled good to me, at least. The price was steep but acceptable….the coffee prices range from a couple of bucks for half a pound to $40-50 for the Kopi Luwak that received fame in “The Bucket List.” It was our big splurge meal and it wasn’t even that expensive so we walked out full, satisfied and a different time and place in the world from the streets awaiting us on the ride back to the hotel. It was a full day and a productive one…..Jakarta is becoming anything but a throwaway city.