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Published: June 15th 2023
Asking questions is the only way to learn… ~ Indonesian Proverb
HE SAID... Today we were arriving in the bustling city of
Jakarta.
We touched down at Soekarno Hatta International Airport in Jakarta around 6:45pm. We’d been travelling for hours, but the flight from Sydney to Jakarta comprised less than eight of those. It was a smooth flight and we felt great on arrival. Unfortunately, it was a slow journey through customs. We’d pre-prepared and printed our visas, thinking it would allow us a seamless path through the formalities, but nothing could have been further from the truth. ‘Snail pace’ is my best descriptive term. We even managed to select the slowest moving line, so we were the very last people from our flight to clear customs. It took the best part of an hour. It mattered little, however, as our packs were also the last to appear on the carousel, so we continued waiting for what seemed an interminable time. It was probably only a couple of hours, but when you’ve been up since 2am, every minute lasts so much longer.
After securing a fixed-cost taxi to our hotel, we sped through Jakarta’s busy highways and crowded streets with the most affable of drivers. He struggled to
understand me, but he could converse easily with Ren. When he dropped us at Yello Harmoni Hotel (our accommodation for the next three nights in Jakarta), we realised we were in a built-up area of the city. When we reached the reception desk, we realised we were in a very urban-chic environment. Vivid wall art, bespoke furniture, quiet work pods, foosball tables, unbelievably friendly (and very young) staff. The place was amazing. As was the view over the city from our small but comfortable room. We were in heaven. We were also completely exhausted. By the time we collapsed into bed, it was midnight. It had been a great day of travel day, but an exhausting one.
We woke at 4:30am, then again at 6am. We slept well and had adjusted to the three-hour time difference with ease. Jakarta was shrouded in smog, and the pre-dawn light struggled to reveal the city’s skyline. We could barely make out buildings and streets. The temperature was tipped to reach 33 degrees with 80% humidity. We were definitely in tropical climes.
We loved Yello Harmoni Hotel, especially the tea and coffee making facilities in our room. We headed down to the
hotel’s expansive dining area for breakfast, and we were surprised by the vast selection of breakfast items. The choice was difficult, but in a good way. There was a wide range of Indonesian options, and a small range of Western options (including cornflakes and sultanas). The savoury options were simply delicious, especially the noodles with fried eggs. Unfortunately, the pastry options were far from delicious. They were dense and tasteless. Some were almost synthetic, as if they had been made for children (which I think was their target audience).
There were large urns of tea and coffee, along with watered down cold juice options (including pineapple and orange), which were very welcome to a couple of dehydrated recent arrivals from Australia. We headed out into the late morning humidity, and after surveying the state of the footpaths (or lack thereof), we decided to take a taxi to Merdeka Square. It was by far the easier option, and the one favoured by the friendly hotel staff. They were bemused that we would even consider tackling the two-kilometre distance on foot. As I sat in the taxi and looked out the window at the fractured bitumen and shattered concrete, I understood
their concerns.
Merdeka Square, located in the heart of Jakarta, was not our first point of call. We planned to walk through it after first visiting the nearby National Museum, which meant crossing the busy Jl Medan Merdeka Barat. This was our first experience of Jakarta’s rickety pedestrian overpasses, and as the loose metal sheeting creaked and groaned under our weight, I wondered if this crumbling structure had been built in a previous century. At one stage Ren grabbed my arm, and for good reason. The whole structure was moving, and we were high above the congested traffic below. If the flooring gave way, our Indonesian adventure would have come to a quick and untimely end.
Luckily for us, we made it over the busy road without incident. Was the crossing worth the effort? I’m not sure. The National Museum wasn’t terribly well curated, but it did offer a welcome respite from Jakarta’s relentless humidity. It was a relief to wander the building’s cool rooms and shaded courtyard. The highlight (for me) was a group of highly excited local kids on a school excursion. It was uncontrolled madness, and hilarious to watch. The poor teachers were exhausted. I
saw one slump against a wall and slowly drop to the floor when the kids all stopped for lunch. Her gaze was blank; her face expressionless; her shoulders hunched. I felt sorry for her, but I couldn’t help but smile. The kids were well-behaved. They were just thrilled to be in a museum and out of the classroom.
It was time to leave the cool sanctuary of the museum and (once again) immerse ourselves in the intense heat of the city. We retraced our steps across the rickety pedestrian overpass and made our way into Merdeka Square. A group of friendly policemen had pointed us in the direction of the National Museum earlier in the day, and we again asked for directions to our next point of call – the National Gallery. This time, however, our pronunciation of the term ‘gallery’ seemed to bewilder them, and they pointed us instead in the direction of the National Library. They were so friendly and eager to help, but we knew it was time to discretely consult our maps. There was a basic map in our Lonely Planet guide, and we also had a detailed map from the hotel. We’d find a
way.
We wandered the vast open grounds of Merdeka Square which were populated with local family groups, captured a few photos of the imposing National Monument (an egocentric legacy of the country’s former president), then retreated to tree cover on the eastern side of the square. It was oppressively hot in the humid midday sun, and there was no escape. Even in the shade we felt like we were melting. However, it was nowhere near as exhausting as when we were trapsing the busy streets outside the National Museum in the open sun.
Ren seemed to have an intuitive sense where the National Gallery was, so we followed her nose. We found an exit gate from the square (which was not an easy task), navigated another rickety overpass across another busy road, and there before us was our intended destination – an unassuming white building with a long narrow entrance. However, you should never judge a book by its cover. The nondescript frontage of the National Gallery completely belies its contents.
The first thing that struck me about the gallery was the incredible friendliness of the predominantly young staff. They were amazing. They helped us e-register for
a special exhibition, where each piece of art portrayed the anxiety and hope that many Indonesian people feel about their future capital – Nusantara on the island of Borneo. The country’s populace was mostly represented by young children in these hyperrealist works – a fact I hadn’t noticed as I wandered the small exhibition. It was explained to me by a friendly and talkative curator who suddenly appeared by my side. I initially thought she was an artist, as her creative insights were sharp and detailed. She was so proud of the artworks on display, and so happy to share her knowledge of the artists.
The standout feature of the National Gallery, however, was the permanent exhibition – a small but brilliantly curated collection of Indonesian art through the ages. The following artists really caught my eye:
> Kartono Yudhokusumo (1924-1957), a pioneer of modern decorative painting – his lush tropical landscapes literally glowed from the plain matte walls of the gallery
> Widayat (1923-2002), another exponent of modern decorative painting – his portrayal of an erupting Mount Merapi grabbed my attention in one of the gallery’s smaller rooms
> Misbach Tamrin (1941-), a populist painter and member of
the Communist Party of Indonesia – his portrayal of Casper (a supernatural figure in Javanese mythology) performing with local musicians and surrounded by marginalised ‘commoners’ was visually and metaphorically stunning
> Surya Darma (1968-), a Bornean painter of my age and generation – his painting ‘Migration’ (where airport trolleys stacked with suitcases are abandoned on a dirt road in the shadow of dead trees) struck a powerful note of anxiety. I was mesmerised by this work.
Indonesia’s National Gallery may be small by comparison to other public galleries around the globe, but its modest volume of artworks in no way detracts from its impact. In fact, the limited displays in intimate rooms allow it to shine brightly. I loved the place, and I was so glad we’d managed to find it. As we were leaving, the friendly staff kept thanking us for making the time to visit. They were clearly very proud of their national artists (for very good reason), and they were so happy to share the work of these artists with people from abroad.
On that note, I need to share an observation. Apart from a middle-aged French couple, we were the only foreign tourists in
the gallery. More than 95% of the people perusing the exhibitions were young Indonesians. I doubt any of them were over 30 years old. It was an amazing experience to wander a national gallery with a bunch of local Gen Z’s. We felt very conspicuous, and we were very much a novelty – but in a good way. We felt welcome and comfortable walking among a generation of young adults. On reflection, there were also very few foreigners at the National Museum and in the grounds of Merdeka Square. It’s the first time we’ve visited a capital city in another country and not encountered hordes of tourists from abroad. We weren’t sure if the absence of foreigners was just an anomaly on this particular day in Jakarta, so we decided to keep our eyes peeled…
After refreshing with cold tea at the National Gallery’s canteen, we jumped into a taxi and headed back to Yello Harmoni Hotel in the late afternoon. On our return journey a thunderstorm erupted overhead with lightning flashes illuminating the city. We only just made it back in time. It was time to relax in the comfort of our room and watch the storm play
out over the sprawling metropolis.
We headed to Mama Malaka for dinner, a small restaurant offering homestyle Peranakan cuisine in a shopping mall on one of the lower-level floors of our hotel complex. Yes, it was uncharacteristic of us to opt for a Malaysian restaurant on our first night out in Indonesia, but it was convenient and we didn’t have to venture into the storm. So, we settled at a table and ordered the following:
>
beef rendang (tender beef cooked with Malaccan rendang spices)
>
beef rawon (a beef and potato soup).
I refreshed with a
teh tarik (a hot milk tea beverage), while Ren went for a lychee tea. The food was tasty enough and the restaurant was convenient for those of us caught in the eye of a storm, but it wasn’t an exceptional meal. However, there’ll be time enough for exceptional meals in the next few weeks as we travel the length of Java – from west to east.
We were back in our comfortable hotel room by mid-evening. We were feeling the effect of the eight-hour flight from Australia, and we were also feeling the impact of a day on our feet
in Jakarta’s tropical climate. We had a walking tour of Central Jakarta scheduled the next day, and it was an early start, so we needed an early night.
SHE SAID... We landed at
Jakarta’s Soekarno Hatta International Airport feeling sprightly. The flight had been slightly delayed, but I was shocked to see that it was already quite dark when we came into land at 6:50pm. We saw a city of twinkling lights below us, and long roads with slow moving traffic.
In the interest of saving time, we’d already pre-purchased an electronic Visa-On-Arrival… but we shouldn’t have bothered! We unwittingly picked the line with the trainee immigration officer, and our queue moved at a rate of one person every 10 minutes! The people who were buying their Visas at the airport were processed much faster! 😞
We eventually changed to another queue, but it made no overall difference. The luggage took soooo long to come out that even those who had sailed through the other queues were still waiting when we got there. And both the immigration area and the luggage carousel area were equally hot and stuffy, so there were no real winners either
way. We had fully intended on catching the shuttle bus to a main city train station, and then a taxi our hotel. However, we suddenly found that standing around for two hours had tired us out… so we ran the gauntlet of the very loud and insistent taxi touts and caught a set-price taxi from the well-regarded Bluebird taxi counter.
I had read that the trip into central Jakarta could take up to two hours depending on traffic, but as we breezed along the airport highway our affable taxi driver assured us that it would only take 45 minutes at that time on a Saturday night. However, like most big Asian cities, as soon as we exited the highway the traffic was bumper to bumper… with motorbikes weaving in and out of lanes full of beeping cars. The sprawling city of Jakarta was immediately apparent to us, and even though I’d spent some time in Jakarta many many moons ago, I had no sense of direction or familiarity.
Our hotel was in the Central Jakarta area, and I suddenly saw the strikingly narrow and very square building of Yello Harmoni Hotel standing tall on the horizon. The hotel
was in a large building it shared with another hotel and had a very handy mall downstairs. Check-in was super easy, and we were in our small but very comfortable room on the 20th floor in no time.
After a quick visit to buy some milk from a minimart in the mall before it closed at 9:30pm, we were back in our lovely room. We had very quickly discovered our first cultural lesson – Indonesians don’t have milk with their thick strong coffee or their jasmine scented black tea. We realised that trips to the shops to buy milk were going to be a frequent occurrence.
After we’d gone through our usual unpacking/repacking routine to change our bags from ‘flight mode’ to ‘land travel’ mode, we showered and hydrated with a couple of cups of tea. Soon afterwards I dragged myself to bed.
We’d left home at 3:50am Hobart time and walked into our room at 9:10pm Jakarta time. The just over 20 hours of door-to-door travel time should really have been a lot shorter, but it wasn’t helped by a long transit in Sydney and the slow airport processes in Jakarta. But on the whole, we
were very glad to be at our destination with no cancelations or luggage losses.
As tired as I was, I loved falling asleep with the lights of the big city shining in through our big glass window… we were in Jakarta! Despite sinking into a deep sleep, I was wide awake at 4:30am! We both tried to go back to sleep, but annoyingly kept waking up. As far as jetlag goes, it wasn’t too bad, but we finally conceded defeat and took ourselves off to breakfast at 7am.
The breakfast room was on the 7th floor and had a view of the mishmash of Central Jakarta’s midrise buildings. The view wasn’t at all beautiful. I suppose when a city holds so many millions of people, functionality is definitely prioritised over aesthetics. I couldn’t believe that a beautiful colonial building on a road below us had been brutally walled on one side, so that an ugly metal over-road pedestrian crossing could be placed in front of it. I found this unbelievable, but I had to adjust my thinking and remind myself that allowing masses of people to cross safely is far more important than gazing at a beautiful building.
Anyway, back to breakfast. I get very excited by breakfast buffets on the first few days in a new country, and I want to try EVERYTHING! So, please bear with me while I work my way through what fascinated me on that first morning. 😊
The buffet was roughly laid out around a square cooking station with a whole range of both local and western hot options on offer. Off to one side there was a pancake and egg station, as well as two small food carts showcasing local breakfast dishes. One cart had all the ingredients to make
bubur ayam (Indonesian chicken congee/rice porridge); and the other had all the ingredients for
nasi kuning (yellow rice and condiments). I couldn’t resist the delicious aroma from this second cart… so
nasi kuning became my first meal in Jakarta. The signature ‘golden’ rice of this dish is cooked in turmeric, lemongrass and coconut milk. It is usually a Javanese celebratory dish, and while the accompaniments can vary, it always has spicy, fried, fresh and crunchy elements. In this case it came with
telur balado (egg in a spicy sambal sauce),
tempeh manis (stir-fried sweet and spicy tempeh), fried peanuts and diced cucumber. It was absolutely delicious!
We also tasted the more traditional Indonesian breakfast dishes of
nasi goreng (fried rice) and
mee goreng (fried noodles). They were both lovely, and they tasted even better with lashings of
ayam tongseng (mild chicken curry with soy sauce and coconut milk) and fried eggs. We also tasted all the sambals (chilli sauces) on offer, but sadly they weren’t labelled, so we can only say that Andrew loved the green chilli sambal while I liked the oily red chilli and shrimp paste sambal.
Of the juices on offer, I was very disappointed that the pineapple juice was the only one with any natural taste; and I was even more disappointed with the platter of tropical fruit. The deep orangey-red papaya was very tasty… but the watermelon was watery, the tiny yellow bananas were gummy and the mandarins were tasteless. Sigh. This had somewhat crushed my ‘gorging on tropical fruit’ holiday dream. Had we missed the fruit season?
Not totally done yet, we finished off our massive breakfast by sampling all the pastries on offer. Sadly, there wasn’t much joy on that front either. Even though some of the cakes looked
fantastic, they were either too dry or too gooey. On the bright side though, the small sugar doughnuts were absolutely delicious, and I hoped to have more of them the next day.
Suitably fortified, we were ready to begin our explorations of Jakarta. Looking at the city through the large window in our room, the day looked very hazy grey and overcast – but we knew this was no reflection of the temperature outside. We’d come from winter weather and I was looking forward to t-shirt weather (I should be careful what I wish for!). 😊
I’d been chatting to my Mum that morning, and her memories of the major streets around Jakarta stirred some memories of my own, but certainly not enough to navigate ourselves without a map. Being a hip young hotel, our hotel’s reception didn’t have any paper maps… and the staff looked at us somewhat baffled when we asked. We could have downloaded an offline version of google maps, but decided to rely on the map in our Lonely Planet guide instead. We also stopped by the other hotel in the building and they were happy to give us a detailed paper map of
the greater Jakarta area.
We left for the National Museum at 10am. We had fully intended to walk the 1.5 kilometres to it, but our reception desk staff had politely suggested that a taxi might be safer as the pavements weren’t in good repair. We smiled politely at them, but on leaving the hotel and attempting to walk the first 10m, we realised they were right… plus the heat was ridiculous even that early in the morning. So not wanting to knock ourselves out on our first day, we hailed a Bluebird taxi.
The taxi driver wasn’t quite sure what or who the National Museum was, but he understood when I mentioned it was near ‘Monas’. So he dropped us off at one of the entrances to Merdeka Square which houses the National Monument – a tall pillar topped with a flame that locals fondly call ‘Monas’. Other locals cheekily call it ‘Soekarno’s last erection’. 😄
Soekarno was a charismatic Indonesian nationalist who campaigned against colonial rule and led the country to independence. He became the first president of the new country and ruled from 1945 to 1967. As with many such all-powerful and larger-than-life political figures,
he seems to have as many detractors as devotees in modern day Indonesia.
Anyway, back to Merdeka Square. We weren’t quite sure how to navigate the many streets around the massive square to get to the National Museum, and after asking a friendly policeman guarding the gates of the square for directions, we walked back to the main road and crossed via one of the aforementioned metal over-road pedestrian crossings. These ugly and unsafe looking things are an eyesore all over Jakarta, but they are also extremely necessary in a city full of one-way roads that swirl around the metropolis. I’m a big fan of grid city planning, and I just can’t get my head around a city that seems to have never ending one-way streets and no intersections!
After mistakenly walking into the military academy (whoops!) and an amused guard telling us the museum was a further two buildings down the road, we finally found the National Museum. I later discovered that not many people call it the National Museum, and that our taxi driver may have recognised it as ‘Gedung Arca’ (The House of Statues) or ‘Gedung Gajah’ (Elephant Building) because of the large bronze elephant
statue in the museum grounds.
At the end of a small semi-circular driveway, a beautiful white classical building greeted us. We were so very grateful to queue up for tickets in the air-conditioned foyer area. The temperature wasn’t too bad at 32 degrees, but the 80% humidity was killing us. The 10-minute walk had drenched us in sweat, and we both looked like we’d recently stepped out of a shower!
After putting our bags in lockers, we started our visit at a gallery with a collection of ancient religious statues from the country’s classical Hindu-Buddhist period. The statues were in semi-outdoor rooms as well as around a rectangular interior courtyard with a central lawn and grand Doric columns. The masses of statues were in various states of wear and tear, and many reminded me of the religious art in Angkor Wat in Cambodia.
We eventually made our way to Building 1: the Nation Building and History of Indonesian Culture section. Thankfully this was fully enclosed and a lot cooler inside. This gallery had beautifully displayed artefacts that gave us an insight into the geography and ethnography of the country. I loved the descriptions of religious icons, ancestral
worship and cultural symbols.
For me the biggest draw card to this museum had been the bones of Java Man. Java Man (
homo erectus) was thought to have existed between 700,000 and 2,000,000 years ago. When this early human fossil was discovered in Java in the late 19th century, it was thought of as the evolutionary ‘missing link’ between apes and us (
homo sapiens). Darwin may be the grandfather of evolution, but really, there have been many many scientists who have contributed to our increasing understanding of evolution over the years… such as finding and making sense of Java Man.
Having studied Human Evolution, the chance to see bones of such evolutionary importance had been extremely exciting. Alas, it then became apparent that the original bones were in a Dutch museum! The Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands ‘owns’ about 40,000 prehistoric objects collected in Indonesia in the 19th century. Without going into what I think about colonial powers and these sorts of related matters; I will just say this… I was somewhat placated by the fact that there was supposed to be a replica of the bones in Jakarta’s National Museum.
We spent a lot of
time making our way through the beautifully curated and displayed artefacts in Building 1, but on getting to the end of the gallery and not finding Java Man, we backtracked; twice! For the life of us, we couldn’t find Java Man. We kept exploring the other galleries in Building 2 that took us through Islamic art, musical instruments, fabrics, jewellery, ceramics and weapons. We returned to the Natural History section of the first gallery to look for Java Man one last time, and had to concede that he definitely wasn’t there. Apart from an information banner hanging in one room, there seemed to be no mention of these valuable fossils. We’d tried asking the security guards for help, but mentioning ‘Java Man?’ drew blank looks. But when I showed another guard a photo I’d taken of the Java Man information banner, he immediately pointed towards a newer building to our right.
We felt rather stupid. We both instantly remembered that the information guy at the entrance had explained to us that we should start in the original building, then walk through an adjacent section of galleries and finally proceed to the new section of the museum in another building!
This newest wing had four storeys, and it was a lot more temperature controlled than the sometimes hot and sticky original building. It even had extremely low lighting, but it desperately lacked the soul of the original building. And here we finally found the replica skull fragments and bones of Java Man. Even though the display cabinet and accompanying information panel was a bit (a lot) lack lustre, I couldn’t help being pleased at seeing something whose discovery had been crucial in furthering our knowledge of evolutionary biology.
However, what first drew our attention when we entered this gallery was the diorama of three
homo erectus figures. Hmmm. Well, I really have no words. I forgave a lot of the ‘artistry’ of the diorama because I loved the subject matter… but really, it was pretty bad. And I couldn’t believe that the diorama was in a more prominent position than the very significant skull fragments and bones!
We also unexpectedly happened upon the replica skull of Flores Man (
homo floresiensis). I don’t know much about this more recent finding of Flores Man, but
homo floresiensis existed after Java Man and is thought to have become extinct about
the time modern man appeared on the Indonesian islands. I was quite excited to look at the skull of Flores Man, but extremely oddly, this exhibit had been shoved in a dark corner next to a fire extinguisher and an escalator. Poor Flores Man was being shown very little love. Some exhibits at the National Museum really were fabulous, but just as many were quite uninspiring and very badly in need of some proper love and curation.
It was a Sunday and the museum was rather busy, but I was surprised that we saw less than 10 tourists the whole time we were there. There were many local families visiting the museum, including a few groups of young teenagers who seemed fascinated by us. Despite her friends laughing loudly at her, one of the girls got up enough courage to ask for a photo with me. However, once the group realised I was more than happy to oblige, they all crowded in and fell into hilarious poses within seconds. 😄
There was also a massive school group of what seemed like hundreds of pint-sized 6- or 7-year-olds. They were all chirping in unison as they scurried around the
museum in pairs, while an army of teachers tried to shepherd them through the museum. It was the very picture of herding very loud and excited cats! It was very cute, but where did the teachers find the energy to do this? The heat was so oppressive in the open-sided rooms that I could barely think straight at times, let alone be responsible for small humans too!
By now I was starting to get tired, but we pressed on – first to see the National Monument in Merdeka Square (Independence Square). When we walked outside, it felt seriously hotter than the 32 degrees it was supposed to be. An expected thunderstorm that afternoon didn’t help matters, with the humidity super high (88%) and rising! We had been seeing glimpses of the impossible-to-miss 132m tall National Monument all morning, and we wanted a closer look. Merdeka Square is a popular site for parades as well as demonstrations. We saw a small demonstration that morning, but couldn’t work out what it was about, or if the large police presence was because of the demonstration or was at normal levels for the square.
Merdeka Square is absolutely massive, and while the
diagonal grand avenues lined with palm trees that lead to the monument looked great, they gave precious little shade from the heat that day. If I was to be brutally honest, I’d say that seeing the monument up close didn’t add anything to the experience. After a few photos of the monument from the scant shade of the palm trees (we chose not to join the enormous queue to climb to the top), we kept walking towards the National Gallery using the Gambir Train Station as our landmark. We had expected Merdeka Square to be a park full of trees, and it wasn’t until we started walking towards the train station that we got to experience the lovely shady areas which were full of families picnicking on rugs. Little kids were running around with their friends, and the relaxed laughter of young and old alike gave the park a lovely atmosphere. For the second time that day I was reminded that it was a Sunday.
As we were leaving via one of the many entrances of the fenced-in Merdeka Square, we thought we’d ask another friendly policeman for directions. Unfortunately, he didn’t quite understand ‘National Gallery’ and tried to
send us back to the National Library. However, on asking for the Gambir Train Station, he pointed at the large complex right next to the gate. We were on track. Excuse the pun! 😉
The sprawling capital of Indonesia was starting to show itself to us. I was starting to recognise that the vastly different styles of architecture existing cheek to cheek was a metaphor for the diversity of humans in the city. We had walked past a mosque with its lyrical calls to prayer, a small shrine with swirling incense smoke, very humble apartment blocks, shiny glass skyscrapers, Dutch colonial buildings with red tiled roofs, and small local shop buildings crammed in-between all of these.
We eventually spotted the collection of old white Dutch buildings that house the National Gallery. After a very confused registration process that was complicated by us not having Wi-Fi to scan a QR code to register online, we were helped by two of the most obliging staff members. One girl used her phone as a hotspot so we could register, and another bloke patiently took us through the registration form that wasn’t in English.
We checked our bags into the cloakroom
and proceeded to the Permanent Exhibition area. I can’t express enough what a delightful experience this was. The rooms were set up in chronological order, and we worked our way from the colonial era, through to Indonesia’s struggle for independence, then to its newly found national voice, and on to its modern identity. It was fabulous to get a quick overview of Indonesia’s history through such a visual medium.
The permanent collection wasn’t large, but it was certainly a beautiful experience. The gallery was (possibly oddly) full of local 20-something year olds. Apart from us and another French couple, I didn’t see anyone over 30… and this included the staff. The visitors seemed so engaged with the art that I wondered if they were all Uni students on some sort of weekend assignment. I also encountered my second ‘can we have a photo?’ request for the day. I’m not quite sure what it is about my look that seemed to be fascinating young Indonesians girls that afternoon.
We then made our way to another building to look at a temporary exhibition. This was extremely interesting, not so much for the quality of the artworks, but for its theme
– the proposed move of the country’s capital from Jakarta to Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo). All the artists had a similar theme which addressed the imminent destruction of the unique rainforest in Kalimantan and the potential loss of traditional culture. The young people looking at the art seemed very intrigued with the paintings.
Andrew was approached by one of the staff who enthusiastically explained the exhibition theme (all information panels were in Bahasa Indonesia). She was lovely and also thanked us multiple times for coming to see the exhibition. The art was very politically charged and some of the works were even anti-government, and I wondered how much backlash something like this would cause in the media.
I thought the Indonesian National Gallery was exactly as a National Gallery should be – free art for its citizens that pictorially record and depict its history and nationhood. I think we all need these opportunities to look at our past, warts and all, in an open and frank way. I also think it’s even more important that young people are allowed to express their opinions on the direction of their country through their art. I absolutely loved our experience here, and
highly recommend it to anyone visiting Jakarta.
After a quick iced tea at the gallery canteen, we caught a Bluebird taxi back to the hotel and gratefully sank into the comfort of our cool room after what had been a very full morning and afternoon. We’d made it back to safety in the nick of time… within minutes the hazy view through our room window turned into a very rainy one. Loud claps of thunder and streaks of lightning announced the afternoon thunderstorm. The rain was heavy and we were so glad we’d returned in time to watch the storm from our hotel window. Not even a sturdy umbrella or heavy-duty raincoat would have protected us from that deluge!
We relaxed with cups of tea and got ready for our Intrepid Travel group meeting at 6pm. We were starting the
Jakarta to Ubud trip (which was the first of two trips that made up the Java and Bali Explorer combination trip). The Group Leader Susi was very enthusiastic from the minute we met her. There were 11 in the group – Stephan and Hannah (France and England), Alasdair (Scotland), Sophie (England), Sebastian and Marina (Switzerland), Ramin and Naheed
(England) and Warren (Aus). It was a mixed group in relation to ages and travel experience, but most had travelled at least once with Intrepid… which in our experience can make a big difference to the ease of travel.
Susi went through all the usual group housekeeping issues, as well as some survival techniques for Indonesia. Being an environmentally conscious company, we would be provided with drinking water stations in most hotels to reduce single use plastic. She also explained that having ring shaped ice or cubed ice was okay, but chipped or crushed ice wouldn’t be safe. Hmmm… that puts paid to my dreams of having the local shaved ice desserts and drinks like
cendol from the street carts. 😞
Most of us decided to have dinner together that night. We’d skipped lunch (because we’d been very full from trying all the various local dishes at breakfast), and we had been looking forward to dinner. Given the rain and thunder, Susi suggested a place called Mama Malaka in the mall next door. Even though the origins of the restaurant were Malaysian, we both had very local Indonesian dishes of
beef rendang (slow cooked beef braised in coconut
milk and a caramelised herb and spice mix), and a soup of
beef rawon (black soup with potato, sprouts and cracked wheat) served with rice. The black colour of the soup is created by the addition of black jelly from the Javanese keluak nut, which I’d never heard of. It also came with a salted duck egg, which I definitely wasn’t a fan of!
We were hungry and really enjoyed most aspects of our dinner. I liked the
beef rawon, but its subtle flavour and the accompanying salted duck egg would make me think twice before I ordered it again. Andrew took advantage of being in a Malaysian restaurant and ordered his favourite
tea tarik (milky sweet pulled tea) and I had an iced lychee tea, which had been made with Indonesian’s favourite jasmine flavoured black tea.
We were very tired, so after a quick trip to an ATM in the mall, we returned to our hotel room to have an early night. For the second night in a row, I fell asleep with the bright lights of a big city lighting up our room. It had been a great first day in Jakarta, and we needed to gather our strength for another day of exploring.
See you around Jakarta!
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Enjoying art and culture
We haven't made it to Jakarta yet but your blogs makes us give it some consideration. You are working your way through the foods, art and sampling the culture. Thanks of taking us along.