Jakarta

Kota Tua

My first morning in Jakarta, I headed out for Kota Tua, the old town where the Dutch originally settled. Before I could get very far, a group of schoolgirls came bouncing up to me to ask questions in English for a class assignment. They were video recording on their phones with fancy sequined microphones held up to better capture my voice. I did my best to answer their basic questions, like “What is your name?” and “Where are you from?”

My first stop was the Wayang Museum, which showcases puppets of all kinds from across Indonesia. There were two whole floors of puppets, and one of the most common puppet shows retells the Ramayana. Upstairs, there was an excellent display explaining the general storyline, and I ended up reading all of it. It turned out to be really helpful once I got to Bali (where Hindu is the most prominent religion) because the Ramayana is embedded in the culture.

puppets used to teach Muslim values, traditional shadow puppet, puppets used to teach about the struggle for Indonesian independence

After that, I randomly followed a sign to what I thought was a museum, but accidentally ended up in a fancy coffee shop. Instead of admitting I’d made a mistake, I decided to get a cold drink and found myself sitting underneath a giant 30-foot dragon on the ceiling. The rest of the coffee shop was filled lots of artifacts from old Jakarta. This is one of my favorite parts of travel, randomly stumbling upon something fascinating that I had no idea existed when I set out in the morning. This little place was probably one of my favorite unexpected finds of the trip.

As I sipped my fancy tropical fruit juice, I looked around the coffee shop, which was an ode to Peranakan culture. Peranakans are descendants of some of the earliest Chinese immigrants to Southeast Asia. The community has long been intertwined with local Malay and Indonesian cultures. The coffee shop was full of antiquities that showcased these early blended cultural traditions, as well as relics from the colonial influence.

After some more random wanderings, I sat down for lunch at the Cafe Batavia. It’s famous because it’s housed in the second oldest building in the Old Town, and many Western celebrities have visited over the years. I thought it was a bit overrated, but I did get to try bir pletok. This traditional Betawi (from the area near Jakarta) drink is made by brewing together ginger, pandan leaves, lemongrass, and sappan wood. Although it wasn’t my favorite drink, I enjoyed the unexpected combination of spices.

I started making my way to my next museum, but was stopped by yet another teacher and her students. These students were younger, more embarrassed, and shyer. I answered their half-whispered questions, and they sent me on my way, this time with a gift bag. I waited until I got all the way back to my hotel room to peek inside the fancy bag. And what did I find inside? A brand-new fancy pink hand towel.

giant dragon, fancy mixed juice, iced bir pletok, and my gifted pink hand towel

Next up was a stop at the Museum of Fine Art and Ceramics, where my favorite pieces were these wonderfully carved wooden statues displayed outside each of the gallery rooms along the outdoor breezeway. They were all relatively modern, but varied widely in style and the amount of detail in their carving. My four favorites are below.

four beautiful wooden carved sculptures – which one is your favorite?

As I was wandering back across the square, I offered to take a photo for a group of older Indonesian Muslim ladies who were clearly on a fun outing together. For the third time that day, they asked me to take a photo with them as well. I leaned over, and the one next to me wrapped her arm around my waist and I swear she reached down and grabbed my butt. Perhaps I should learn to be a little more cautious with my generosity. You never know when offering to take a photo will end with you getting unexpectedly groped by someone’s grandma.

Mangrove Lagoon

Last time I was in Jakarta, I’d put some pins in my Google Map and one of them was for kayaking in the mangroves. I figured I might as well check to see if there were any openings, and there were. The next day, I hauled myself out of bed early and grabbed a taxi. When I got there, our group consisted of a dad and his kid along with a larger family made up of a mom, dad, daughter, and a couple of nieces who had never been kayaking before. The core family had just come back from living in the UK for a couple of years, where the mom had just finished her PhD in pharmacy so she could return home and be a professor at the university.

After the girls figure out how to stay stable in a kayak, off we went on the mangrove adventure. Within minutes of being on the water, there was a reptile swimming nearby. My guide had previously warned me that they were no crocodiles in the water. Sure enough, it was just a monitor lizard, but I’d never seen anything like this. It was mesmerizing to see this creature swim effortlessly at the surface. Around the bend, there was a beautiful heron preening on a rock. I took a picture to identify it later. Although I already knew that herons come in blue and green, this one was a purple heron.

purple heron, me in my kayak, monitor lizard swimming in the mangrove lagoon

On and on we paddled, and it was surreal. This place was only twenty minutes from downtown Jakarta, yet I couldn’t hear any of the traffic. Saleh, the guy who does these tours, is a geologist in the oil industry by profession. He really just doing outdoorsy things. He recently did a 20+ day sea kayaking tour between islands, so we got along great, sharing stories of our adventures.

He then proceeded to show off the mangrove plantation, which was absolutely stunning. Row after row of young mangroves stretched out across the water, slowly becoming part of the ecosystem. The first time they planted them, they died because the water got too high during high tide. Now, they build baskets that sit above the water for the young plants. This allows their roots to grow down into the water and take hold but prevents them from drowning. Different areas had been planted at different times. Some were only a year old, some a few years, and some areas just looked like natural areas because they’d reached maturity.

baskets for baby mangroves, the mangroves after about three months

The company doing this work has held the contract for years, but it was about to expire, and a Chinese company might take over the contract to develop the area. On the way out, the owner of the business came over to talk with me. He was an Indonesian man who met his American wife while she was an exchange student here. He went to school at Penn State, and they’ve lived back and forth between Indonesia and the United States ever since. Of course, this land belongs to the government, but he didn’t want to see it turned into a high rise hotel. He didn’t think the new company would continue his family’s legacy of mangrove restoration and was understandably frustrated by how money and corruption was influencing how these contracts were being awarded.

I had only planned on going kayaking, but somehow ended up learning about mangroves, meeting a whole cast of characters, and learning about local government corruption. Saleh promised to take me out to the ocean the next time I visit, so I can experience “real” sea kayaking. The owner said he’ll text me the next time he visits San Francisco and the pharmacist mom and dad now follow me on Instagram.

Indonesian Food

For the foodies following along, here’s some of what I ate. First photo below was ketupat pecel pincuk, which was basically just vegetables on rice with fried tempeh, slathered over with peanut sauce. Next up is gado-gado, practically the only vegetarian dish on the menu at Cafe Batavia. This is another version of salad with a peanut sauce, this time with some eggs on the side. This dish gets served often in Indonesia and it’s always plated in a different way. Last up was a random hole-in-the-wall joint in Chinatown that always seemed to have a line of people out the door. I finally walked by when there weren’t too many people. It’s a Korean-style salt bread place and that’s basically all they serve along with tea and coffee. They only had a couple of flavors left, so I got a cheesy one to go.