Jakarta Then and Now

July 8, 2019

In my Foreign Service career, I twice returned for a second tour to a country where I had previously served, with a gap of fifteen or more years between the two assignments. In both cases, I found the nations tremendously changed, to the point that I felt like I was living in a completely different country.

Earlier this year I returned to Jakarta for the first time since I completed my posting there in 1990. That means that I was last there more than 25 years ago. I was very curious to learn if Indonesia would follow the model of the two other countries and be very much a changed place.

In all, I spent a month in Indonesia, and a full week in Jakarta. Overall, Jakarta felt very much the same to me. Time had moved on, and there were definitely changes, but the overall ambience was the same, with one major exception.

What Has Changed

When I served at the U.S. embassy in Jakarta from 1988–1990, Indonesians were still living under the oppressive rule of a dictator, General Suharto. Even though my time there was towards the end of his thirty-one-year rule, when I left Jakarta in 1990 Suharto and his Golkar political party seemed very much in control. What little opposition existed was muted and revolved around human rights issues and freedom of the press.

When I landed in Jakarta this past March, almost from the first moment it was clear that politically the country was quite different. National elections were set for April 17. Every boulevard and street, down to the smallest alleys in remote towns, was lined with political campaign posters or party flags or both. There were “elections” under Suharto, but the results were a foregone conclusion. This time, however, there were sixteen parties competing at the national level, and even more regional and local parties were campaigning outside of the capital.

The multiplicity of parties, and the fact that the outcome was not a sure thing, evidenced a strong break with the Indonesia I had previously known. Still, the election in some ways felt like a throwback. Incumbent president Joko Widodo (popularly known as “Jokowi”) was running for a second term. His major rival was a Suharto son-in-law, Prabowo Subianto, a former general whose party represented the old Suharto order. I asked many, many people in that week in Jakarta, and later during my travels throughout Indonesia, what they thought would happen. Many predicted a win by Jokowi, but almost all of them cautioned that his major rival might pull off an upset, bringing back the old regime.

The election happened just two days after I departed Indonesia. The polls and predictions and my interlocutors were right; Jokowi was returned to office for a second term. Even so, the strength of the Suharto allies was sobering. Twenty years into Indonesia’s democracy, many Indonesians voted to return the dictator’s family and cronies to power. I tried to think of a U.S. parallel. Imagine if there had been a U.S. election in 1796 with the king of England’s heir on the ballot for president. Imagine that a large percentage of Americans voted for that prince. Would democracy have seemed secure? Indonesia has been fairly stable politically since the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998, with no civil wars or breakaway republics other than East Timor, but still the strength of the opposition made the country seem fragile in an unexpected way.

The Same But Different

The political posters blanketing the landscape everywhere the eye could see were a major change, but otherwise Jakarta felt to me like “same old same old.” Things had moved on, had changed, had evolved, and yet the essence seemed to be the same.

First, it was blisteringly hot. Indonesia sits right on the equator. That means that it is hot all year round—really, really hot. I had lightweight clothes with me, but even so going outside anytime between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. meant that I was going to be sweating within minutes. Walking for a distance of just a few blocks ensured that I would be dripping wet before I arrived at my destination. I like to walk around cities and towns when traveling, but Jakarta’s climate discourages that. Anyone who can, rides to a destination.

Second, Indonesians continue to be unfailingly polite and helpful. In Indonesian culture, raising one’s voice or getting visibly angry are socially unacceptable. For a westerner, always seeing smiling faces and always being treated with courtesy can sometimes seem insincere—but for Indonesians acting any other way feels wrong. While back in Indonesia, I tried once again, as I had when I previously lived in Jakarta, to rein in any obvious shows of impatience, annoyance, or exasperation. That is not always an easy thing to do when everything seems to take longer than it should, but I tried my best. I really only lost my temper once during that month, with a travel agency that I believed was trying to gouge additional money out of me.

Back in 1990, traffic in Jakarta was the worst I had ever seen anywhere. Bangkok was also bad, but not as awful as Jakarta. When folks in other cities to which I was later assigned would complain about how terrible the traffic was, I always thought to myself, “Hah! You clearly have never been to Jakarta.” The sheer volume of the traffic was overwhelming in itself, but what was worse was the kind of traffic: buses, cars, motorcycles, three-wheeled taxis, rickshaws, and even pushed hand carts all vying for the same road space. Three marked lanes would be inhabited by seven lanes of mixed vehicles.

It was a nightmare to navigate, and anyone who could possibly afford to do so hired a local driver since traffic accidents regularly erupted into a crowd run amuck. (“Run amuck” is a phrase derived from the Indonesian language and refers to the spontaneous combustion of crowds into rioting masses, a phenomenon that happened in Indonesia while I lived there with surprising frequency. And it is still happening. Following the 2019 national elections, the main opposition party staged a protest rally on May 22. The peaceful protest turned into a riot, and six people were killed and another 200 injured.)

In Jakarta in 2019, the overwhelming volume of traffic is still there, but it seems less chaotic and dangerous. Some types of vehicles—like the tri-wheeled taxi cabs and the pedicabs—have been banned from highways and major streets in Jakarta (but not from streets in other Indonesian cities). Three lanes will still hold five vehicles, but not seven as before.

The swarms of motorcycles have, if anything, grown bigger. You won’t see larger conglomerations of motorcycles anywhere else. Common wisdom in Jakarta, according to my hired driver, is that motorcycles can make it across town faster than cars, and of course it is a lot less expensive for Indonesians to buy, maintain, and operate a motorbike than a car—but anyone with the means to do so quickly abandons his motorbike for a car due to the heat and the frequency of heavy rain.

Jakarta is clearly trying to deal with traffic congestion. A new above-ground metro system was being tested while I was in Jakarta and was due to come into service shortly after my departure. Designed to relieve traffic congestion, it was an open question as to how much of a dent the metro would put in the chronic traffic jams.

The heavy traffic meant that crossing a street or road, even at designated crossing spots, felt 25 years ago—and still felt this year—like putting one’s life in the hands of a driver who may—but probably doesn’t—think crosswalk stripes actually mean something. Cars aren’t the only danger. The closest I came to being run down this year was not by a car but by a motorcyclist speeding faster than the cars around him, trying to prove the notion that he could beat the cars to his destination.

As the tri-wheeled taxis and pedicabs have been pushed off main roads, enterprising Indonesians have leaped into the breach. Indonesia’s home-grown version of Uber is everywhere, but Indonesia’s super up-to-date digital generation has also created an Uber-like taxi service carried out on motorcycles. This form of taxi is called an ojek. The motorcycle taxi drivers, despite the sweltering heat, wear jackets with their company logo emblazoned on the back. Go-jek (a play on the word ojek) seems to be the leading motorcycle taxi company. Its motorcyclists, wearing green Go-jek jackets, are seen everywhere in Jakarta, with paying customers riding pillion.

Indonesian food was the same as I remembered it. Meal choices were the same, morning, noon, and night. There really is no designated “breakfast food” In Indonesia. People just eat the same things they eat at other meals. In my small hotel in Jakarta, there was no restaurant, but the room price included breakfast. Every morning I was given a boxed meal, usually consisting of nasi goreng (think fried rice with a few chunks of some sort of meat thrown in), a vegetable, and a second starch (potato usually). Sometimes the nasi goreng would be swapped out for mie goreng (the same dish but with noodles instead of rice as the base).

As my trip progressed, I stayed in other, larger hotels, most of which had buffet breakfast spreads. Those buffet meals were often quite extensive, and were designed to cater to the tastes of foreign tourists, who came from many different countries. Usually there would be scrambled eggs and bacon for Americans, tofu and soups for the Japanese, grilled tomatoes and beans for the Brits, a couple of curry dishes for the Indians, and a few Thai mainstays. Still, the largest choice of dishes would be Indonesian—nasi goreng, mie goreng, many other dishes incorporating coconut as a key ingredient, and other Indonesia standards.

I had nasi goreng at least once a day every day I was in Indonesia, and sometimes I had it for all three meals. Luckily I love both nasi goreng and mie goreng, so that wasn’t a problem. (On the other hand, I do not favor coconut, and many, many Indonesian dishes incorporate coconut. I did my best to steer away from those.)

All of these elements—the weather, the people, the traffic, the food—all felt very familiar.

Jakarta Moves On

Despite the sameness, there were a lot of changes which seemed not radical, but just the natural progression of time altering everything.

When I was in Indonesia before, there were only a few malls. The shops in those malls were very expensive, and the only people in them were the affluent. Malls have mushroomed in Indonesia, and have become the go-to meeting places for all. Moderately priced small restaurants, internet shops, and clothing stores fill the malls, and “pop-up” booths run down mall corridors with even more economical shopping choices. Some malls occupying different city blocks are joined by above-ground walkways, so that customers can move from one mall to another without ever leaving the air conditioning.

Another change has been that Indonesians of all socio-economic classes have enthusiastically embraced cell phones. Go-jek motorcycle taxis, for example, can only be booked via cell phone, not land line. On more than one occasion, men loitering on street corners who were clearly only one small step up from begging whipped out their cell phones and offered to help me find the address I was seeking.

Quite a significant change involves fast food restaurants. When I was in Jakarta before, as I remember it the only American fast food available was one Pizza Hut restaurant in central Jakarta. Nowadays, on crowded shopping streets the American name brands are everywhere: McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, and of course Pizza Hut. Unlike the French, the Indonesian middle class and youth have enthusiastically embraced American fast food culture.

On one of my forays around town, I went down to my old workplace, the U.S. Embassy. The embassy back then was on a large compound near Merdeka (Freedom) Square, with lots of huge shade trees under which several low-rise buildings housed the U.S. and Indonesian staff. I worked on the second floor of the building dedicated to public affairs. The Ambassador’s office was on the top floor of the chancery, the main building on the compound. I really liked that embassy. It seemed in tune with Indonesia—not ostentatious, not very modern, adapting itself to the hot climate. The U.S. Embassy is now in the same spot, on prime downtown real estate, but it is completely different. A multistory, metal building rises up and towers over the bordering security wall. It is sleek, modern, and more or less the opposite of what was there before. I can’t say that it is out of tune with Jakarta, because Jakarta’s buildings are becoming more 21st century, too, but still I felt a sense of loss and sadness at the change.

One of my duties while assigned to Jakarta was to draft speeches for the ambassador. The one of which I was most proud was his departure speech, in which the ambassador spoke candidly about problems for the future of Indonesia. Since he was on the point of departure, the ambassador could address issues in a way that was impossible earlier in his tenure. One “concern” that I addressed in the speech, which the ambassador retained in his final draft, was about the large percentage of young Indonesians, many of them with high school and even university educations, who were facing a job market with too few positions for too many job seekers. The disparity between the numbers of jobs available and the number of job seekers resulted in Indonesia having many positions that seemed more “make work” than necessary.

At a department store, for example, a sales girl would assist a customer. After the customer selected an item, the sales assistant would write up a slip for the item and give it (but not the item itself) to the customer. The customer then had to stand in line to pay the cashier. While the customer was waiting in line, the first sales assistant would take the item over to the pick-up station. Having paid, the customer was given a receipt and had to go wait in yet another line. Once having reached the head of that second line, the customer presented the receipt and claimed his item. So, there were three employees to do the same job that one, or at most two, employees would do in a U.S. department store—but three Indonesians rather than just one or two had a job. The same sort of inefficiency reigned throughout Indonesia, whether in government offices or household staff.

This year, I saw few examples of that sort of inefficiency. A high percentage of educated, unemployed young people persists in the population, but customers are no longer being inconvenienced with having to maneuver multiple unnecessary layers of employees.

Enduring Jakarta

In the intervening 25 years since I last experienced Jakarta, I had compiled a mental list of three Jakarta spots that I was determined to visit, if they still existed.

The first was a restaurant that was quite famous back in 1988 for its rijsttafel. A legacy of Dutch colonial rule, rijsttafel meals consist of many different courses of Indonesia food, sort of an Indonesian version of a smorgasbord. What made this particular restaurant unusual were three factors. First, the restaurant was located in a lovely old colonial home with amazing local art on the walls. Secondly, the menu included items authentic to the colonial period. The third and most memorable factor was that, if a diner ordered rijsttafel, a procession of many attractive young ladies, all attired in batik sarongs, would come to the table, each bearing a platter. What an entrance those young ladies made!

With the help of the unfailingly polite and helpful Jakarta hotel staff, I identified that restaurant, the Oasis. Not only was it still open, the location was only a few blocks from my hotel. I made a reservation. Despite the close distance to the restaurant, I booked a taxi. The last thing I wanted to do was to arrive at this elegant restaurant with perspiration coming out of every pore. The restaurant and meal were much as I remembered them. I got there on the early side of the normal dining hour, and over the course of my meal the restaurant filled up with large tables of celebrants, obviously many of them birthday and wedding parties.

As a single woman dining alone, I was a bit of an oddity in the restaurant, so several staff members stopped by to chat. I mentioned to one of them that I had last been in the restaurant about 25 years previously. The next thing I knew, the restaurant manager came over and introduced himself.

“Can I order the rijsttafel even though I am alone?”

“Certainly. It’s our speciality.”

“I remember quite fondly the procession of some 20 or so young women bringing out the various dishes. Does that still happen?”

“Yes, it does, but sadly nowadays the number of people carrying the platters is less, and the rijsttafel presentation is different.”

What the manager didn’t tell me, but I soon observed, was that the procession now consisted of both women and men, all of whom were traditionally dressed in sarongs, but the total number of servers who brought the rijsttafel to the table was far fewer, some seven people rather than 20 plus. On the positive side, though, music and dance were added, as well as “diner participation,” all of which all the diners in the restaurant got to enjoy. Readers might like to see a short video I made of rijsttafel being delivered to an adjoining table.

The second item on my priority list was to return to a department store named Sarinah that I frequented while working in Jakarta. Sarinah had a floor dedicated to an outstanding collection of handicrafts that was my favorite haunt for buying presents to send home and for purchasing Christmas gifts. Before arriving back in Indonesia, I wondered if Sarinah had been able to survive changing times and tastes. Indeed it had, and I visited it more than once during my time in Jakarta. The handicrafts were, if anything, even more well made and enticing than they had been back in 1988. I was surprised that there weren’t more foreign shoppers in the store. With great difficulty, I restrained myself from going on a shopping spree while in Sarinah, saving major purchases for a later visit to Indonesia’s cultural capital, Jogjakarta. I did, however, buy some small souvenirs, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that I only had to deal with one shop girl, not three, to secure my purchases.

In a future column, I will write about my third place to revisit, which was the location I most wanted to find again. For now, let me just say that the Indonesian genie was very generous with his gifts, granting me my three wishes, and I was able to experience again three venues dear to my memories of Jakarta.