I'm in one of the biggest cities in the world and Lonely Planet predicted that I would bump into a particular person. That's impressive, right? Made all the more impressive by how mediocre the information in Lonely Planet has been throughout the rest of Indonesia.
Anyway, I'm in Jakarta. A late switch from Bali in an attempt to reduce the risk of getting stuck in a Southeast Asian ash cloud.
Jakarta is so much more civilised than I thought it would be. Easily the friendliest of the megacities I've been to. The people are so nice. Truck drivers will stop motorbikes to allow you to cross the road - that doesn't happen anywhere. And the "Hello Mister" people that are shouting at you aren't trying to sell you anything, they are just saying hello.
The city itself is surprisingly pleasant, certainly more pleasant than we'd been led to believe ("Have you got any tips for Jakarta?" "Erm, go to Yogyakarta instead"). Kota, the old colonial centre with its brightly-coloured-bike art thing going on could be from any European city. Chinatown was adequately weird (live frog anyone?). And the newer "city centre" boasts the biggest mosque outside of Saudi (200,000 people in a mosque. Exclamation mark) opposite a cathedral with spires like I've never seen before (you'll have to Google it yourself, it was under scaffolding so my photo would be mediocre). As in right opposite, as a symbol of Indonesia (the world's most populous Muslim majority nation)'s tolerance between different faiths [insert your own Bill 62 comment here].
Jakarta is so pleasant I feel bad that the only pictures I have to illustrate this post are of the somewhat non-representative neighbourhood that we stumbled into whilst looking for (and not finding) the old harbour and a murky skyline through a dirty window. Still that's what you're getting.
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