Jammed in Jabodetabek

It’s fortunate that most Indonesians have a flexible attitude to time. In many Asian and African countries, there’s a sliding scale on the value of timeliness, based on location, the business at hand, and those involved. Business meetings in the capital city are expected to start within ten to fifteen minutes of the scheduled time; in a provincial city, people will show up thirty minutes late without apology; in a village, the meeting will happen when it happens. Social events also operate on a loose schedule, where no one is criticized for showing up “late.”

Jakarta residents, who are expected to be more punctual than people in other places, find it more difficult to be so because of the city’s legendary traffic snarls. With a population of more than ten million, Jakarta is the largest city in Southeast Asia. Its metropolitan area is so large that it has its own name, Jabodetabek (the first letters of Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi combined); with a population of more than thirty million, it’s the second-largest urban agglomeration in the world. Most residents of the largest—Tokyo-Yokohama—rely on public transport. In Jabodetabek, where public transport is slow and unreliable, many take to the roads; every day, Jakarta’s population is swelled by millions traveling into the city to work and trade.

Even outside the official rush hours, it can take three hours to travel across the city (about ten miles). The only sure way to arrive anywhere on time is by motorcycle, weaving in and out of the traffic. One of the fastest-growing e-commerce businesses is Go-Jek, a play on ojek, the word for the popular motorcycle taxi.

The ojek is not as safe as a traditional taxi, or even the three-wheel auto rickshaw bajaj, but if you need to travel fast, this two-wheeled version of Uber is the best option. Taking advantage of the fact that Indonesia is the world’s fourth-largest mobile phone market (it has more SIM cards in use than there are people, according to the Economist), Go-Jek lets users use an app to call a driver for a ride or a delivery.

Slower than a bajaj or an ojek—a bicycle rickshaw

Stephanie and I sampled most forms of public transport—minibus, train, taxi, bus, and bajaj—during a three-day stay in Jakarta. We didn’t expect to travel by ojek. Then the rains came and the side street leading to our guest house was blocked by flooding. Jakarta lies in a low coastal plain, with canals (many of them heavily polluted) running throughout the city. Here, the drains had been blocked by trash, and the water was about nine inches deep. We were about to start wading through it when someone suggested we could get through on motorbikes. We set off on two machines through the muddy water, the drivers weaving around stalled vehicles and floating furniture and over invisible speed bumps. They had a remarkable sense of balance at slow speeds.

Shipping news

From Taman Fatahillah, the central cobblestone square of Batavia, the former capital of the Dutch East Indies, it is a short walk along Kali Besar to the old port of Sunda Kelapa at the estuary of the Ciliwung River. For three centuries, trading ships and military vessels sailed from the port as the Dutch expanded and consolidated their control of the Dutch East Indies, fighting off the English, the Portuguese and the pirates.

The harbor entrance was too narrow and shallow to accommodate larger vessels which had to anchor further north. Rowboats and smaller ships, known as lighters, were used to transport cargo and passengers to the port. In the 19th century, the condition of what the Dutch called the Haven Kanaal (Harbor Canal) deteriorated. It became costly and time-consuming to carry passengers and cargo into the port, and dangerous during stormy weather. In 1885, partly to accommodate increasing traffic following the opening of the Suez Canal, the colonial administration built a new port five miles to the east.

Today, Sunda Kelapa is lined with brightly painted wooden pinisi, the traditional two-mast wooden schooners that for centuries have carried cargo and people between islands. The first ships, said to be modeled on the Dutch pinnace, were built for the spice trade at Makassar, the VOC trading fort on the island of Sulawesi.

The modern version, with a crew of a dozen, is similar in design but longer and larger (up to 350 tons), with navigational equipment and a diesel engine. The pinisi no longer carry cloves, nutmeg, and other spices. Most were unloading tropical hardwoods such as camphor, meranti, and mahogany, logged in Kalimantan or Sulawesi, and taking on cement, sand, bricks, and other building materials.

I asked my port guide to describe a typical voyage. “One week from South Sulawesi to Jakarta with a cargo of wood,” he said. “Load up with cement and then three days to Jambi [a river port in central Sumatra], and back to Jakarta with a cargo of coconuts.” Although a few small cranes and winches were in operation, most of the loading was done by laborers, hoisting wooden planks on their shoulders and cement sacks on their backs. For transporting bulk materials across the archipelago, pinisi are still the cheapest and most efficient option.

Going Dutch

It’s a quiet corner of Indonesia’s bustling capital, Jakarta, away from the traffic snarls, street markets and mega-malls. It has a cobblestone central square, canals and stately 17th and 18th century houses with gable fronts. Ignore the palm trees and the tropical heat and you could be, well, in Amsterdam.

From its modest origins as a trading post, Batavia, named for an ancient Germanic tribe, the Batavi, became the thriving commercial center of the jewel in the Dutch imperial crown—the East Indies. Over almost three centuries, administrators and military commanders sailed out of the port of Batavia to expand their dominion throughout the archipelago by conquest and alliance.

The Dutch imperial mission was driven by economic motives, although trade and politics soon became intertwined. From the mid-sixteenth century, the Dutch were duking it out with the Portuguese, Spanish, and English for control of the East Indies trade and sea routes to China. Each established fortified trading posts along the main sea passages; the Portuguese were first to claim the famed spice islands of the Moluccas (Maluku). Realizing the potential of the East Indies trade, the Dutch government merged competing merchant companies into the Vereenigde Osst-Indische Compagnie (VOC), the United East India Company. By 1605, the VOC had driven the Portuguese out of the Moluccas.

In 1610, the prince of Jayakarta (Jakarta) granted trading rights to both the VOC and the English. Relations between the two powers were never cordial. In 1619, the English defeated the Dutch in a sea battle and, with the support of the prince’s army, besieged the VOC fort. Reinforced by troops from the Moluccas, the Dutch governor Jan Pieterszoon Coen kicked out the English and razed Jayakarta. The VOC named its fortress and trading post Batavia.

Batavia was a closed community, with a mixed population of Europeans, Asian laborers, and slaves; Javanese were not allowed inside the walls for fear of an insurrection. The Dutch built canals from the Ciliwung River and lined them with stately mansions.

Today, many are abandoned and in poor repair, their roofs leaking and trees sprouting through cracks in the floors. Jakarta’s city government wants to revitalize the district, now called Kota Tua, but has offered property owners few incentives to restore the buildings. Some Indonesians say good riddance: the country should not be spending money to spiff up relics of its colonial past.

The best example of colonial-era architecture is the palatial Stadhuis (City Hall), built in 1710 to serve as the headquarters of the VOC and later the Dutch colonial government. Since 1974, it has housed the Jakarta History Museum. Viewed from Batavia’s central cobblestone square, the Taman Fatahillah, it is easy to imagine how Batavia might have looked three hundred years ago when its streets bustled with traders and laborers, hurrying between the harbor, warehouses, and trading offices. One block west of the square is what used to be Batavia’s high-rent district. The main canal, the Kali Besar, is lined with stylish three- and four-story eighteenth-century mansions with balconies and arched roofs. The last remaining Dutch drawbridge, dating from the seventeenth century, crosses the north end of the canal. In Batavia, the Dutch created a little corner of Amsterdam, albeit with palm trees and better weather.