Hundreds of female fans flock F4 idols' hotel

The State Palace and Hotel Borobudur, Central Jakarta, are only two kilometers away from each other. But on Thursday afternoon, the places were like two different universes.

While thousands of workers protested against the utility price hikes in front of the palace, hundreds of people (photo above) -- mostly young women -- swarmed the hotel for a totally different reason.

They skipped school and work, hoping to see Taiwanese acting/ singing sensation F4, due to appear in a two-day concert at the Jakarta Fairground, Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, starting on Friday.

While the workers demanded reasonable prices to match their provincial minimum wages of only Rp 631,554 per month, the boyband fans were willing to pay up to Rp 2 million each for concert tickets.

About 80 percent of the 70,000 tickets have reportedly been sold already.

It is difficult to explain the madness, but in the end, it boiled down to their fantastic hair and good looks.

Jerry Yan, Vanness Wu, Ken Zhu and Vic Zhou have indeed taken Asia by storm since their 2001 Meteor Garden broadcast serial, followed by the sequel launched last November.

The success of the show has also landed them a record deal with Sony Music, while the concert here is aimed at promoting their second album, Fantasy Forever, released at the end of last year.

With TV shows, albums and commercials, the boys have become a musical gold mine, causing their management and promoter to treat them like cut glass, with extremely tight security in evidence.

The media conference was all over in 10 minutes, with only three questions allowed, driving the journalists mad.

The same thing occurred at the meet-and-greet event, where 300 fans were given the opportunity supposedly to meet and greet the boys.

But what happened was that the fans had to wait for 90 minutes, eventually to meet them for only five, during which time they waved and smiled and made a few trivial comments before the management whisked them away. -- Hera Diani