Jakarta offers nighttime entertainment for all tastes

Jakarta offers nighttime entertainment for all tastes

By Mehru Jaffer

JAKARTA (JP): Nothing seems easier in today's world of glamour and glitter than to amuse oneself. Cosmopolitan cities like Jakarta have become the center of gravity for millions of people, both for its unlimited economic opportunities and for the fun and games available to the prince as well as to the pauper here. Especially after dark.

During the day there is much going on in Jakarta, the home of over 12 million people, but at nighttime the city throbs with quite another kind of hustle and bustle. This is the time when people prefer to jam instead of simply cutting deals like during the daytime. The young and energetic move straight out of the office even after nearly 10 hours at the desk to chill out at air-conditioned cafes or a bar at a five-star hotel. Students prefer cheaper joints like roadside eating places or open-air cafes. With them the emphasis is less on eating and more on the airing and sharing of ideas. Many housewives are happy simply to have their husbands back each evening and entertain friends and family at home. Those heavy in pocket but light in spirit pass by fast food counters for burgers, pizzas or sandwiches day in and day out, remembering to fuel the body but without realizing how they starve the soul.

The more adventurous, however, go in search of new excitement evening after evening. Maybe to a massage parlor? According to a regular, these parlors can range from a couple of grotty rooms at the back of a house in the middle of a crowded commercial center through to swish, well-appointed parlors in major shopping arcades and hotels.

For the uninitiated, especially foreigners, it is advised that if by chance half way through the exercise the massage lady is heard saying "suck it", "suck it", to please listen again, for all that she is probably repeatedly saying is "sakit, sakit?" as she kneads and loosens all the knots in the body with her deliciously, delicate hands.

But it was not always so. So hectic, so full of choices or so costly to amuse one's self. Even a few decades ago stepping out of the house for amusement was a rarity and eating out was an occasion that was indulged in literally once in a blue moon. Many more people lived in rural areas working very hard from sunrise to sundown. After dark there was little else to do except to tell stories, sing, dance and play musical instruments or simply sit around talking. Out of this same tradition was born the wayang (shadow puppet) performances that have kept audiences enthralled for centuries.

Today it may be easy to catch a wayang performance anytime during the year but in earlier times communities had to wait for the appropriate occasion to witness the grand, night-long spectacle. A lot of games played today were perhaps invented by children working in the fields and living in rural surroundings. Since adults left the simplest and most boring chores for the children to do, work was imaginatively turned into different kinds of games to make the time pass more quickly or to make it seem like work was fun. Two children might have a contest to see who could pick more tea leaves or collect the most wood for the night's fire.

These games taught children how to aim and throw, how to solve problems and to do things with their hands following certain rules and regulations. They also learned to be fair, patient and, above all, found a wonderful opportunity to let their imagination run wild. Before there were no factories making toys or stores selling them and children in the countryside learned to make do with whatever they had. Toys were invented out of what nature provided or objects lying discarded in the house. So rags became dolls and leftover wood and string were used to make spinning tops. Very often games were invented on the spur of the moment by those lucky enough to posses a higher flight of imagination. Several games involving marbles, stones and sticks were played in villages around the world.

Very little money was needed to have lots of fun then, with each family invariably having several children combined with all the children of the neighborhood who kept each other company night and day. And few youngsters complained of boredom as they were left to play by themselves in large gardens, fields and homes after their chores were done.

Today the most popular forms of entertainment remain theater and film performances, cabarets, casinos and sitting at cafes.

In fact, it is inside a cafe that the liveliest spirit of Jakarta's nightlife lies; cafes that are essentially pubs where alcohol drinks are found along with live music, coffee and eats.

While cafe Jimbani creates a Balinese ambience, CNN meets Starbucks at the News Cafe where the day's top headlines jostle for attention with the dish and drink of the day. More and more cafes have installed the Internet along with coffee machines to make the manic surfer spend many more hours on its premises.

A night prowler faking a complaint said that the amount of choices available in Jakarta actually hindered his passion for keeping himself constantly amused. There are clubs, bars, discos and restaurants galore. The difficult task remains to find a place that one really enjoys. To do that a lot of hopping from place to place is required for a while.

A nighttime walk down Jl. Mangga Besar is said to be a walk on the wild side. Here, outdoor vendors, street-side cafes, massage parlors -- advertised as health centers, discos, nightclubs and restaurants are situated shoulder to shoulder. Mangga Besar and the surrounding Kota area is home to the largest concentration of nightspots in Jakarta, ranging from the seedy to the posh.

At Fatahillah, the entertainment offered is similar to that in Hong Kong with mouthwatering Chinese flavors available inside well-known restaurants that invariably have facilities called VIP rooms as well where it is suspected much more goes on aside from eating, drinking and talking. Here Chinese pop music and soft rock in English is also to be found. For those still hooked on karaoke, this is the place to be.

Other performances in a number of languages with wild costumes and some crude jokes will remind one of the vaudeville of the 1920s, but with a very Asian flavor. Some of these shows in Kota (downtown Jakarta), especially on Jl. Hayam Wuruk and Gajah Mada are descendent from the French cabaret that simply meant, at first, a restaurant serving liquor and offering musical entertainment. Later dancing was included around the 1880s in different corners of gay Paris.

Cabaret soon became the center of all cosmopolitan existence and cultural activity. It served as a small club in which the audience was grouped around an entertainment platform where a series of amateur acts were linked together by a master of ceremonies. The coarse humor here was usually directed against the conventions of a bourgeois society. By the late 1920s, the craze for cabaret had spread all over Europe. The German cabaret was no longer just musical entertainment but with the fear of a second world war lurking in the background it had become an entire political and literary movement.

It was no longer bawdy entertainment but biting satire patronized by artists, writers, political revolutionaries and intellectuals. The German cabarets were usually located in old cellars that had become centers of leftist opposition to the rise of German fascism and often experienced retaliation for their criticism of the government by staunch supporters of Hitler.

Taproom concerts at city taverns go by the name of cabaret in England and the Americans call it a nightclub where an entertainer usually a comedian, singer or musician can establish rapport with an audience in an intimate atmosphere that encourages improvisation and spontaneity. This kind of entertainment is considered to be the best sort as it does not just tickle the ribs but also stimulates the gray cells.

Whether it is during the day or at night, the best relaxation as far as this writer is concerned remains a visit to places like the Cafe Utan Kayu, not only in search of a good cup of coffee that is reasonably priced but also in the hope of bumping into someone like an Ayu Utami or a Goenawan Mohamad simply to hear them talk perhaps of what is essential in life, and what is not.