Jakarta: The good, bad and ugly

Jakarta: The good, bad and ugly

I am an American expatriate teaching in Surabaya. On May 28, I
had to visit the Attorney General's Office in Jakarta about a
problem I had. While in Jakarta, I had a chance to see and
experience the worst and best the capital currently has to offer
expats. I will begin with the bad, go to worse and worst and end
with the good because it was so surprising.

Upon arriving at Gambir station, my fiancee and I were
surrounded by taxi drivers offering to take us to the Supreme
Court with prices from Rp 10,000 to Rp 15,000 but we thought the
taxi booth would be safest. How sad it was to have our first
impression of Jakarta be a taxi driver first take us south on Jl.
Medan Merdeka Timur, then in a circle, pretend to ask directions
and end up with a metered fare of Rp 7,000 at the court, which
turns out to be within walking distance of Gambir station.

After a sadly disappointing meeting, we took a bajaj to Mangga
Dua with a kind man who laughed at our experience with the taxi
and said we had to be careful with Jakartans but that he was from
East Java. But I guess he had been in Jakarta too long because he
charged us Rp 10,000, after first asking Rp 15,000, whereas when
we returned to Gambir, another bajaj driver only asked for Rp
4,000.

But the worst experience of Jakarta "hospitality" was the
bakso (meatball) seller near the National Monument. My fiancee, a
Surabaya native, first asked him if we could have bakso for Rp
1,500 each which he agreed to but when we finished he demanded Rp
8,000. I really felt that being bule (white) in Jakarta means
people can lie, cheat and steal.

However, I am not really writing this to complain about the
bad but to tell about the amazingly good experience we had. When
we went to purchase tickets back to Surabaya, we discovered to
our horror that an envelope containing Rp 500,000 was missing and
that we did not have enough money to return home. I could only
imagine that the money, in a plain unmarked envelope, had fallen
out at the Supreme Court. My fiancee was in utter despair, saying
it was hopeless to even try looking for it.

However, I went back to the Supreme Court and saw a Pak Agung
Putra and asked him if anyone had found an envelope. Amazingly,
he replied, dengan uang? (with money). I praised God for such an
honest man. He said another guest had actually found the envelope
and given it to him. Since it was unmarked, he did not really
know whose it was but he thought it might have belonged to me.

I just wanted to write that while there may be many small men
in Jakarta who are ready to lie, cheat and steal, there is at
least one great man named Agung Putra who should be praised for
his actions to a guest to his city.