Jakartans are discovering Bogor's merits

By Gus Kairupan

JAKARTA (JP): It's been quite a long time since I visited Bogor, West Java. I mean really went there and stayed for a bit longer than flying visits, each lasting only a few hours.

Maybe it suffers from being too close in proximity to Jakarta's fleshpots that it is not listed on the roll of places that offer a wide variety of pastimes. One doesn't "go" to Bogor. One bypasses it.

At least before toll roads began to snake through the countryside the only way to points further south, like Bandung, was through Bogor. Of course, it's not quite right to say that nobody goes there.

There are lots of people who visit the place, perhaps to take a breather before continuing onwards, which isn't at all the same as going there with a purpose.

I'm not referring to those who live there (they have a damn good purpose), but real visitors, who live elsewhere and have made Bogor the destination point of their travels.

It looks, though, as if in the quite foreseeable future Bogor will be the recipient of an enormous number of visitors.

What's more, those visitors are likely to stay, and stay permanently. Don't ask who, ask why. It's Jakarta, of course. Sure, you don't see much of it as you drive through the 40 kilometers or so of the toll road to Bogor but vegetation on either side isn't that dense that you can't discern real estate projects winking at you through the greenery.

Those stretches of almost invisible (from the toll road) real estate! Like a crab's pincers, creeping slowly southwards, slowly, slowly until one day ... Gotcha!

Already there are many Jakartans who live in Bogor and commute to the capital to earn their daily bowl of rice. The state railway company runs special trains for this, and quite comfortable they are, too, if what I hear is true.

You can't really blame people for pitching their tents in Bogor. After all, Jakarta is well on its way to becoming unfit for human and animal habitation.

What's the use of good lebensraum in an environment that has begun to make you suspect that breathing is a health hazard? Am I bitching about Jakarta? Of course. So does every denizen of the capital. It's a favorite pastime. But I still live here. Besides, this is where I'm supposed to be jaunting, right?

So, is Bogor ready for the inevitable clamping shut of the crab's pincers? You bet it is. You can't miss it because it's been designed to make sure everyone sees it. If you turn left at the end of the toll road and proceed for about 150 meters, you pass a row of houses that would make any no-taste so-called Jakartan socialite who lives in Pondok Indah turn green with envy. There's one that really stands out.

More than one story, of course, and, from the outside, it's all Greco-Roman columns, carved stucco, curlicues everywhere and wide-front balcony with the kind of baluster that makes me think of bowling pins, in short ... the works. Rumor has it that the place has been offered to H.M. the Queen (any of the three who reign in Europe -- take your pick) but she found it far, far too big compared to humble Buckingham (or Amalienborg, or Soestdijk).

If that one is a rather messy combination of neo-Gothic, real Gothic, renaissance, baroque, and whatever style was in vogue in Europe, the designer of the place next door, I'm sure, has some funny ideas about the Bauhaus, Le Corbusier, Saarinen and I.M. Pei.

Disdaining times past, he's concentrated on bad-taste 20th century, featuring stainless steel railings so bright you need sunglasses to look at them and a 20-meter high splash of curved blue glass. Oh, well ... I suppose one does need a place to stay, doesn't one?

"You," said mine host, who is a part-time Bogor resident, "are just jealous and dying to live in one of them."

"Far from it," I said, "I've got more expensive taste than that and would love to live in a wooden house which would need to be renovated continuously or even rebuilt altogether. So, in the long run it would be far more expensive. These ones will be permanent eyesores."

So, as far as house designs for the rich are concerned, Bogor is ready. More and more Jakartans living there, and moving between it and the capital doesn't seem to be doing them any harm. That's all very well but I hope some of the less-positive aspects remain in Jakarta.

One of them concerns food. Fruit and vegies on your Bogor table still come relatively straight from the earth and the fresh-water fish you sink your teeth into would have left its watery abode only a short time ago.

And as for Indonesian goodies, those lovely, lip-smacking, sticky, squashy sweets and hearty bites, nothing beats Bogor Permai. By 1 p.m. everything is sold out ... to Jakartans. The parking lot is crammed with vehicles bearing B license plates.