Vacationers fleeing city despite anniversary events
Zakki Hakim, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Amid the damp-squib celebrations being held to mark Jakarta's 476th anniversary, residents of the capital are welcoming the long school vacation as a chance to flee the city to pastures greener and cleaner.
Tantia, 16, a high school student, is planning to spend her month-long holiday at her grandfather in Bandung, West Java. She also plans to spend her savings on buying clothes in that city, which, according to her, provides good quality apparel at considerably lower prices than in Jakarta.
She is planning to travel by train and is willing to face the usual holiday season risk -- sold-out tickets.
According to an official at the train ticket office in Juanda, Central Jakarta, tickets for the Argo Lawu, Argo Dwipangga and Taksaka trains are sold out up to Sunday.
Danu, an official, said that all the trains heading to Yogyakarta, Solo and Semarang in Central Java, as well as Surabaya in East Java, were full, and he was expecting the massive exodus to continue until mid-July.
Besides using trains, Jakarta residents are flying in large numbers to main travel destinations across the country, such as Bali, Yogyakarta, Solo, Medan in North Sumatra, Makassar in South Sulawesi, and Surabaya.
Travel bureaus are claiming that planes to those destinations are fully booked until mid-July.
Diah, a ticketing officer with the Anta Express travel bureau, told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday that almost all seats on all airlines were reserved up until July 14.
She said that even flights to Singapore were almost fully booked up.
Natalia, a mother of two, said she was planning to take her children to Singapore on vacation as, according to her, the airfare was cheaper than a flight to Bali.
Her two children are currently students, the eldest at a junior high school and the youngest at an elementary school, both located in Bintaro, South Jakarta.
Asked about why they were not spending the holidays in the city instead -- enjoying the up-to-70 percent discounts offered during the Jakarta Great Sale, for instance -- she answered that her family needed a vacation away from the grime and crime of Jakarta. In fact, she said she had not even heard of the sale until the Post mentioned it.
School vacations in Jakarta mostly begin on June 28 and end on July 14.
If most families from the middle to upper-income brackets leave the city, this means that it will be mostly the less-well- off who will be left behind to celebrate Jakarta's anniversary.
However, though the one-month Jakarta Fair being held in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, has been visited by some 488,000 people, it is reported that the event is too expensive for most Jakartans.
Furthermore, the Jakarta Great Sale is considered of little benefit to those who can scarcely afford to eat.
So, besides the city administration and the governor himself, who among Jakarta's downtrodden millions are really in the mood for taking part in the 476-year-old city's anniversary party?