Livin' on a Prayer

Last weekend, I went off in search of answers. Usually its questions of a trivial nature that keep me awake at night, questions such as: Why is there only one monopolies commission? Is there another word for synonym? Or, if one synchronised swimmer drowns, do they all have to drown? This time however, matters of a less trivial nature were vexing me and so I decided to turn to God (well, one of them, the Christian one in fact).

Now Christians often have a rough time around this neck of the woods. Over in Malaysia, they have recently come under fire (quite literally) for their use of the word 'Allah'. Meanwhile, closer to home, bigotry and the mob mentality often predominates over pluralism and Indonesian churches are often blockaded and denied permits. Most recently, over in Bekasi, Muslim residents closed a local church after complaining that it was disturbing their sleep, which I must say I found ironic to say the least.

Christians are, as a result of all these shenanigans, often to be found hiding in churches located deep within shopping plazas and commercial estates in Jakarta. These are not perhaps ideal locations, given Jesus's attitude to the money changers and the like but perhaps, on another level, entirely fitting if you subscribe to the opium of the masses argument (and aren't shopping plazas our new churches after all?)

And so, last Sunday, I decided to pop along to one of these retail houses of worship to see what goes on and to do a bit of clapping. I soon found myself down at the Bellagio Plaza in the Mega Kuningan area, where the Jakarta City Blessing Church sits on the top floor.

I strolled inside the hypermodern house of the Lord and passed a door marked, ‘Sunday School’, which immediately gave me a flashback to the many tedious Sunday mornings of my youth. I shuddered and headed on into the Church proper. Inside, a mix of ethnic Chinese and ethnic Indonesians were gathered waiting patiently for the service to begin.

The mall church's interior was fully carpeted and crammed with plasma TV screens. A four piece electric band sat in the corner, ready to rock out below a painted ceiling mural of fluffy white clouds and infinite blue skies, which looked something like the Sistine Chapel done by Walt Disney. Basically, it was the complete antithesis of the cold pews and dour piety of the old British churches of my childhood and, I guess, more redolent of the American mega church phenomenon.

As if to confirm my USA for Jesus thesis, the female pastor stepped up to the altar, the band burst into life and the congregation leapt to its feet, ready to bellow out a Bon Jovi-esque soft rock power hymn. Rather than hymn books, the worshippers followed the words karaoke style on the church’s TV screens. It was all a very long way from, "Abide with Me" wavering out over creaking organ pipes.

The pastor skilfully worked up through the gears and into a religious semi-frenzy as she implored the congregation to pray for people from, "Pulau Nias all the way to Pulau Roti." Many of the congregation had their eyes closed by this point and their palms held forward, as if warming themselves in the Lord’s divine light. Yes, it was all very American of course, although the assembled parishioners stopped short of speaking in tongues and going all wobbly before falling over backwards.

Eventually it was time for the collection, however instead of the collection plate, envelopes were distributed with a handy BCA account number printed on them, should one wish to make a convenient transfer or set up a monthly debit payment. There was no Oral Roberts style hard sell though and we weren't threatened with being cast into a flaming lake of boiling excrement for all eternity. My envelope remained empty alas (I'm holding it now in fact) and I headed back out into the Bellagio with a view to consecrating a large curry brunch (praise him).

"God is dead," so said Mr. Nietzsche back in the 19th-century. Well, he certainly seemed to be alive down at the Jakarta City Blessing Church. What Mr. N. meant by this bold assertion though, is not that there aren’t people who still claim to believe. Rather, he meant that this belief is simply not of the type that people used to have. It is not the central pillar of our lives any more, as much as some of us might want to insist that it is. Our materialistic culture and our scientific rationalism have riddled such faith with the bullet holes of doubt and reduced it to a compartmentalised Sunday morning social club, after which the congregation retreats to the car park in order to compare their new cars (you should never try and keep up with the neighbours, by the way; as the great Quentin Crisp once said, it's better to drag them down to your level, it's much cheaper).

At the other end of the religious spectrum of course lies the Muslim suicide bomber. Are they any surer of their faith however? Perhaps, instead of rabid certainty, they are in fact trying to draw a line under their own unconscious doubts with a final, ultimate act of affirmation.

So where does that leave us? Ho hum. Well, I guess it's another week of existential dread and nihilism for me then. Happy Easter.

2,4,6,8, Motorway

Last Sunday, I lurched awake nauseously at around 9.30, had a good cough and then reached for the mobile phone to see what drunkenly incoherent texts had been left for me in the middle of the night by friends, colleagues and lawyers wishing to serve me with writs. I sat up, narrowly avoided being sick on one of my handsome Rp.25,000 sarongs, and opened a message from my friend Dan (who likes to be known by his initials DPQ).

DPQ has only been in the country for just over a year and yet, a keen climber, he's already conquered many of Indonesia's highest peaks (when he's not out on the drink trying to conquer some of Indonesia's most flighty women). In conjunction with a friend, DPQ has set up a website which you'll find at: www.gunungbagging.com. 'Bagging' is British slang for collecting and the site features a wealth of information and scenic photographs of what he calls 'Ribus', namely mountains with at least a 1000m elevation drop all around.

Anyway, DPQ invited me to accompany him on a jaunt down to the Cicurug area of West Java, a town not far from Bogor. From there we would hike up to Kawah Ratu, a sulphurous crater around halfway up the 2211m Gunung Salak.  I'd be doing the driving of course.

And so, around an hour later, DPQ rocked up my house in his hiking boots, carrying a plastic bag full of bottled mineral water and cans of beer, I don't know why he bothered with the water to be frank as you can't beat shot-gunning a few tins of ale as you enjoy the natural splendor of a good mountain hike and I believe all of the best hiking safety manuals recommend such an approach.

My antique motor vehicle started on only the second attempt and we soon hit the southern ring road. I almost missed the Bogor turnoff for about the seventh time in a row owing to a combination of me fiddling with the EQ settings on the car stereo as we both enjoyed the sensational sounds of our favorite 70s German rock group, Can, and the fact that signs on the toll road are slightly erratic. There are in fact signs for Bogor all the way up to the penultimate set of signs.  On the final set of signs the word Bogor is mysteriously absent.

After swerving into the correct lane at the last second, we relaxed and enjoyed the half-hour run down to the end of the toll road at Ciawi.  The going then becomes a bit trickier and the road takes on more of an impoverished, banana republic character.  As if to underline this fact, a public minivan in front of us had one of its tires explode on it about 30 seconds after we left the end of the toll road.  The sexy racing wheels and 2mm thick tyres that the driver had had fitted to his Formula One wannabe probably didn't help in this regard.

Thankfully though, the insidious tentacles of the all-purpose mini-mart have spread out of Jakarta and seemingly all over West Java and thus we could stock up on water, chocolate, beer and prophylactics at 500m intervals. Eventually we reached Cicurug, a small town famous primarily for its 24 hour gridlock of public minivans whose sole aim, given the fact that 90% of them are empty, is seemingly to serve as a blood pressure increasing reality check for Jakarta motorists attempting to get out into the countryside for a break. “Think you've escaped Jakarta?” they seem to say, “Well think again matey, you're going nowhere... very slowly.”

Eventually we turned right and drove up the extraordinarily steep 12km road to the start of the hike, trying hard not to overheat the engine, plunge off the road down a ravine or otherwise flatten half blind octogenarian women carrying bundles of firewood on their heads.  Alas, when we reached the cool climate and pine forests of the national park entrance, the classic ill fitting uniforms of the Indonesian man in charge shambled towards us and informed us that the mountain was closed.

DPQ was not happy I can tell you. “You've closed nature?” he exclaimed, apoplectic with thwarted-when-trying-to-do-something-in-Indonesia fury. “Yes sir, I'm sorry, the park is closed until the end of the month, there may be a landslide and there's poisonous gas up there and...erm... it's slippery.”“Slippery!? Of course it's slippery! I'll take the risk thanks and I believe it is my risk to take if I want.” “But Misterrrr, people have died up there.”

This is true of course, I must have read any number of stories in the paper over the years about Indonesian students who've hiked up mountains in their flip-flops with bottles of Red Bull only to come a cropper when they realize that it gets a bit chilly and treacherous up there.

And so alas we were restricted to having a little walk around the forest area near the entrance.  It was a far cry from my knee straining assault on the 3000m Gunung Gede last year but there was nothing we could do about that. I was after a nice, relaxing hike and didn't fancy trying to out run a pursuing phalanx of national park security guards all the way to the summit. And thus with heavy hearts we were forced to turn round and enter the toll road traffic jam Purgatory of the great Sunday evening return to town. Take a look at DPQ's website though, once the wet season’s over it’ll be every man for himself up there.

Beers, Steers and Queers

I'll start this week with a personal plea to any policeman who may happen to have read last week's effort. I swear I had no idea that the copy of Windows 7 that I recently installed on my new Quadcore behemoth of a computational beast was on the wrong side of the law. I bought it with the best of intentions from a handsomely stocked disc shop in broad daylight and have the receipt to prove it. Anyway, I'm very sorry officer but if you really want to clamp down on illegal activities in Jakarta then frankly, if you've got enough yellow plastic "Police Line: Do Not Enter" tape then it would be far simpler to just run a ring of the stuff around the entire city.

Let us move on though. This week I wish to address the subject of booze. Whilst many of Indonesia's more outlying provinces are in the process of adopting Sharia style prohibition, Jakarta seems to have been drunkenly lurching in the other direction of late. A real drinking culture seems to have developed in recent years, especially amongst the young. Wine bars now dot the city and Kemang is now full of middle-class youngsters hitting the bottle as if it's going out of style. I decided to investigate.

Only last week, young Sinetron ingénue, Cinta Laura, could be found in this very newspaper discussing how, "JIS (Jakarta International School) kids like to go out on a Friday night in Kemang." it was time to check it out and seeing as I'm only 17 and a half I knew that I would blend in just fine.

My first stop was a new bar called Bremer which is apparently very popular with the new breed of young paraffin guzzlers. I’d hoped to catch sight of Miss Laura emitting a Margarita fuelled rainbow yawn into the bushes before assuring me that I was her best friend in the whole world but alas it wasn’t to be. Me and my companion headed down a narrow alleyway and found ourselves in a lovely beer garden packed with drinkers.

The place reminded me of a British beer garden in fact although with fewer opportunities to get glassed in the throat for looking at someone’s girlfriend. At the bar, one could purchase a metre of ale (even beer’s gone metric) which turned out to be not one of those long, thin chemistry lab tubes but a meter long wooden rack full of about ten beer glasses. Nobody appeared to be drunk and disorderly although the staff’s bottle openers were clearly being kept very busy. I ordered up a bottle of a beer I’d never heard of before and immediately regretted it. It was a new local brew called Kuda Putih (white horse) and was the cheapest in the bar at Rp.22,000. It seemed to have been knocked up from Anker dregs collected from half drunk glasses and possibly actual horses were involved in the brewing of this tipple. 

A while later we headed down the road to a new shop called Boxmart which has ingeniously cashed in on the youngsters who like to sit outside Jakarta’s many branches of Circle K drinking beer of an evening. Boxmart is basically a Circle K with chairs, tables and even a mini stand up bar outside. We sat down and were immediately accosted by eight year old beggars. Still, at least in Jakarta the beggars and the Circle K street drinkers are separated out into two distinct groups, in contrast to many formative experiences I’ve had in London. Here at least, dishevelled middle aged men don’t stagger up to you breathing alcohol fumes in your face before inquiring in a slurred voice, “Excuse me pal, could you spare us Rp.10,000? I need a new pair of Bintang…SHOES…sorry I mean shoes”.

So why is there this apparent polarisation between increasing puritanism and prohibition in the provinces on one hand and an increasing prevalence of folk in Jakarta getting completely steampigged at every available opportunity? It's a complex problem I'd guess. However, in one sense, perhaps these two opposing behaviours are reactions to the same cultural malaise. This is namely the sense that, to quote a piece of poetry from one of my favourite bands, "The car's on fire and nobody is at the wheel."

By this I mean that there's perhaps a general, either conscious or unconscious, understanding that the planet is sleepwalking towards oblivion and that our politicians, mired in incompetency, corruption and a growing totalitarianism (and also punch-ups in Jakarta this week) completely lack the moral authority and compass to renew a globe that is spiralling out of control. Nowhere can this feeling be more acute than in Indonesia I would wager. One reaction to this creeping collective paranoia is a misguided attempt to purge society of its perceived decadence and to revert to the strictures of religious dogmas. Thus ten years after winning their freedom, many Indonesians seek to once more emasculate themselves under the lashes of Sharia's whips.

Another reaction to the sense that no one's really in charge though is to fiddle while Rome burns, blot it all out and overdose on hedonism before a sobering future arrives. Bottoms up.

I'm the Operator with My Pocket Calculator

Last week, I finally took the bull by the horns and lugged my battered desktop PC along to Ratu Plaza for a major upgrade. It's been about five years since I last attempted such a foolhardy act and in the meantime my once proud machine has become technically obsolete, left in the dust as our accelerating world of high-tech gizmos streaks off into the sunset.

I selected a new fancy pants  Intel Core 2 Quad processor and a new motherboard plus 4Gb of RAM, a 1 Terrabyte hard drive and a sexy new casing. I kept my old monitor, soundcard, keyboard, mouse, DVD burner and Internet WiFi dongle. The nice man in the shop slotted all of these old and new bits together within about half an hour and I then popped a few shops along to buy an illegal version of the new Windows 7 operating system.

The government and police pay lip service to stamping out the pirated software industry here of course but they are not trying very hard if you ask me. It's not as if these discs are just being sold out of suitcases on street corners by guys ready to run away at the first sign of trouble. I mean there are entire shops in well-known plazas full of racks of thousands of discs which have all dedicated their efforts towards making Bill Gates' nerdy spectacles steam up with incandescent fury. Old Bill got his revenge on me later though, oh yes.

And so I picked up a Windows 7 disc and headed home to test drive the new machine. I spurned a friend’s advice to try Ubuntu, the free operating system based on Linux, as I don't possess an anorak and have actually kissed a girl before (a real one too, not just a guy in a dress or something). So I decided to stick with good old corporate, monopolistic Microsoft.

At home however, events took an all too predictable turn and served to remind me exactly why I had resisted upgrading my machine for so long. The various hardware and software driver issues sent my blood pressure soaring through the roof as I spent hours and hours and hours searching for new drivers that Windows 7 would actually support and dealing with various issues and conflicts and the pain of reinstalling so many bits of software. 'Plug and Play' they call it. Boy did they get that one wrong. 'Plug and Cry', or 'Plug and Unplug and Bloody Well Plug Again' would be more accurate names. I'd advise Microsoft to drop the, 'and Play' part and just call it "Plug..." with three optimistic dots after it.

And so, paradoxically, I had tried installing Windows 7 in order to make life easier and ended up having a three-day mental meltdown. What's going on here? Trendy German philosopher from the 1960s, Herbert Marcuse, noted how our rational, enlightenment, science culture often ends up producing irrational outcomes such as this. People sit gridlocked in cars, going precisely nowhere fast in devices originally designed to make movement easier. Stock markets crash due to computers individually making decisions based on limited data and then clashing violently with each other when the bigger picture swims into focus. Mobile devices, far from freeing us, bind us ever more tightly into a shell of online existence from which there can be no escape.

For Marcuse, there is no historic, science driven path to enlightenment and rationality leading from slavery to freedom, only one that leads from the slingshot to the H-bomb.

Secondly, Marcuse also notes that science is now so complex and that we are so buried under oceans of data and bureaucracy that, paradoxically, people will believe any old rubbish about crystal healing or tofu in order to attempt to get a bit of clarity and order in their heads and so again, irrationality springs from rationality.

To these two formulations I think that I would add a third, namely that devices designed to make life less stressful and more pleasant and convenient end up irritating the bejesus out of me, not a very rational outcome. And it's not just Windows 7 that has made me contemplate an act of computer defenestration. Every time I enter a branch of Circle K or pull up to a car park barrier in town and trigger an automated, digitally disembodied voice which proceeds to regale me with chirpy, synthetic salutations, I want to cut somebody up with a chainsaw. Every time I phone up to complain about my Internet service and am confronted with an automated answering system, I go all sweaty and purple in the face after about four button push submenus. Every time my mobile phone cuts off in the middle of a conversation, I have to restrain myself from tossing the thing under the wheels of a passing bus.

Well folks, it's now a week later and I'm still having computer problems. I guess that I at least have the recourse to unplug the damn thing though. How long will it be before the computers decide to unplug us?

Three Wheels on My Wagon

A story appeared in last week's Globe stating that the days of the bemo, those three wheeled minivans that look like elongated bajajs and which can seat about eight, are numbered.  The city administration plans to get rid of the 1000 bemos is still dragging their sorry arses around the city's thoroughfares by 2011. In fact though, bemos have actually been illegal in the capital since 1996 but, as with so much else that happens in this country, the connection between legality and what actually happens in reality is tenuous to say the least.

Anyway, I thought that I'd take a bemo ride for old times sake as, during my first year in Jakarta, I remember enjoying a few amusing trips in the pathetic little things.  And so I strolled down to the flyover that crosses Jl. Sudirman next to the Meridien hotel and found a waiting fleet of about ten bemos squatting on the road like abandoned dustbins after a street fight.  The lurid paint jobs could hardly disguise the fact that these battered three wheeled shopping trolleys fitted with sewing machine engines are now well over 40 years old.

It's quite amazing that these things are still running at all and riding in one, you have the nagging suspicion in the back of your mind that the floor is going to collapse and buckle underneath you, leaving you running frantically on the road below like Fred Flintstone out on a Sunday drive.

The very fact that these Paleolithic old bangers are still running at all however is something of a triumph of human ingenuity.  Jakarta's creaking bemos remind me of Cuba's time warp fleet of 50s American gas guzzlers.  As with Cuba, the bemo drivers and mechanics have made a virtue out of a necessity and continue to defy the capitalist logic of waste and planned obsolescence.

It seems almost magical that these things still start in the mornings.  I wonder how many miles they've clocked up over the years?  A quick Google search on vehicle longevity brings up a 1976 Mercedes-Benz 240D owned by Greorios Sachinidis from Greece. This particular vehicle has apparently notched up an amazing 2,858,307 miles, which is the distance to the moon and back about five times.  Some of Jakarta's bemos may also perhaps have made it to the lunar surface at least once.

The average lifespan of a motor vehicle these days is just 13.5  years and it's hard to imagine any of today's cars lasting for 40.  As the world begins to hit the barriers of resource limitations our consumer culture ironically follows a model of increasing disposability.  People simply don't know how to fix things these days, unlike our brave bemo mechanics, and in a way perhaps they can't.  Our advanced technologies are increasingly specialised and arcane. You can always weld a broken exhaust pipe back onto a bemo but how are you going to fix a faulty Intel microprocessor? With scissors and glue?

Technological progress follows its own inexorable logic however.  Free market capitalism means that production has to be constantly revolutionized if a company is to stay ahead of the competition.  You simply have to fund R&D and scientific research if you want to maintain your competitive edge.  Capital has thus engendered a hyper accelerated culture that has quite astonishingly propelled us from the horse and cart to the space shuttle in less than 200 years.

I'm not quite sure where exactly bemos fits in on this continuum although they are perhaps nearer to the shuttle than it may appear at first glance (and the things are probably equally likely to explode on you).

There can be no time for historical materialism when one is trying to catch a bemo however.  Last week's Globe intimated that most of the drivers of these vehicles were dodgy gangster types.  They certainly had a good old laugh yours truly as he waited for his chariot and also attempted to charge him Rp.10,000 for a Teh Botol (and offer him women to boot).

Eventually, it was time to hit the road and I elected to sit up front next to the driver as we chugged off towards Tanah Abang.  An alarming amount of fumes started to waft up into the cabin from around the sides of the gear stick, making me feel a little lightheaded.  Perhaps the powers that be want to squash the bemo due to its internal as opposed to its external pollution.  Certainly the little things are no dirtier, in terms of exhaust smoke, than the fleets of orange Metro Minis and green Kopajas that fart their merry way around Jakarta every day.

In fact, I've long thought the parlous condition of the capital's buses to be rather strange in light of the fact that most of the country's other towns and cities are served by gleaming new squadrons of Angkots (mini vans).  What's all that about then eh?

Eventually, we puttered to a halt in the heart of gangster land (downtown Tanah Abang) and I shelled out Rp.2500 for the privilege of traveling in a vehicle older than I am (twice as old in fact...ahem).  So what will become of these senile motorised tricycles and the army of rough diamonds that pilot them?  The lure of the ojeg surely beckons...

That's neat, that's neat, that's neat, that's neat, I really love your tiger feet.

Last weekend I was ready for a couple of days out of town. A few weeks in the big smoke can really take their toll on the psychic defenses, not to mention making the old liver squeak like a rat stuck in a trap, and so I took up an offer to head out once more to the tropical paradise of Jakarta's Pulau Seribu (Thousand Islands).

I usually like to take my chances on the Rp.15,000 public boat from Muara Angke, however this time I was afforded the privilege of sharing a super fast yacht/speed boat out to Pulau Macan (Tiger Island) from the very posh Ancol Marina, as part of an all-inclusive and very reasonably priced weekend deal.

If you're an island novice or otherwise disinclined to slum it with the Kretek chomping Bapaks on the public boat, then I'd highly recommend the Macan trip, which is proving tremendously popular with expatriates (have a look here).

The fast boat takes a mere hour and a half to steam through the mud, silt and 100 million toilet flushings that coat Jakarta Bay and on into the crystal blue waters of the islands, considerably faster than the chugging public hulk. This speed can come at a price however. If the sea is in any way choppy or rough then the boat bangs and smacks over the waves like an ojeg speeding across the lunar surface, pummeling your backside into tenderloin in the process.

Foolishly, I had necked a few cans of Bintang prior to weighing anchor (a medicinal early morning pick me up you understand). After about an hour, I made a beeline for the head (as I believe the smallest room is called in nautical parlance). Alas I got inside just as we hit a rough spot of water with predictably hilarious consequences. I reemerged from the little sailor's room with a sprained knee and damp trousers and sat down in a huff. I should stress here though that I was the only one of 14 passengers who manage to both injure and wet himself simultaneously on the way to Macan, so perhaps I only have myself to blame.

After landing at the Macan jetty I felt a touch peculiar (so what's new, I hear you cry) and went for a bit of a lie down on a sun bed. After a rousing from my siesta I found Macan to be just as picturesque and lovely as the other islands in the chain that I've visited. The tiny atoll was covered in trees and fringed with coral and an eco-friendly resort boasting solar power, recycled rainwater and a coral rehabilitation programme has been set up there. Some top snorkelling is available, or alternatively you can sit on your fat arse all weekend drinking gin and tonic whilst your Jakarta stress meter drops out of the red zone.

I thought that I'd go for a swim before hitting the sauce though and paddled over to the nearest neighbouring island, around 200 meters away. After wading through the shallows and trying not to spear my feet on any of the sea anemones that liberally dotted the coastline, I flopped onto the sand like a beached whale, the only person on the tiny island. I think I was the only person there at any rate. It took me a mere five minutes to circumnavigate the tree-covered sandbar and I didn't come across any warungs or ojeg drivers crouching amid the tropical foliage.

Birds were squawking in the trees however and mud skippers hopped across the sand hunting fish as the sun beat down, burning my back to a crisp and ensuring that showering would be painful for the next week. It was easier to imagine that I was 5000, rather than 50 kilometers or so away from a filthy sprawling metropolis.

Perhaps, when global warming causes Jakarta to be swamped, then the city itself will become an extension of the Thousand Islands. People will be able to kayak or swim between higher bits of terra firma or between partially submerged skyscrapers, as fish and coral colonize the swamped roads, traffic islands and abandoned cars and bajajs of the ex-capital. If you don't want to purchase an apartment too many floors up because of the earthquake threat then think again, you could be sitting on an eco-tourism goldmine.

After some drinks, a soothing massage, more drinks and a blissful night’s sleep undisturbed by revving motorcycle engines and calls to prayer, it was time to re-board the turbo powered speed cruiser for the 90 minute blast back to the effluent filled beauty of Jakarta Bay and the joys of Bluebird taxis. Thankfully, this time, the seas were calm and thus there was no repeat of my uncomfortably damp first leg of the journey. There was only a moraine of plastic bags to traverse about half an hour from Jakarta that seemed to demarcate the boundary between the blue waters of the further islands and the mulligatawny soup that bathes the capital's coast. Drown it all I say, wash the city into the sea, let's start again and do it properly this time.

Lake of Fire

Last weekend, I revved up the old banger and drove down to one of the few Jakarta tourist spots to have so far eluded my attentions. Around four or five kilometers southeast of Ragunan Zoo in South Jakarta, on the way to Depok, lies Setu Babakan, one of the city's more sizeable lakes. Around the lake's perimeter you'll find a Betawi Cultural Village which is devoted to preserving the ethnic and cultural heritage of Jakarta's indigenous people.

There are apparently around 2.5 million Betawi people in the capital which is, I guess, around a quarter of Jakarta's total population. The Betawi have a culture and a language, not to mention music, traditions and food, that are all distinct from Java's Sundanese and Javanese populations. They are also known for their rough and ready manner, their openness to strangers and even for their short temperedness, all character traits that are anathema to the supposedly refined Javanese.

Anyway, I headed down a bumpy track to the side of the lake and took a stroll down Setu Babakan's bucolic (and only slightly bubonic) boulevards. The lake is ringed with cheap and cheerful chairs, tables and 'warungs', at which courting couples can whisper sweet nothings in each other's ears whilst taking in the pleasant views of the lake and scoffing down a few bowls of ‘baso’ meatballs. There were plenty of amorous young blades present on my visit in fact, all enjoying the relative pollution free calm.

There were also a few groups of Betawi gentlemen enjoying some rather dubious looking homemade concoctions and shambling about arhythmically to a cassette of traditional Dangdhut music. One of them tipped a bottle of Red Bull into a mineral water bottle of fearsome looking brown liquid and offered me a swig. Fearing for the health of my optic nerves, I declined his kind offer of a Pertamina Pina Colada and continued on with my stroll.

If the Sharia religious police ever manage to expand their sphere of influence down through Sumatra and on into Jakarta, then they will surely have a field day cracking the skulls of the young couples and half cut ‘bapaks’ down at the Betawi Cultural Village. Let us hope that such a vision never come to pass.

Also stationed around the lake were various fishermen trying to hook a few bites and carp and tilapia are supposedly there for the taking. Mind you, I saw precisely nothing swimming through the rather brackish waters and perhaps this isn't surprising given that the lake is fed directly from the somewhat less than pristine Ciliwung River.

Also, next to the lake I came across a hawker selling posters of a chap called Benyamin Sueib, who was apparently a famous native Betawi actor. "Mr. Ben -- 1939 -- 1995" was the legend under one such poster. Yet another Indonesian gentleman fails to make 60. Ho hum. Perhaps those homemade, lakeside cocktails were a contributing factor to Mr. Ben's demise. The other famous ethnic Betawi gentleman is, of course, Jakarta's current governor and moustache enthusiast, Mr. Fauzi Bowo. I wonder if he ever brought a lady friend down to Setu Babakan during his formative years?

Next to the lake, sits the Betawi Cultural Village and this is well worth a look around. Regular musical and theatrical performances are held here and, on Thursday nights, Silat demonstrations can also be watched. Silat is Indonesia's indigenous martial art so I'd recommend standing well back if you do go along.

Strolling back lakeside, it was time to head out on the high seas in a pedal powered, fiberglass sea lion with a ball balanced on the end of its nose. Not quite hang gliding at the Bogor Lido for sure but extreme sport enough for a Sunday afternoon, after a Saturday night weighing Anker in Bintang Bay. A 20 minute, self powered cruise will set you back a mere Rp.5000 per person.

Back on dry land, I rounded off a fine Betawi afternoon with a tub of my favorite durian ice-cream, purchased from one of the lakeside stalls. It hadn't quite been a holographic, high-tech ride through Disneyland but Setu Babakan at least has the ring of cultural authenticity to it. Even the hello misters and suggestive innuendo were bang on target.

Perhaps though, with a little investment, the place could be turned into a modern Betawi theme park. They could put in a loop the loop roller coaster with a Bluebird taxi going round it, or a Ferris wheel with Bajajs for gondolas. They could even set up a gridlocked dodgems ride on which one only gets to move five centimeters during a single five minute session. Drivers would also get to have real, authentic Betawi road rage punch-ups with other dodgems drivers who bump into them.

Eventually, it was time to head home and I left the courting threesomes (boy, girl, scooter) of Setu Babakan to enjoy the dusk in peace. If you've already done Ancol, Taman Mini, Taman Safari and the zoo, then this relaxing little spot could be just the ticket. Just don't drink any strange liquids if offered.