All stories about "Jakarta"

The 2008 Beijing Olympics are still four months away, but they've already started with a bang. Activists who oppose China's occupation of Tibet have been holding huge protests as the Olympic torch makes its customary pre-games lap around the globe. In the past week, the torch toured Paris and London with an entourage of local policemen and Chinese security personnel. In spite of all the guards, protesters forced the torch to be extinguished for the first time in modern Olympic history. If you want to get in on all of the "Free Tibet" fun, the Olympic torch will be stopping in fourteen more cities between tomorrow and April 29th. The good people at Google have made a map showing all of the remaining cities along the torch's route. The tour includes such exciting destinations as San Francisco, Buenos Aires, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, and the hometown of everyone's favorite despot -- Pyongyang!

There's still plenty of time to plan a trip to go protest the torch in any one of these great urban oases. Protesters get to meet other cute politically involved types and rub elbows with the world-class athletes who carry the torch, all while enjoying the fun of screaming and flinging yourself at angry law enforcement personnel. So why not fly around the world following the Olympic torch and going apeshit? It's all for a good cause. It's kind of like the civil rights movement, with sightseeing instead of big dogs and high-powered hoses.

Entering Nine Muses is somewhat like entering an opium den, or the classiest speak-easy in the East. A dark door leads to a dusky marriage bed positioned at the top of stairs that take you down to the restaurant. The dark wood and rich velvet in the bar and dining area are echoed in the honey-voiced jazz singer that croons classics by a large window looking out onto Nine Muses' outdoor dance floor. We were drawn in by rumors that it was a lesbian bar, but hetero couples and groups of friends outweighed pairs of women by a long shot. But the ambiance and delicious drinks made up for any disappointment about the sexual orientation about the clientele.

Nine Muses Club

[Text: Anita Schillhorn Van Veen]

Previously: Kemang Food Fest, Red Square: Vodka Bar, Episode: Get Well (Hammered) in Jakarta, Dragon Fly: Nightlife, Jakarta Style, Tembok Bomber, Tag-A-Go-Go, Prepare to be Agglomerated

The air is as fresh as it gets in polluted Jakarta. Shisha smoke drowns out the smell of bajaj and motorbikes. And you can get everything from rice burgers (hamburger with a rice patty for a bun) to roti bakar (toasted bread topped with your choice of chocolate, bananas or other sweets) to machiatto to traditional Indonesian cuisine. At Kemang Food Fest, the young and stylish gather under sleek red awnings and the night sky to sample food, drinks and smokes from around the world. And who says Ramadan isn't any fun? To celebrate the month of daily fasting and nightly feasting, many establishments in the food court are open till 5 am.

Kemang Food Festival

[Photo+Text: Anita Schillhorn Van Veen]

Previously: Red Square: Vodka Bar, Episode: Get Well (Hammered) in Jakarta, Dragon Fly: Nightlife, Jakarta Style, Tembok Bomber, Tag-A-Go-Go, Prepare to be Agglomerated

Red Square is a kitschy vodka bar packed to the black-and-red gills with a multinational crowd. Any drink is available with a vodka base, and the bartenders and hostesses in their Russian-military-style coats offer a wide selection of vodkas. A long bar-height table that changes color spans the center of what should be a dance floor, but this obstacle doesn't deter clients from dancing; they just hop up on the table to strut their stuff, a stunt that gets more and more dangerous as the evening wears on, the crowd gets drunker, the men get clumsier and the women start teetering on their stilettos. The bartenders also climb up on the bar for a nightly show in which they juggle vodka bottles lit on fire. In spite of the unavoidable prostitution scene in Jakarta, Red Square offers up enough other distractions that the white-guys-with-three-Indonesian-girls scene can be ignored.

Red Square Jakarta

[Text+Photo: Anita Schillhorn van Veen]

Previously: Episode: Get Well (Hammered) in Jakarta, Dragon Fly: Nightlife, Jakarta Style, Tembok Bomber, Tag-A-Go-Go, Prepare to be Agglomerated

Episode is a sleek new nightclub with a hospital theme - "ambulance" backwards on a wall with glowing letters and backlit photos of skulls provide the atmosphere for well-dressed Jakarta revelers ready to get down, dirty and drunk. Women in slutty nurse costumes serve guests injections of tequila, shot directly down their throats with a syringe (thankfully with no needle) and the club's specialty cocktails come in two-foot high test-tube-like glasses with multiple straws. By 2 am, guests are dancing on tables, drinking pitchers of vodka tonic and forming vaguely embarassing Conga lines. By the next morning though, the only thing they'll be doing is nursing a lethal hangover.

Episode
Ascott Apartment, Lobby Entrance,
Jl. Kebon Kacang Raya No.2, Jakarta Pusat.
Tel (021) 392 8395.

[Anita Schillhorn Van Veen]

Previously: Dragon Fly: Nightlife, Jakarta Style, Tembok Bomber, Tag-A-Go-Go, Prepare to be Agglomerated

Not long after I walked into Dragonfly, a popular Jakarta nightspot, an Indonesian woman sidled up to me at the bar. "My girlfriend wants you to come talk to her," she said. "She is freaky freaky." (That's two freakies, for those of you keeping score at home.) "Okay," I said. And I was thus cast -- hopelessly, headlong, and happily -- under Dragonfly's spell.

Wallpaper* gushes over the restaurant/bar's hip design, and yes, the place looks cool inside. I also hear the food is comprised of a tantalizing blend of Southeast Asian fare ("Aromatic Durian Pancake with Homemade Ice Cream," anyone?). But decor and vittles aside, I was much more enchanted with the clientele: twenty and thirty-something J-town denizens dancing and drinking with abandon. The cocktails flow steadily from the multiple bars, and the beats tend to be loud and hip-hop-centric. Dragonfly is, in short, a must-see the next time you find yourself looking for some fun in Jakarta.

[NB: For the record, the photo of the women shown here includes neither the freaky one nor her friend. Likewise, your faithful correspondent is not, in fact, that dorky guy on the right trying to weasel his way into the frame.]

Dragonfly [Official site]
Year of the dragonfly [Wallpaper*]

[Newley Purnell]

Previously: Tembokbomber Tag-A-Go-Go, Invader Goes 3-D, Strictly 4 My Knittaz, Subway Sign Spoof, Trio of Paris Picks, Plasmaslug! Come Out and Plaaaaaay!

Though Tembokbomber is nominally built around the Indonesian street art scene and artists like Jakarta-based tagger Morden, the site runs material and imagery from artists worldwide. Just a casual examination lead me to a dude called Blu (or is it Blu Blu?), sampled above. Either way, plenty of good stuff to digest.

Tembokbomber [Josh Spear]
Tembokbomber [Official site]

Previously: Invader Goes 3-D, Strictly 4 My Knittaz, Subway Sign Spoof, Trio of Paris Picks, Plasmaslug! Come Out and Plaaaaaay!

City Population offers fairly basic population data for cities worldwide, but the odd thing is that most of site owner's energy appears to be spent parsing cities, suburbs, and metro rings into "agglomerations" of population. By this method, Tokyo gets to count Yokohama and Kawasaki and thus becomes the world's largest agglomeration. New York is #4 because we get to eat Newark and Paterson, but not Hoboken. Poor Baltimore gets cannibalized by Washington DC.

City Stats [Urban Faithscape]
City Population [Official site]

Previously: Google Maps Locates Romans Ruins, Garmin StreetPilot c320, Superfuture City Maps, Slice Pizza Map

Register with Cathay Pacific's CyberTraveler program, and you can purchase the All Asia Pass for $1,099. What does this mean, grasshopper? I shall tell you, and listen well, for there are many fare-bumping pitfalls on the way to enlightenment. Firstly, you may only travel now through December 1. You must depart from New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. You may only travel on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. But once you get to Hong Kong, you can fly around to (and among) Bali, Bangkok, Cebu, Fukuoka, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Karachi, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Nagoya, Osaka, Penang, Sapporo, Seoul, Singapore, Surabaya, Taipei, Tokyo, and Xiamen for 21 days. You could travel Sunday-Thursday, but that involves another $500. And don't just think you can stroll up to the ticket counter and hop on and off planes with immunity. Oh no: space is limited. Limited, I tell you! Don't believe those physicists and their jabber about infinite space! Best to by the pass, then book all your flights in advance. You'll spend three weeks zipping around Southeast Asia in a manner sure to attract the attention of international authorities. Travel light.

All Asia Pass [Cathay Pacific]