Jakarta, Indonesia: you either love or hate it; Indonesia's capital city will certainly not settle for an in-between. After spending about 4 days in this rather densely-populated area (my God, so many people deh!), I fell in love with the place despite the high levels of pollution and the notorious reputation of undrinkable water. Apart from having a wonderful host and meeting all these wonderful Indonesians, Jakarta captured me because it was an interesting blend of traditional meets modern life, it is the headquarters of some of my favorite music artists and the language spoken and social interactivity there simply blew my mind away. I am certainly humbled by my experiences in Indonesia yet at the same time I felt really proud of what I went through there, and probably no one would ever fully understand my deep fascination, respect and passion for this 17,000-island country but myself.

I am here to talk about my experiences there, and some of the things that stood out the most in my mind about Indonesia. I know many of you are waiting with bated breath for this exclusive scoop, so let's get right to it!

PENGAMEN
There are lots of pengamen in Indonesia, orang jual khidmat if you will, or people selling services. I first encountered them when we stopped at a warung to have dinner; there were men standing around with guitars strapped on, and as they see you sit down, one will outwardly approach you, start strumming and sing. He usually will not go away until you hand him some money, usually minimum of a thousand rupiah note, after which he'll politely thank you and move on to the next table. They're quite good at what they do really, singing and playing the guitar I mean. Apart from these singing musicians, you'll also sometimes encounter small kids with tambourines in their hands hoping to entertain you for a modest fee. If not that, they're armed with a shoe brush and polish, hoping that you'll let them polish your shoes.

These pengamens are not limited to hanging around warungs either, sometimes when you're driving around the city and you're stuck in a traffic jam or something, you'll see people walking up and down the traffic trying to sell you newspapers, magazine or just armed with a guitar or ukelele, hoping to entertain you in exchange for rupiahs while you're in your car. Local people are used to them and expertly dodge them with their cars while lifting a stern hand indicating no, but if you're a tourist like me, you can't help but gawk for a while at the sight, and then look away praying they wouldn't come your way, hehe. Certainly can't find anything like that in Malaysia.

And of course, if you're looking for parking in a public place like near a shop or restaurant, there's always some dude there coordinating the flow of cars wanting to park and will direct you to a spot, all this service is of course not free. Tipping is a certainly a very strong culture in Indonesia, whether people realize it or not. Rupiah makes the world spin in Indonesia. Be stingy with it and watch middle fingers fly out and hell break lose hehe.

WARIAS
After dinner, Ryo took us around Jakarta in his car for night sightseeing. Little did I expect it to become so entertaining! I can't remember the name of the highway we were on, but suddenly to the sides of the road, you will see beautiful women dressed in sexy dresses waiting to be picked up. There were dozens of them, but it only takes you a little while to finally realize that they're not actually women, but rather drag queens! They're called waria (literally man + woman, or wanita + pria) in Indonesia. The deragotary term for waria is bencong. Back in Malaysia, waria are refered to as mak nyahs.

Some of the waria look convincingly female, but you can always tell that they're male due to their broad shoulders and rather masculine faces, though some of them were pretty feminine. And as I found out, as you drive into darker areas of the road, the fewer clothes they had on! Whether they become more expensive as you get into these darker areas, I will never know, but it was quite rib-tickling to see all these drag queens competiting with each other trying to get some guy to take them home.

When I asked my friends whether the police do anything to curb these waria flesh activities, my friends smirked and exclaimed that some of the more loyal clients of these waria include the police! Ha, busted!

So now I know what Indonesians do when they have no money to go do something: they'd fill up their gas tanks a bit, drive around, cuci mata and have a good laugh together at the warias who look like Siti Nurhaliza or Melly Goeslow!

TEH BOTOL and SATE KAMBING
Teh botol is to Indonesian as teh tarik is to Malaysian and Coca Cola to an American. Teh botol is actually commercially packed and sold sweetened jasmine tea that every Indonesian simply cannot live without. The bottle resembles a lot like the classic Coke glass bottle, and even the writing is in a similar font as Coke's. When I had my first taste of teh botol I didn't quite like it because it felt weird tasting jasmine tea with sugar as I usually had it without. But after a while, I acquired a taste for it, and it's lovely to chug down several cold bottles of the stuff on a hot sweaty day! Notice I said several bottles hehe. I could easily drink down like 3-4 as Evita is only halfway through her first one, hehe.I've gotten potty for teh botol! They have the box version too, so I brought back a few with me too!

My Indon friends always ask me if you can buy teh botol in Malaysia, and they're always shocked to hear that you can't hehe. Yes I know you can get teh botol as far as in Australia, so I guess Malaysia is unlucky in that sense eh. Hehe. Don't come live in Malaysia if you're a teh botol lover, can't get that stuff here, *grin*.

The Indonesian dish that I found myself craving for is sate kambing, and you know, I never really liked mutton but sate kambing made all my premonitions of about mutton go away! So good! I think the success all lay in the marination of the meat and urghh, I find myself craving for it here. Sate in Indonesia is so different from sate in Malaysia; there's so many kinds. Like in Malaysia we only know sate Kajang which is essentially quite sweet, there in Indonesia there's sate padang, sate madura, sate jawa lah apa. Phew, banyak. I belom khatam makan sate kat sana, hopefully I can do that on my next trip! Hidup sate kambing!

BAJAJ
Bajaj, or bajai as it's pronounced, are these three-wheeled motorcycle-like vehicles you see scattered all over the streets of Jakarta. Riding one is quite cheap and they zig zag through the busy traffic of Jakarta like annoying insects dodging raindrops! If you wanna travel cheap, bajajs are the way to go. The only unpleasant thing I see about bajajs is that you're exposed to the dusty Jakartan air when you ride them, so if you're a poor-pollution-resisting kind of person, you're going to have hard time breathing! Otherwise, bajajs are a blast! My Indonesian friends are quite embarrassed that I find them fun.

MONEY and SHOPPING
The one thing I had to get used to when using Rupiahs is the fact they used denominations of ribuan or thousands to count their money. For example, what is a seribu rupiah (Rp.1000) to an Indonesian is like satu ringgit to a Malaysian or a dollar to an American, if you disregard the currency exchange rate. If you go exchange your ringgits to rupiahs, the money exchanger will usually quote in juta or millions of rupiah since the value of the rupiah is relatively small compared to other currencies. So if you buy 1 juta rupiah (or Rp.1,000,000), that's the equivalent of about RM370 or about USD$100. What that can buy you is a relatively loads, if you know how to spend it right. One ringgit is about Rp.2,700 can get you about about 2 teh botols (you'd have to add like Rp.300).

While in Indonesia, I bought lots of books and Indonesian music CDs. I think as far as shopping goes, that's what I'll ever really buy in Indonesia, since I have keen interests in Indo music and literature.

THE MUSIC SCENE!
On Friday night January 11th, I was fortunate to follow Evita to Hard Rock Café Jakarta on Jalan Thamrin to catch Krisdayanti and Padi perform some songs live! This was all part of the MTV Asian Awards nomination from Indonesia for the big event that will take place in Singapore on February 2, 2002, and it was hell-fun seeing all those people on stage. The other Indonesian nominees for the MTV Asian Awards were Dewa, Sheila on 7 and Jamrud but unfortunately they were not part of the act at HRC. It is my dream to catch Dewa live in Jakarta, and I hope one day my dreams will be realized.

This other group called T-Five also made a short appearance on the HRC stage while we were there, they sing like pop plus hip hop or something like that, now quite popular with their hit song Kau which they rendered for about 30 seconds on stage. When Krisdayanti came on, she pulled one of her famous concert tactics and pulled some dude from the crowd and started flirting and swooning with the fellow on stage! Apparently this is some famous strategy she pulls off every time she steps foot on stage (husband Anang tak marah ke!). Padi of course comes on stage next and the crowd goes wild, they sang 3 songs, one of which is the current hit Mahadewi.

When we were done at HRC, we wanted to head out to another gig at Kafe Taman Semanggi (KTS), but not before we had an encounter with 2 members from pop group Base Jam outside HRC whom Evita interviewed regarding their latest album. At KTS, Evita interviewed another band called Lakuna, and while that was going on, I was watching Tofu perform on stage; I really like them, they sounded a bit like the Groove, only they incorporated some rap into their songs which turned out really cute! I thought the girl singer Fla was really cute looking too. KTS is a nice place, it's basically an area full of open-air restaurants, cafés and carnival-like stalls selling toys and souvenirs with a large space in the middle, and the stage was situated at one end of the area while everyone filled the empty space.

So there you have it folks, my story on Indonesia. Lots more on Indonesia that I'd like to share, but maybe later ya? So whaddaya guys think, think Jakarta is a city you'll ever visit?