Jakarta Jive

After Singapore, Martha and I headed to Jakarta to hang out with Lincoln, see some sights, and do some batik making and shopping.

First, we hit up Toko Maju in Pasar Mayestik so that Martha could experience extreme crafting claustrophobia amid the buttons and zippers:

Then we took a bajaj ride home (riding in the newer, natural gas powered blue bajaj was a first for me!  I had only taken the super-polluting orange ones previously!):

The following day we headed to the Textile Museum, which had long been on my list of places to check out.  The Museum itself consists of mainly batik (and a little bit of ikat) and doesn't have a ton of English signage, but we were able to muddle our way through with my limited Bahasa Indonesia skills...  They also had a cool natural dyes garden displaying all the plants historically used to make dyes for batik.

While at the Textile Museum, we took advantage of the opportunity to try our hand at making batik in the Museum's workshop.  We made batik tulis, which is the hand-drawn batik. Here's how the process works: we used a light table to trace some floral designs onto a square of cotton, stabilized the fabric with an embroidery hoop, then set about applying the hot wax to the fabric using the canting (chan-ting), which is a little fountain pen type thing: a wooden handle with a small metal receptacle on the end for holding wax and a teeny spout out of which the wax flows.  You dip the canting in the hot wax (kept hot over a little burner as you see below), wipe off the excess, and apply it to the lines you traced or drew on the fabric.  Everywhere you lay down the wax will remain white after you dye the fabric later.

Dudes, this is harder than it looks!  Martha and I both ended up with several messy drips of wax on our fabric, screwing up the design a bit.  The wax dries really quickly, and once it's on the fabric, it's on there for good, no erasing, as it seeps into the grain of the fabric. 

After you are finished outlining your design, then comes the dye process.  First, our friend here painted the outside edge with paraffin.  Then he mixed up the dye (not the natural dye, as it takes several days of soaking for the fabric to absorb the plant dyes) and tossed our fabric squares in:

After the dying process was complete, our friend brought the fabric over to a pot of boiling water (mixed with something caustic, as I understood...baking soda, maybe?) to melt the wax off the fabric:

Then, ta da, we had our batik, a little wet still, but finished!:

Martha's is purple, mine blue.  You can see the splotchy parts where we messed up, but it adds to the rustic charm, no?

While our batik dried, we took some silly photos next to the statue of a giant canting in front of the workshop:

Here's us with our finished work, as well as us with a friend we made at the workshop.  He was from Medan and was taking a two day batik course while in Jakarta.  His batik motif consisted of an under-the-sea theme with fish and sea plants, so everyone call him the fish man:

We made the obligatory trip to Monas, the national monument, where we had our photos taken with some tourists from Sulawesi (didn't get a shot of that, sadly, but I will refer you to similar paparazzi incidents here and here):

Also, we hit up Taman Fatahillah, which was pretty quiet during Ramadan. We took a tour of the Museum Wayang (Puppet Museum), which was pretty cool and then quenched our thirst at the overpriced but atmospheric Cafe Batavia, the colonial era bar/restaurant:

Not pictured, but we also spend some time sitting in Jakarta's notorious traffic, of course.

Jakarta Sights

On Meghan and Liz's first full day in Indonesia, we took in some sights in "sweltering, steaming, heaving mass" that is Jakarta.

First on the list: Monument Nasional (Monas), Jakarta's obligatory phallic symbol/national monument.  A 137 meter tall tower in Central Jakarta that commenced construction (Haaa! Shout-out to my EPA folks! Regulatory humor never gets old.) in 1961 under President Sukarno, Monas is meant to represent a rice mortar and pestle and/or female and male body parts. With a flame on top.  Hmmm.

Since it is a symbol of national unity, like the Washington Monument, Monas attracts tourists from all over Indonesia, some of whom were super excited to see 3 bule ladies also enjoying the monument.  We got our photos taken with several groups of people, including 2 "aunties" who insisted on their own separate photos, lest one upstage the other.  Pretty funny.

Monas is surrounded by several cool bas-relief wall carvings highlighting Indonesian history.  Unfortunately we couldn't get very close to take in the detail due to some odd barrier placement, but they looked kinda neat from afar anyway:

 After taking a little time to figure out how to get into the monument (and subsequently being laughed at by several vendors- who knew the entrance was across the street and that you had to walk under the square to get into the monument??), we made it inside and were able to check out a series of 51 interesting, albeit incomplete and amusingly translated dioramas that also took a stab at retelling Indonesia's incredibly complicated history.  No photos, as the dioramas were really dark, but it's worth the $2 cab ride and 75 cent entrance fee to check these out if you are in the area.

Following our diorama tour, we headed up to the top observation desk of Monas in a crowded elevator in order to catch a glimpse of Jakarta from above:

Once safely back on the ground post-Monas, we headed to the old part of Jakarta, Kota Tua (Old City), the center of the Dutch colonial capital formerly known as Batavia.  Specifically, we started at Fatahillah Square for a glimpse of the crumbling colonial architecture, a cold drink a the quaintly colonial Cafe Batavia, and a view of some seriously cute school kids enjoying themselves immensely on the two-person rental bikes (with matching hats!) available in the square.  We would have gone to some of the surrounding museums, but I was dumb and didn't think to see if they were open.  Turns out all the museums are closed on Mondays... live and learn.

 

After a brief sojourn in Fatahillah Square, we walked over to check out Sunda Kelapa Port, or the Old Harbor.  Dodging a few trucks and catcalls on the way (I don't think many tourists do the walk we did, let alone 3 lady bules!), we saw some interesting stuff, including:

Trash collector guys on narrow bamboo boats floating along a horrendously polluted canal: 

During a detour due to a wrong turn onto Jalan Pasar Ikan (Fish Market Street), we saw these dyed chicks, which we wrongly assumed were for Easter (more on that later), plus many vendors selling all sorts of maritime paraphernelia, including giant tangles of anchors and old-timey looking nautical steering wheels: 

Finally, when we reached the harbor, we found that the historic harbor still serves as a hub for inter-island trade, although it is no longer the main port for the city of Jakarta. It was a little bit like a time-warp in that we saw a fleet of wooden-masted schooners being hand-loaded by gaggles of bare-foot men.  Apparently Sunda Kelapa berths the world's last wind-powered sailing fleet still used for trade.  Wow.

After taking in all of these sights, we were pretty sweaty and tired, so we hopped a taksi, braved the jalan macet and headed home.  After a quick shower and trip to the grocery store for a live-action version of Grocery Games, we grabbed dinner and drinks at the new Jakarta stand-by, the mega mall.  At the mall we encountered elaborate Easter displays, overpriced luxury goods, a boat on the 6th floor, American propaganda, and

Afterwards Meghan tried durian for the first time and did not puke, nor did she keep Liz awake with smelly durian burps, so we had that going for us, which is nice.