As I mentioned before Jakarta is a city of ramshackle houses and huts that have gleaming towers popping up here and there. It is a city that has extreme contrasts between the haves and have not’s according to a friend. I could not agree more with his assessment.

I am staying in the J. W. Marriott hotel which was bombed twice by a local terrorist group, most recently last year. Normally that would make one hesitate about staying in such a place but this hotel is a veritable fortress.

When you arrive at the hotel, or any western style hotel for that matter, you have to pull through and into a gated holding area. One the hotel side of the holding area is an 18” thick concrete blast wall. It’s there in the event some whack-job decides to detonate an explosive device or car bomb. They use mirrors to check under the car, someone looks into the engine compartment, and security people open and look into just about everything.

This is standard at all the facilities that I visited. The Four Seasons was exactly the same when I went over there to use there spa facilities. And all the major hotels had their own private police/security forces with the ever present machineguns draped over the shoulder.

Saturday we hired a car and driver for a 10 hour day of sight-seeing and shopping. The total cost for the car and driver was about $60 US dollars. One of the sights we saw today was the National Monument of Indonesia which is also know as President Soekarno “last erection” because he was such a philander. What a great legacy for the country!

Basically Jakarta is a city in transition; a city that has one foot in the past and the other trying to move forward. It is a city that I don’t particularly feel safe in and can’t wait to get the hell out of on Sunday morning when we head up to Hong Kong.

I would love to meet the guy that invented the blue colored tarpaulin because he has to be a genius. The versatile blue tarp can be used to cover a roof of a home or shack to keep the rain out or if you have four poles and some rope you can set up a convenience store any where you like.

People squat on land all along roadways and basically anywhere they want. But if you have a blue plastic tarp you can set up shop or home. I seen so many of them that someone, somewhere is sitting pretty and living the dream and it sure as hell is not in this crap-hole known as Jakarta!        

Dave Bossert- Commentary

Dave Bossert is a community volunteer who serves on a number of boards and councils. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon.