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LIPPO CIKARANG - It was a Saturday yesterday. As usual I got up on time and after breakfast, mandi and a quick look on the internet I grabbed my stuff for a short trip to Jakarta, which is still about one hour from here. The bus at ten in the morning was one bus later than I had planned on taking in the first place, but well, that's how things go. No big deal.
I bought a bottle of es teh. While it is Ramadan - the holy month of fasting for Muslems around the world - the food stall that normally serves passengers is still open. I didn't expect them to be closed during this month as well, since most travelers bring little children, are busy with other things than fasting or are not Muslim, like me.
With the Ramadan in progress, Jakarta gets more quiet every single day, which becomes even more visible when I visit the city only once a week. No traffic jams, or slowing traffic, not even at the toll road alongside Jalan Gatot Subroto and the Pancoran area, which are notorious for their traffic jams, while the road is just a straight stretch.
Soon I was finished with the points in my agenda. I took my camera with me because I wanted to have a look around. From the post office just south of Passer Baroe I walked to Jalan Jaksa via Lapangan Banteng, Medan Merdeka and a piece of Jalan Sudirman. It took me over an hour, since there is no need to hurry in broad daylight here.
In Jalan Jaksa, which is a famous nightlife area for - mainly - foreign tourists, I found that it just looked like Poppies Lane in Bali, or Sosrowijayan in Yogyakarta. But this was worse than both places if I might add. Most restaurants were open, but simply looked too dirty to even sit down and ask the waiter for a cold beer. It took me a walk back and forth through the entire street, about half a kilometer, when I decided to jump inside in Romance Cafe.
Upon opening the door a tremendous smell of alcohol greeted me, as well as five adult guys reliving their childhood did. They were as drunk as they could get at this time of day. It was barely two in the afternoon now, but they probably had more beers to drink than the entire rest of Jakarta at that time. I ordered a cold Bir Bintang and the first dish on the menu that I somewhat preferred; spaghetti bolognese.
Soon I got into a 'conversation' with one of the drunk guys. He was from Scotland, there were two Americans, one Canadian and an Aussie as well. Two of them said to be working at EF, English First, a well-known school to learn English in parts of Indonesia. Since they were so drunk, I have reason to believe they indeed are teachers there.
The 'conversation' ended at every sentence but started again after a few seconds of 'beer loading'. One adult man walked outside with his Anker beer bottle in his hand. Like a little child he was followed by two of the other drunk teachers. After a minute they were back, all three of them. A bottle was accidentally tipped over and splashed to pieces on the floor. The owner barely reacted to this abuse of alcohol.
It took the cafe longer to serve my spaghetti than the time I needed to eat it. My beer was not that cold and I finished it within reasonable time as well. But I know that hanging around with his kind of people is very infectious. Enough of these places also in my neighborhood, but I am darned happy that I don't need it to make my life in Indonesia of more value.
At least I got to see this nice old house, still 'untouched' in Jalan Jaksa. © indahnesia.com
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