Jakarta / Indonesia

What do you think of when you hear 'Indonesia' or 'Jakarta'? Terrorist bomb attacks? Tsunamis? Or perhaps, insurrections? It seems that a lot of the news coming out of Indonesia is bad news, but in fact, although it is the country with the largest Islamic population in the world, there is alcohol and there is pork. Out of respect for other religions, there are 4 different New Year holidays and people even enjoy Christmas: it is a country with a large helping of tolerance.

The latest big thing in Jakarta is a day trip around the Bandung factory outlets. Bandung is a city located 120km south-east of Jakarta. You may well have heard of it as the city which hosted the 1st Africa-Asia Conference, the Bandung Conference of 1955. Until recently, you reached Bandung from Jakarta by spending half a day going by car across a narrow mountain road, gripping your seat at the sight of oncoming cars, or else you went by train, an equally frightening prospect as you have to cross the old iron bridge said to have been built by the Imperial Japanese Army before the war, or you went by twin-engined propeller plane, all of which methods of transport were liable to leave you feeling rather depleted. But with the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the Asia-Africa Conference this year, suddenly building work for an expressway was stepped up a gear, and the new road was opened just before the conference. The journey to Bandung has been reborn as a 2-hours one-way recreational driving route.

Why the lines of factory outlets in a historical town? Well, originally Bandung was a textile producing town, but apparently it had a tendency to overproduce. There were peaks and troughs in the level of orders from abroad. It is my suspicion that the owners of the textile factories decided to build the factory outlets because they thought that since they were making 'the real thing' anyway, if they couldn't sell it abroad, then why not sell it to their own people. Anyway, shop signs for GAP, Esprit, Benetton etc. are lined along the road, and at weekends it's jam-packed with throngs of people. It is difficult to even get close to the shop you are aiming for, almost as if you'd gone and brought Jakarta's traffic jams along with you.

Well, after buying lots of the anticipated cheap brand goods, as well as some surprisingly expensive ones, time to head home. Having left the driving to the driver, after a slight doze I awake to find that we're still in a traffic jam just outside Jakarta. In the end, the journey home takes 4 hours, "no different than it was before they opened the expressway," we sigh. Even so, the brief excursion made a refreshing day out.

The expressway to Bandung There are no traffic jams because this photo was taken during Ramadan. Inside a factory outlet shop swarming with hoards of customers.

Marubeni Group magazine "M-SPIRIT" VOL.30 (November, 2005)