Cranial Vomit

One of the things that I had always remembered about Jakarta is how congested their roads were.

After 17 years the situation is about a thousand times worse.

Back home in dear ol’ Western Australia, a traffic jam would delay things by 15 to 30 mins. here, you cold add up to 3 hours to your journey if you took the wrong turn… Here I am, trapped in traffic. There are 3 lanes going in one direction yet there are at least 6 queues of cars spread across them. Most of you reading this might know bad traffic from perhaps Sydney or even Bali - thats not even remotely close to what its like here. To get an idea, drop some acid, staple a 500 gram steak to your chest, blindfold yourself and throw yourself into a tank full off sharks with frikkin lasers tied to their heads and you might experience how chaotic it is here.

Everything is at a standstill now. To my left, an elderly woman with an outstretched hand begs form money from the comfort of a piece of cardboard sitting on the side of the road. She is enveloped in thick black car exhaust spewing from a Mitsubishi lancer idling next to her. To my right, a kid no older than 10 years of age goes from car to car trying to sell bottles of lukewarm water and corn chips. A steady stream of scooters flow around him at breakneck speeds yet the kid seems completely ignorant to the fact.

Over the past few years the Indonesian government had tried to ease the strain on the main arterial roads by improving public transport. This was to be done by constructing a series of bus lanes and commissioning a brand new monorail. Just like the Simpsons episode, the whole thing failed miserably - unfortunately for the people of Jakarta, there was no musical song n’ dance to the whole ordeal. I’m not exactly sure to the whole story but evidentially the funds dried up so the workers walked away. The failed remains of the project litter the landscape of the city in the form of skeletal concrete towers and roads going nowhere. I guess nobody thought of a back-out plan as it certainly would cost billions to clean up the mess and reclaim the land that was taken away from the same roadways it was supposed to save.

Law enforcement must be non existent on the roads - street signs are ignored, traffic signals change from red to green with no apparent influence to the flow of vehicles and pedestrians jaywalk the streets like ants scurrying around the floor of a rain forest in anticipation of a pending thunderstorm. Cars weave in and out of the makeshift lanes in a vein attempt at saving an extra 30 seconds to their travel time - it doesn’t always work, sometimes they gain an extra 20 seconds… good enough for the drivers.

Ahead of me a Mercedes scrapes the side of a Hyundai. Both drivers quickly jump out to survey the damage, chat for two seconds, then a wad of cash is exchanged followed by the drivers getting back in their cars. In the time this event took, not a single car had the opportunity to move. No phone numbers exchanged and no insurance papers to fill out.

Efficient yet completely insane.

At home you regularly hear people whine about how bad it is on the roads these days. Try spending 10 mins behind the wheel here. That’ll shut you up. In the meantime - thank god for personal drivers.

I’m gonna nap now - gotta fly to Bali tomorrow.