Enjoying Jakarta

My hometown, Jakarta, is the largest city in Indonesia. As the capital city of Indonesia, Jakarta has significant roles in providing all aspects for maintaining and progress of the nation. The center of Indonesian government is located here with important buildings like Presidential Palace in Medan Merdeka Barat Street, House of People Representative in Gatot Subroto Street, and foreign nation embassies. Jakarta is also functioned as the center of economic activity with several vital economic centers such as: Jakarta Stock Exchange and Central Bank of Indonesia. Socially, Jakarta is known as a melting pot. We can find almost every ethnicity from Indonesia here.

There are many ways of enjoying Jakarta. If you want to know more about history of the city, you can take a small tour to Kota area. There you can see the museum of the city called Fatahillah Museum which shows us how was Jakarta’s condition in the colonial era. Not far from Fatahillah Museum, there are Puppet Museum and Bank Museum. If you are a person who likes to shop a lot, Jakarta offers you its fascinating shopping places, for instance: Mangga Dua, Tanah Abang, Mal Taman Anggrek where you can buy export quality goods with relatively cheap price. For people who love doing adventure, there is Dunia Fantasi or Dufan to go to. Another place worth seeing is Taman Mini Indonesia Indah which resembles Indonesia in miniature. After exhausted walking around the city, you can find some good food at Ancol Bay to enjoy seafood or Kemang with various kind of food from Indonesia and other countries. There are various modes of transportations in Jakarta, from bajaj, taxi, train, and the recent public transportation is bus way. This new public transportation has already more than ten routes operating to all directions from north to south, from west to east. The fare is affordable to most people, Rp.3.500, for one transferable trip.

Talking about Jakarta is not always on the highlights. As a big city, Jakarta has a lot of problems, starting from the imbalance of population with limited public infrastructure and services, sanitation, flooding, and of course heavy traffic jam in most part of the city. Flooding is always the main issue of Jakarta in every rainy season. Although there still a lot of thing to be fixed, the government of Jakarta under the newly elected governor, attempts hard to make Jakarta a better, safe, healthy, and comfortable place to live.