Jakarta: People, Places, Plants, Birds & Animals
Jakarta - People - 1a Like Colombia, the police are often quite young males, and sometimes very attractive in their outfits.
Jakarta - 1b Like Colombia, the police are often quite young males, and sometimes very attractive in their outfits. When was the last time they shot and killed someone?
Jakarta - People - 2
Jakarta - People - 3 A worker at the Ragunan Zoo in south Jakarta.
Jakarta - People - 4a Students visiting the old Dutch colonial area 'Batavia'.
Jakarta - People - 5 Students visiting the old Dutch colonial area 'Batavia'. This lad and the next approached me with some questionnaire they were using in a school project. So few tourists that I was approached so often that I avoided them - unless, like this lad, they were too gorgeous to ignore!
Jakarta - People - 6 Students visiting the old Dutch colonial area 'Batavia'.
Jakarta - People - 7 At first my perceptions said that this is a woman, however after looking at the photo I concluded it is a man. Not a member of the TV/TS 'community'.
Jakarta - Places - 1 A drawbridge surviving in Batavia from the Dutch Colonial era.
Jakarta - Places - 2 The National Monument.
Jakarta - Places - 3a The National Museum of Indonesia Beautifully designed on the outside, shockingly few artifacts inside. Believe I may have seen more in certain European museums. The fountain with a near naked archer I have not been able to identify from Google Images. Looks to be more European than Indonesian. Perhaps I missed an entire wing of the museum since Google has many sculptures of Buddhas and Hindu Gods and Goddesses that I do not recall seeing.
Jakarta - Places - 3b Close up of the cock. It's not a fig leaf (figs do not grow in Indonesia). I suspect the mainly Muslim population is not terribly comfortable with the work and that may account for it's absence in Google Images where I attempted to research it.
Jakarta - Places - 4 A ridiculously ornate cannon! In the Municipal Museum. I'll add some information if I'm able to find it.
Jakarta - Places - 5 Terminal 3 at Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta Airport. This new facility handles most international flights and is plush and super comfortable, in stark contrast to the old Terminal 1 and to Terminal 2 which reflect the standards of much earlier decades.
Jakarta - Places - 4 Integration of plants into building designs. An exceptional example.
Jakarta - Plants - 1 Along certain important central roadways, the plant architecture is far better than the roadways themselves. This photo and the next clearly demonstrate that a certain higher intelligence was behind so may of these median strips. Nothing comparable can be found in the Western world!
Jakarta - Plants - 2 Another extraordinary example of plant architecture, with staghorn epiphytic ferns planted around the trunks of palm trees. Brilliant and beautiful!
Jakarta - Plants - 3 Root system of a tree bordering a sewage canal. Shows how massive the usually underground root system of a tree seeking moisture usually is.
Jakarta - Plants - 4a Add a scientific name shortly!
Jakarta - Plants - 4b
Introduction to: Jakarta: People, Places, Plants, Birds & Animals
The images of people are almost all of boys and young males. With each culture I have visited throughout my life, a similar process of slowly developing an appreciation of young male beauty occurs. For Indonesia there are the images taken in Jakarta, Bali, and Labuan Bajo (Komodo). Barely enough observation, and few captured images, to even begin the psychological process of developing an aesthetic sense – yet hopefully a satisfying and tantalizing glimpse into their world.
Jakarta is an enormous sprawling, messy, pedestrian un-friendly city. Build first as a tiny but planned capital (Batavia) by the colonizers from Holland. Once that period was over, city planning seems to have been thrown out the window! And once motorized vehicles arrived, the city gave up whatever people friendly face it had and the pedestrian took an often dangerous second place to anything with wheels and a motor.
My first experience after taking the bus from the airport into the city was as challenging and nerve wracking as anything I can remember. Even my ‘rehearsals’ using Google Maps, did not prepare me for the chaos and miss mash of roadways built with little or no thought to an uninitiated tourist dragging a trolley case, just looking for a sidewalk, a crosswalk, a street sign to orient by. Meanwhile entire battalions of motor bikes, taxis, private buses in almost solid blocks speed their way down the thoroughfares. No obvious way to even cross a street without risking being run over a dozen times. Yet these drivers seem so completely aware and sensitive to everything around them – including me. How they do it is beyond my understanding! Need to study accident statistics, however I suspect the number of accidents is much lower than one might imagine.
Rather than attempting to complete this and my other Asian gallery introductions in one fell swoop, I am inclined to return to each in their embryonic stages and add to them – when the spirit moves and my thoughts and memories coalesce. Bear with me!