Kota Tua

First weekend here in J-town was fun.

Saturday was spent lounging around on my bed watching movies….

… while my parents and The Sister are out frolicking in Bali. They’re nerding it up at some conference which I shall have the luxury of listening through tapes of it next week. So, frolicking is a bit of an overstatement.

Uncle DN came over though and we talked and talked and talked. Closest relative I have here is roughly 3 hours away if the traffic is kind. We hung out at Mal Kelapa Gading which is literally a zebra cross away from my house. We traversed the whole stretch of malls there. It really isn’t all that different from Singaling, from the Zara store to the Ya Kun Kaya cafe. At the risk of sounding like a spoilt brat, I’m bored with the same comfort and sense of safety.

So on Sunday we set off for Glodok at Kota Tua. Kota Tua or Old City was the trade hub of a bygone era. The place used to be our China town and surprise surprise it’s filled to the brim with electronic stores. After the riots of 1997/98, the place is still humming with activity but the walls are charred black, rotting with mold and negligence. It’s an entire community in a faded palette. The characters which inhabit the place have a certain colour about them: skin burnished bronze, with an offwhite sclera that blends into earthy brown pupils. It’s as if time had stopped ticking since 1997 and the white noon heat burned it all to a standstill.  I wish I had a camera to document it all.

We were there to forage for liberated movies to stem our boredom since we’ve concluded that public television will likely to whittle our brains away. The man has over 200 movies at home. Plus, he’s a burly guy so he’s perfect for adventures into the dirtier parts of the city. Like Kota Tua.

After Glodok, we hopped on a bike. Yeah a bike taxi. They wore helmets made out of weaved coconut leaves and rides vintage bikes with rust comfortably etched to the rims. It’s quaint but this is their livelihood, not a gimmick crafted by the tourism board.

We rode pillion to Stasiun Jakarta Kota. Stasiun Jakarta Kota houses the electric powered trains that moves people from Bogor, Bekasi and Tangerang to the city.  The spirit of a particular place lingers to the foundations, the columns and the rafters of a building. I love how the metal colums curves upwards. The clocks still possessed a certain kind of dignity. The trains line themselves up by shallow platforms. There’s ornate details in the pillars which props the awnings along half a dozen platforms.

See. I need a camera for this.

Someone should preserve these structures and allow for this area to draw in people, retain its character and yet still develop with the rest of Jakarta. I don’t want it to be forgotten.