Feelings after first week in Jakarta

A bit over a week of life in Jakarta behind and I'm still alive. Have survived a little stomach-related illness and an earthquake. I want to share with you, my dear readers, a bit of my first impressions of Jakarta. Today I tell you the only thing I really hate here, which is the traffic.

I had heard very much about the traffic and had hence been warned before, but this is totally beyond comprehension. First, no matter what time of day/night it is, there's always a lot of traffic. Mopeds are the worst. There are billions of mopeds and they are everywhere. All cars and mopeds are honking too just to add to the experience. They're honking either because they're pissed off at someone, or they are taxi drivers trying to attract your attention saying they are available, or indicating they will overtake closely, or just for the fun of scaring a poor westerner.

There are no sidewalks and walking anywhere is an absolute impossibility. I live next to a really busy street with 3 lanes to both directions and crossing it would be a suicide attempt. There is one place though where people gather to cross the street together. There I wait until there's a bigger group of us and then cross the street inside this human wall hoping that drivers don't like to wash our remains off their cars and will stop. Even if Indonesians are really friendly people, they go absolutely mad behind a steering wheel. The trick is then just not to show any kind of hesitation or fear when attempting to cross a street, you just have to go and usually they will stop. It's the only way to manage as a pedestrian in this chaos.

Usually I walk home from work by the side of this street, and it's a huge adventure every time. The drivers are racing only 20 cm past me with incredible speed. It's just insane. It takes 30 min to walk to work but because of the insupportable heat and the traffic it's quite hard. But those things I've actually already learned to live with, whereas the worst thing is by far the stinging smell of gasoline. Jakarta is hopelessly polluted and walking that busy streetside and breathing in the gasses gives a decent headache for the rest of the day. That's why you probably won't be surprised that I usually take a taxi in the morning to get to work. It's safer and so much more comfortable and costs less than 1 euro. Actually I even realised I could afford hiring a personal driver here as their salary only is around 110e/month but then I'd also need to buy a car which is another story.

The street sides are dangerous too as they are of course in really bad condition and have huge dikes in which dirt is floating to the city sewage system. Sometimes I've made the fatal mistake to take a deep breath just when passing one of these holes in the ground and the disgusting stink dreates an instantaneous puking effect. Jakarta is absolutely not a beautiful city, however some new shopping malls are amazing and totally above anything else I've ever seen, but right next to them there are poor little shelters as homes and it looks just like some kind of slum area. I've asked many Jakartans whether they like this city. It's been a categorical "no", except this weekend one taxi driver said something I'd classify as a "yes": "It's the city in which I work and live, I have to like it".