Food is my religion
As I wrote before Jakarta is humming with life. Starting from the airport in the early evening our eyes glow in the multicolored neon light of advertisements and boasting decorations.
The city is changing with mind blowing speed compared to german standards. Everywhere are brand new fancy buildings nearly finished boulevards and malls. After a short but notably good bite in a vegan restaurant (excellent rendang) we explore the new chinese styled food mile (I know food after food… and there will be even more 🤯; note the title). Like Alice in wonderland we wander through the shiny and a bit over the top theme park and gorge our eyes, noses and tongues on the manyfold impressions.
Early on the next day we brace our feet for a walking tour through Glodok (the old chinatown). Refreshed by some tea we follow our guide through a maze of traditional chinese medicine shops, markets with seemingly every creature on earth (prepared and living) and many different temples. Our guide sketches out the history of the area, explains the religious cultures and leads us to special culinary secrets.
Especially the taoist religion is very new to us. We visit a shop for sacrifices. In good capitalistic manor you can by there paper made models of every status symbol on earth: from Gucci shoes over Louis Vuitton bags to Lamborghinis and houses with pools, even fake money. “This you will burn in the temple to send it to your dead loved ones in afterlife”, our guide explains as we are dumbstrucked by the sheer creativity. As a chemist I cannot resist to wonder about drinking in taoist afterlife. If you have to burn things to send them to afterlife, you can only drink alcohol there as water is not burning🤷🏽♀️.
The temples themselves feel like being in a eastern movie and we even visit a catholic temple (it really does not look like a church) with a picture of a chinese jesus. At last our guide brings us to one of the many food temples in Jakarta where we enjoy a modern tea ceremony and have a lunch (the variety of food here is incomprehensible).
What to do after this cultural experiences? Right we have to go shopping in a mall – this time it is the Sarinah mall. “In your free time you go to the mall”, our cousin states. As a consequence you can hop from one air conditioned shopping paradise to the next almost without seeing the sky (which is covered by smog anyway 😉). Besides stores and spectacular restaurants there is a lot of entertainment in the malls to. We test our skills in an arcade, watch dinosaurs in cinema and enjoy some exhibitions. Did I mention that we ate a lot? Here is a short remembered list: pandan cakes, vegan rendang, mochi donuts, sweet casava cake, vegan sate, sweet fried jackfruit pancakes, bubble tea in different varieties (even one prized as best bubble tea), coconut jelly, sweet rice cake with garlic, sugarcane juice, rainbow-cheese-sandwich, falafel, chinese hot pot, stir fried noodles and rice, fried banana with sambal (a lot of different sambals), sticky rice cakes, pandan jelly with salty coconut flakes and sushi – I let out the good breakfast at the hotel.
Most of the time we are accompanied by parts of the family, which is a bliss. They really have good ways to spend the time in Jakarta, know the best food and are a well of knowledge about this ever changing city.
Together we head out (by car) to a special place out of Jakarta for a picnic in the rice fields. The scenes on the other side of the windshield are ever changing: modern high-rises are replaced by chaotic shops and bridges crossing in every direction at once. Even the poor parts of Jakarta a bursting with traffic. The contrast between poor and rich seems really high, as we drive back to the city in the dark. Mislead by the navigation, we hurdle over a unfinished road until we reach a big new street. On one side in the dark we can barely make out the makeshift huts on the other side are the skyscraping brand new shiny towers encircled by a dutch styled theme park.
What will we see in the last few days of our journey?❓