Ke Kota

Ke Kota

The usual route to Chinatown (or Kota, as it is known locally) from the Jakarta city centre is through Jalan Gadjah Mada. Gadjah Mada is a busy one way street that goes north and takes you past bustling Chinese shops and restaurants. It runs parallel to Jalan Hayam Wuruk, which channels south-going traffic in the opposite direction. In between these two roads, is a dirty canal (or drain), which some locals would erroneously call the Ciliwung river. (I wrote about the canal in a previous posting).

Jalan Hayam Wuruk is named after the famous king of the Majapahit empire based in East Java during the 14th century and Gadjah Mada was his illustrious Prime Minister. The two of them brought the Majapahit empire to the height of its glory.

These two roads remind me of Jalan Raja Laut and Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman in KL, also running towards north and south respectively. Both are long roads busy with buses and old Chinese shops. While there's the Chow Kit area at the end of Jalan Raja Laut and the beginning of Jalan TAR, here we have a similarly notorious Jalan Mangga Besar running perpendicular to Gadjah Mada and Hayam Wuruk on the northern end.

The nightspots along Hayam Wuruk and Mangga Besar are popular among men looking for "action" at night. Kota never sleeps: during the day it bustles with the typical industry of the Chinese; at night, bright neon-signs advertising a thousand and one delights adorn its main street streets and side-alleys. All along Jalan Hayam Wuruk going south, one could see a parade of ladies-of-the-night, garish under the neonlights, trying to woo customers from the passing traffic.

Passing through the street at night on a taxi, I'd like to imagine myself driven by a Travis Bickle, (De Niro in Scorcese's Taxi Driver), who would lament about the "filth" in the streets and how a rain should "wash" it all away. And ocassionally I would stare out of the window and see private investigator Jake Gittes played by Jack Nicholson lunging desperately towards a dead Faye Dunaway in the climatic scene of Roman Polanski's classic, Chinatown; and somewhere out there, a voice says: "Forget it Jake, this is Chinatown".

To me all this filth is beauty: I enjoy taking photos of the city at night--the harsh loneliness of streetlights, the haunted faces in chiaroscuro and the hint of seedy dealings in dark alleyways.

It is probably why I like Riri Riza's experimental movie, Eliana, Eliana so much. And of course, I am also a big fan of director Ridley Scott whose cityscapes and night scenes are so visually arresting (my favourites being Blade Runner, Black Rain and Alien).

Night in Jakarta is endlessly fascinating.

Mau ke mana pak?
Ke Kota.