Jakarta

The capital of Indonesia, on Java, with a population of over 10 million. Harry arrives from Bali expecting an Asian megacity and spends the first half of the video saying the opposite — the skyscrapers around the central business district look to him better designed than England’s, and the phrase he keeps reaching for is New York.

His summed-up first impression is that the city is very developed, very green in the centre, and much bigger than he expected, with modern districts and local ones sitting close together. The qualifier is that Jakarta is sinking as sea levels rise, which is why a new capital is being built at a cost he describes as billions — displacing people in the process.

Getting around

The MRT is the surprise. Harry buys a stored-value card at Block M station and tops it up as needed; the gates, the signage and the announcements are all in English as well as Bahasa, so the network is usable without the language.

His verdict on the trains: the most spacious metro he has ridden anywhere, clean, modern, and with air conditioning that actually works. He plans to use it for the rest of his stay.

Coffee and street food

ONE FIFTEENTH Coffee — a large café where the menu arrives by QR code on your phone and you order from the table. There are no photographs on the menu, which is how Harry ends up ordering blind:

• Pempek, a fish cake from Sumatra, served with a vinegar dip. He compares the texture to a British fish cake — crisp outside, soft inside — and skips the vinegar, which he admits is the wrong way to eat it.
• Coffee poured hot over ice cream, which he rates strong and unusual.
• $16 for two meals and two coffees, at what he calls a market fine-dining sort of place.

Street food is the better half of the day, and Harry’s line about it is that in Indonesia the street food is often as good as or better than the restaurant food.

• Siomay and batagor — steamed and fried dumplings, ordered mixed, with tofu and chicken, doused in satay sauce. He calls the satay sauce unbelievable and the crisp version his favourite of the day; the chilli arrives about thirty seconds later. Around 10,000 rupiah a portion, and 20,000 paid for what they took away (from video – unverified — the amounts are said in shorthand).
• Es doger — a mixed dessert built in front of you: ice cream, coloured jellies, fruit, something green Harry has to dig for that tastes like cake, and chocolate, all stirred together until it half melts into a drink. His description is soft and hard textures at once, very sugary, and very good.

Markets

Street food stalls run in long rows with electronics and counterfeit goods opposite — bags, caps, phone cases. Harry buys a fake designer backpack: 200,000 rupiah asked, and after a long negotiation they settle around 150,000 (from video – unverified). At the end he hands the seller his old bag as part of the trade and transfers his kit into the new one. The seller is straightforward that it is fake and from China; Harry’s own assessment is that the zips and build are genuinely good.

These stalls are hard to find deliberately — Luke’s point is that they don’t show up well on Google Maps, and you come across them by walking.

The counterfeit mall

A separate video is spent inside a multi-storey mall of fake goods (Harry doesn’t name it). Several floors of designer clothing, sunglasses, perfume, watches and shoes, laid out like an ordinary shopping centre with salons and food between the units, and the ground floor is where the hardest selling happens.

Nobody is pretending. Asked outright, sellers confirm the goods are fake and made in China and argue about build quality instead; a watch seller asked whether the police are an issue says they aren’t.

What Harry paid, all in rupiah:

• Fake Dior shirt — 320 asked, walked down through 280, 250 and 220, agreed at 200.
• Dior Sauvage aftershave — the one item where he had a reference price. He looked the real thing up at about £110 (roughly 1.7 million) and negotiated from there, settling at 1,750,000. Paying by card added 3%.
• Essentials t-shirt — 600 asked, 500 agreed. It comes with tags and a branded bag from a stockroom upstairs. He is told Essentials is the most popular brand with Indonesian buyers.
• Richard Mille copy, battery movement — 500 asked, 350 agreed. The automatic version was 4 million. The dial says Swiss made.
• Seen but not bought: fake Yeezys at 2,200,000, and bags on sale at 150.

The useful contrast is at the end. At the DJI store — a real shop — a Mini 2 is 7 million, about £400–450, and there is no discount of any kind and no tourist discount. Harry buys it anyway and turns down the fly-more combo, which adds 2.2 million for two batteries that cost 1.7 million each on their own. The haggling economy stops at the branded shop door.

His own verdict on the day is worth keeping: he says plainly that he is out of his depth on what fake clothing is worth, that he’s bad at negotiating, and that he spent far more than he intended.

Monas and the centre

The National Monument (Monas) stands in a large park in central Jakarta: an obelisk Harry gives as 127 metres, commemorating the independence struggle against the Dutch, and completed in the 1970s (from video – unverified — he flags both figures himself as needing a check). The park is clean, heavily policed, and full of families picnicking. The top platform was sold out on the day; the lower viewpoint, four flights up, still gives a panorama of the city.

Nearby:

• Istiqlal Mosque, which Harry is told is the sixth largest in the world. He doesn’t go in — he is in shorts and would need a sarong, and it was closing around three.
• A statue of a Betawi hero in the same area. The Betawi are the people considered native to Jakarta and its surroundings. The name is garbled in the subtitles and isn’t recorded here.
• A loud political rally or protest with a heavy police presence, which Harry passes without engaging.

Harry’s tips

• Take the MRT. Buy the card at the station, top it up, and read the English signage — it is the easiest part of the city.
• Eat on the street rather than in the restaurant. The stalls are scattered everywhere rather than gathered in one district, so the way to find them is to walk rather than to search a map.
• Learn some Bahasa. English is thin here compared with Bali, and Harry treats that as the reason Jakarta is more interesting rather than harder.
• Ask a security guard for directions. His observation across Southeast Asia is that they are consistently helpful, well informed and polite.
• Cover your legs for the mosque, and go well before three.
• Walk into the fake market with a list. His stated lesson from previous markets is to decide what you want before you go in; without one you buy at random and overspend.
• Look the real price up on your phone mid-negotiation. It’s the only item of the day where he knew what he was doing — see haggle with a reference price.
• Don’t try to bargain in the branded shops. Electronics here are fixed price and the assistants won’t move at all.

Source

• My First Time In JAKARTA, Indonesia (New York or Asia??) 🇮🇩 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLogbvAxwpw
• I Spent $600 in Jakarta’s Fake Market 🇮🇩 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qihOYEn4r0