---
type: Place
title: Jakarta
description: Indonesia's capital as Harry finds it — a skyline he compares to New York, the best metro he has ridden, street food better than the restaurants, and a city that is sinking.
tags: [jakarta, indonesia, java, street-food, mrt, monas, markets]
coordinates: {lat: -6.1754, lng: 106.8272}
timestamp: 2026-08-05T12:00:00Z
---

# Jakarta

The capital of [Indonesia](/countries/indonesia.md), 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](/tips/haggle-with-a-reference-price.md).
- **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??) 🇮🇩](/videos/oLogbvAxwpw.md) —
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLogbvAxwpw
- [I Spent $600 in Jakarta's Fake Market 🇮🇩](/videos/3qihOYEn4r0.md) —
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qihOYEn4r0