Every city has its affluent neighborhoods, and Jakarta is no exception. Areas like Menteng, Kebayoran, Pondok Indah and Kemang are home to many of Jakarta's wealthiest residents. Sometimes it's 'old money' - landowners from pre-independence days, cronies from the New Order regime boom years, or folks well-connected enough to have had a stake in some of Indonesia's leading conglomerates. Their houses tend to be spacious an very comfortable, but somehow bear the simplicity of Old Jakarta - traditional kitchens; airy living rooms with high ceilings and large ceiling fans; teak wood or rattan furniture; lush gardens.
Like 'new money' people everywhere, Jakarta's New Rich seem determined to test the limits of both their purchasing power and publicly accepted taste. In Jakarta's southern suburbs - Pondok Indah in particular - they build gargantuan new homes that from the main road look a bit like badly constructed spaceships or poor reproductions of Disney-style palaces. In short, garish in just about every way. If you're ever pitying yourself for being poor, stroll along Pondok Indah's main road, look at the houses and see the kind of embarrassment you've been spared.
The entrance facade sometimes carries the family's initials in huge gold letter plates; the front courtyard might contain a pair of life-sized ceramic Pegasus statues; the gleaming marble-laid living room is the size of a small stadium; chandeliers typically weigh two hundred kilos and house enough light bulbs to illuminate a casino; the swimming pool is flanked with spitting fountains; the children's bedrooms are often the work of a specialist interior designer and the kids' beds are shaped like racing cars or medieval castles. Check theses houses out. They epitomize post-modern kitsch. But most impressive of all, real people with real freedom actually choose to live in them.
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