Jakarta Story : Jalan Jaksa

Like so many backpackers on Lonely Planetized journeys through Southeast Asia, Jalan Jaksa - a 500-meter stretch of hot dusty pavement in the heart of the city, is not a pretty place.
Decades ago, weary travelers en route from Sumatra to Sulawesi stopped here to kick back over beers and banana jaffles, and plan the next leg of their Great Archipelago Adventure. Some buried their sunburned faces in crusty second-hand books and searched for their inner selves. Jalan Jaksa was a quiet street then, with some shabby budget hostels and little else.

Entar a blaring re-mix of Akon's latest single and the set changes dramatically. Small open-air bars now fill the gaps between hostels and the atmosphere is decidedly more sinister. Nobody seems to notice the second-hand book stalls anymore, and Muslim fundamentalist groups have lately made a habit of conducting 'moral sweeps' along the street, breaking down bar doors and smashing botles of alcohol. With cheap booze and even cheaper women, Jalan Jaksa has firmly established itself as a down-market hub of sinful pleasures.

Nigerian drug-dealers in silk-shirts and gold rings linger in fluorescent-lit drinking dens. A new generation of backpackers and surfer dudes hangs out at bars called Memories and Romance. These days they seem not so much into finding themselves as losing themselves in the sickly delights of watered down cocktails with names like 'Slippery Nipple'. Male travelers are sometimes flanked by heavily perfumed, platform wearing local honeys. The boys' smug young faces suggest they don't realize they'll have to pay these 'friendly ladies' for their services later on, or that some of these friendly ladies aren't ladies at all.

ALongside the travelers, middle-aged hippies look as though they've been here twenty years too long and gone a bit mad in the process. Many are Jaksa veterans from the 70s who apparently forgot to ever go home; they continue living and teaching English in Jakarta, and warm their favorite Jaksa bar stools practically every night of the week. Late opening hours, cheap beer and the casual atmosphere have lured even ordinary young Indonesians to the street in recent years: students, young artists and intellectuals have adopted Jaksa as a favorite venue for meetings into the night.

During the peak traveler season of June through August, the bars and hostels fill with jaded but happily boozed-up kids, prostitute and Top 40 hits. Just as in the 70s, local children gaze in from the perimeter in utter amazement, waiting for another fight to erupt between Swedish or German boy band look-alikes. The children's expressions haven't changed. Only the young, white people on the other side of the perimeter have.