Not Gunung Padang, the cat cemetery instead
Visiting Indonesia, I couldn’t not also visit Jakarta, the now largest city in the world, with over 41 million inhabitants.
Surprisingly, the city didn’t feel like a sprawl, though that could easily have been because of what areas I visited, as most buildings I saw were of manageable height, sufficiently spaced apart. Specifically, the neighbourhood I stayed in, near the Gondangdia train station, was a calm residential suburb, planned by the Dutch in the 1920s, with the vast majority of the buildings being only a few stories tall, and several of them being small architectural gems.
But, even from the top of the national monument, over a 100 meters above ground level, Jakarta didn’t come across as overwhelming. One particular suburb, directly to the west, did have a bunch of very tall buildings huddled together, but much of the city seemed quite agreeable.
An important objective for my visiting Jakarta was to visit the gravesite of Jan Pieterszoon Coen, founder of Batavia, the capital of Dutch Indonesia, on the site of Jakarta. Coen was responsible for what historians agree on was the only successful genocide in world history, in the service of commerce, specifically the trade in nutmeg, then thought to be able to ward off the plague.
He died, possibly of cholera, during a siege of the city he had founded, and was buried on the site of where the Dutch built their first church. That building has made way for a museum on Indonesian puppetry, wayang. Still, several original gravestones remain, as does a monument, a mural, to all the Dutch governors of Batavia, with the most prominent one being Coen, whose name dominates the central panel. Off-limits to museum visitors, I was neither able to walk, nor spit, on the man’s gravesite.
Upon entering the museum, spilling over with kids, shouting, cavorting, a guide attached himself to me. The student of English literature knew a thing or two about the puppets, but at Coen’s memorial, all he could tell me was that the man had been a general.
Almost lost between the many great puppets filling cabinets against a wall on the second floor of the museum, is one wayang puppet of Coen, looking devilish.
The museum is on the city’s central square, or rather, the central square of the old Dutch town. The city walls have long been removed, and the inner city was mostly rebuild in the 1930s, meaning you can find some lovely former governmental buildings in art deco and De Stijl architecture, occasionally making the area feel oddly Dutch.
Also on the central square, you can find a dozen or so young ladies, also oddly dressed up as Southern Bells, renting out bicycles, yet again oddly labeled with “Dutch Nutmeg” (Noni Belanda, in Bahasa).
Close to Jakarta, I had hoped to visit Gunung Padang, a mere 80km from the city. This is a megalithic site, which fringe archeologists believe was man-made as far back as 27000 years ago, which would make it the oldest man-made construction still standing, predating every known civilisation.
However, the science at the basis of these claims is rather shaky, and there is more support for the human constructing on the site being much more recent, perhaps dating back some 2500 years ago, with the main geology being a consequence of the hill being a now extinct volcano.
Nevertheless, in alternative history circles, the site is legendary, so visiting seemed necessary.
I was expecting to be able to find day trips from Jakarta, but these were elusive; one outfit appeared to offer them, but at rather crazy prices, charging 200 dollars for the privilege.
Getting there by public transport is possible, but trains are infrequent, with the most common train, which only runs a few times a day, not coming closer than 25km from the site, and taking some 4 hours to do so.
Renting a car is an alternative. At 40 euros for a day, acceptable, but the drive is at least 3.5 hours, each way. And for some reason, I would only be able to get a huge 7 seater at the airport.
The best option was to get a Grab, the local Uber. A steal at just 25 euros, one way. However, to sign up for Grab, you need to confirm your existence through receiving a security code by SMS, and those were not arriving on my number. This had failed in Yogyakarta, and was failing again, now.
So, I had no choice but to give up on Gunung Padang.
Instead, I went and visited the second best destination I could think of, Jakarta’s cat cemetery. The added bonus, lots of live kittehs.
The cat cemetery is also close to the zoo, so spread out visitors rent electrical bikes to get around.
Good (street) food everywhere, it was a good thing that Jakarta, just the previous month, had forbidden the sale of dog and cat meat.