I used to spend a lot of time in Jakarta for work, and it's an underrated city. Yes, it's hot, congested, polluted and largely poor, but so is Bangkok.<p>Public transport remains not great, but it's improved a lot with the airport link, the metro, LRT, Transjakarta BRT. SE Asia's only legit high speed train now connects to Bandung in minutes. Grab/Gojek (Uber equivalents) make getting around cheap and bypass the language barrier. Hotels are incredible value, you can get top tier branded five stars for $100. Shopping for locally produced clothes etc is stupidly cheap. Indonesian food is amazing, there's so much more to it than nasi goreng, and you can find great Japanese, Italian, etc too; these are comparatively expensive but lunch at the Italian place in the Ritz-Carlton was under $10. The nightlife scene is <i>wild</i>, although you need to make local friends to really get into it. And it's reasonably safe, violent crime is basically unknown and I never had problems with pickpockets (although they do exist) or scammers.<p>I think Jakarta's biggest problems are lack of marketing and top tier obvious attractions. Bangkok has royal palaces and temples galore plus a wild reputation for go-go bars etc, Jakarta does not, so nobody even considers it as a vacation destination.
I was there ~20 years ago. I had made friends with some Indonesia students in college and joined them on a trip home. We were mostly in Surabaya, but did spend some time in Jakarta as well. We had a great time.<p>The language is a hidden gem, you can learn enough to get around on the flight over which I can't say about any other SEA language. Phonetic spellings, Latin alphabet, no tonal sounds, dead easy grammar and a million loan words you already know.<p>Jakarta is definitely for the adventurous though, and you had better have an iron stomach.
>Jakarta is definitely for the adventurous though, and you had better have an iron stomach.<p>I love, love, loved backpacking across quite a bit of southeast Asia. I did not like the massive gastrointestinal problems nearly the entire time though.<p>I spent big money on four things for that trip: the flight, shoes, backpack, and toilet paper. I would've killed and eaten someone to get my hands in alcohol free wet wipes.
> ...which I can't say about any other SEA language. Phonetic spellings, Latin alphabet, no tonal sounds, dead easy grammar and a million loan words you already know.<p>Nitpick: Sounds a lot like Tagalog (Filipino), another SEA language.
I've never studied it, but my understanding is that like Japanese, Tagalog has the pitched/stressed thing going on. My wife is Japanese and holy cow I can't tell the difference. Bridge or Chopstick? No idea, they sound exactly the same to my ears...<p>I'm pretty fluent, but my pronunciation was as good as it's gonna get like 10 years ago which is a frustration.
In Japan/ese, the pitch/stress thing is overrated, and so are regional language differences. When natives point it out to me, it strikes me a little more than cultural gatekeeping. Linguistic context matters much more. How often are you listening to your own native language and you are confused by two words that sounds similar (like 'hashi' in Japanese for bridge/chopsticks)? Almost never. Advice: Ignore it when natives that criticise your pronunciation. Ask them how is their German or Thai is... and they will freeze with shame.<p>Where I come from, to criticise a non-native speakers accent or small grammatical errors (that do not impact the meaning) is a not-so-subtle form of discrimination. As a result, I never do it. (To criticise myself, it tooks many, many years to see this about my home culture and stop doing it myself.) Still, many people ask me: "Hey, can you correct my <language X> when I speak it?" "Sure!" (but I never do.)
>How often are you listening to your own native language and you are confused by two words that sounds similar<p>It confuses the hell out of me when non-natives misplace stress in Ukrainian and use wrong cases. It's that I want to gatekeep, but above certain rate of mistakes it's just difficult to follow what is being said.
Japanese pitch accent actually varies across regions. Some have no pitch accent at all! I think this shows that it's not very important unless you want to sound like a native speaker. I never bothered to learn the "standard" pitch accents but I tend to imitate the Kansai pitch accent of my wife :)
Both are Austronesian languages
How did the language end up with a Latin alphabet?
most SEA languages are similar btw
I spent a month in Jakarta earlier this year and wasn't impressed.<p>Traffic was terrible. I almost missed my flight due to taking a bike over a car, but then it started pouring rain and I had to huddle under a bridge while I waited for a car.<p>Jakarta has a noise problem. The temples blasting the prayers is disruptive to sleep and inner peace. The traffic does not make anything either.<p>Also, Indonesian food IMHO is at the bottom of SEA food culture. MY has wayyy better food (both in quality and diversity).
>Also, Indonesian food IMHO is at the bottom of SEA food culture. MY has wayyy better food (both in quality and diversity).<p>I won't speak for the quality but this seems like an extremely dubious statement. Malay cuisine is certainly diverse, owing to settled migrant populations from other parts of Asia, but they don't have the dizzying array of indigenous cuisines on offer in Indonesia, many of which aren't readily available in Java.
> Also, Indonesian food IMHO is at the bottom of SEA food culture. MY has wayyy better food (both in quality and diversity).<p>Agreed! Malaysia is really underrated, or at least it was by me. Now it's one of my favorite spots in the world, food is great (not as Thai's but comes close), wonderful sea, wonderful jungle, Kuala Lumpur is becoming a really nice city and CoL is value for money.
> Indonesian food IMHO is at the bottom of SEA food culture<p>I take it you haven't been to Burma / Myanmar
Having been to both Indonesia and Myanmar, I can say confidently Burmese food is much better. The one exception is the dessert Martabak you can get in Java is to die for.
Lived in SE Asia for well over 15 years, and Burmese food is great.
???<p>Burmese food is absolutely delicious. Burma Love in SF, Rangoon Bistro or Burma Joy in Portland. They're some of my favorite restaurants.
haha, I have not.
Nice. I'm an ex-tour guide, and had many jovial discussions with a colleague who toured Myanmar and LOVED the food - he knew I thought it was pretty average, at best.<p>Of course, that crazy guy didn't really like Thai food...
Putting Indonesian below Filipino food is quite something.
True. I forgot about Filipino food. Filipino bbq pig was good tho
I'll see anything you get in Indonesia, and raise you Balut... Or Betamax... or Helmet. Their national dish was designed to hide the aroma of rotten meat, FFS.
<p><pre><code> > Jakarta has a noise problem.
</code></pre>
I offer a practical template: <Large city in developing country X> has a noise problem.<p>When you say "temples", do you mean masjid (mosque)? It is pretty normal anywhere in the Islamic-majority world to sing prayers over a loud speaker a few times a day.
U.S. cities have noise laws.<p>I don’t think Tokyo is considered loud.<p>Yes, temples blasting prayers.
This is an appeal to normality fallacy, just because something is normal doesn't mean it's good, or in this case that it doesn't disrupt sleep.
Rain, noise, traffic... welcome to SEA
Man if you think Seattle has too much noise and traffic you should stay away from basically every other mid-large sized city anywhere in the world.
The regional abbreviation, or the airport code?<p>.... what? Either works?
> lunch at the Italian place in the Ritz-Carlton was under $10<p>I'm curious, what does a beer or a glass of wine cost?
What is the air quality like to actually breathe in your experience? I have noticed Jakarta on lists of poor AQI and it doesn't look great [1] but I think the AQI number is kind of an abstraction.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.aqi.in/us/dashboard/indonesia/jakarta/jakarta/historical-analysis" rel="nofollow">https://www.aqi.in/us/dashboard/indonesia/jakarta/jakarta/hi...</a>
I found it probably the worst of anywhere I've ever been, you can taste it and just being outside slightly burns the back of your throat. I still really like visiting though.
Air quality is terrible. AQI does not lie. It's even worse when you're sitting on the back of a motorbike 6ft away from 10 other gas powered bikes.<p>There is slow adoption of electric vehicles, but still very low adoption rate (like less than 10% of motorbikes).
> Air quality is terrible. AQI does not lie.<p>Heh. To get a sense of what the page's numbers might mean, I checked on Kaohsiung, where you can <i>taste</i> gasoline in the air as you walk down the street.<p>And hey, reported air quality in Kaohsiung is abysmal, so that checks out. Jakarta even looks good by comparison.<p><a href="https://www.aqi.in/us/dashboard/taiwan/kaohsiung/kaohsiung" rel="nofollow">https://www.aqi.in/us/dashboard/taiwan/kaohsiung/kaohsiung</a><p><a href="https://www.aqi.in/us/dashboard/indonesia/jakarta/jakarta" rel="nofollow">https://www.aqi.in/us/dashboard/indonesia/jakarta/jakarta</a><p>AQI appears to have Jakarta pegged at an average "66", which looks pretty respectable for the region. They seem to have much more carbon monoxide than Kaohsiung or Shanghai, but much less fine particulate.
This could be a general issue with SE Asia, but one thing that was a breath of fresh air for me as I departed Jakarta from my Bali trip last year was a thought that I no longer need to worry about quality of water being used to wash salad veggies or clean my toothbrush with.<p>Clean safe water from the sink was definitely not something I experienced in Bali in 2024 and I had the similar impression in Jakart
Clean safe water from the sink is not something you'll find in most of the world, in fact. It's not just SEA.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Safe_drink_tap_water_map.png" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Safe_drink_tap_water_map....</a><p>So basically it's only safe to drink tap water in western countries + Japan, Singapore, Chile, South Korea, and a few of the rich Arab countries.<p>I would argue that even the blue areas here would be speckled with lots of non-drinkable areas if you zoomed in, due to old lead piping and so on.
I traveled often between Jakarta and Japan in 2018, 2019 and 2020. The real breath of fresh air for me was literally the fresh air back in Japan. After running around for a week through Jakarta, I would inevitably develop a deep cough and a clogged nose. That said, the people, the food, and as someone else pointed out the nightlife is amazing.
Shame their water is poison.
So - hot, congested, polluted, no public transit, cheap taxis, cheap luxury hotels, amazing food, fun night activities (but you'll need to know locals). Other than the no crime claim (which I find dubious) you've just described every big city in every developing country on the planet.
> you need to make local friends to really get into it<p>Well, that might sound like an impossible task!! So, just sign up for Experiences from any of the leading travel portals. They’d get you into any of the local party scenes.
Bangkok is not what you described. Bangkok is a great city, not too polluted, there are not a lot of poor people. Bangkok is like Manila.<p>I spent a lot of time working is South East Asia. Jakarta is the worst city, yes it is big but very filthy like New Delhi or India in general. Second filthiest is Malaysia.<p>The cleanest city is without a doubt Singapore.
> not too polluted<p>Are we talking about the same Bangkok? I'm talking about the Bangkok in Thailand where they literally shut down the schools due to air pollution being so bad [0].<p>What Bangkok are you referring to?<p>Malaysia is wayyy cleaner than Indonesia, both in air quality and trash on the ground.<p>[0] - <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/24/bangkok-pollution-hundreds-schools-closed-free-public-transport" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/24/bangkok-pollut...</a>
Bangkok has seasonal haze incidents that can get bad enough to close schools etc. Those are a scourge across all of SEA and are generally caused by slash-and-burn agriculture practices. It's much different from having bad AQI year-round.<p>I'd hardly say Bangkok is a clean air capital, but it's next to the ocean with no significant mountains nearby so usually pollution gets blown out to sea.
For me Manila is the uncontested worst city in SEA. All of Jakarta's downsides, plus an absolutely horrific airport, worse traffic, extremely limited public transport network (which doesn't extend at all to the places where most business travellers go, namely Makati/BGC), higher crime and more violent crime too (lots of guns around), and worse food.<p>About the only upside is that most people speak some English, which is manifestly not the case in Jakarta.
> <i>I spent a lot of time working is South East Asia. Jakarta is the worst city, yes it is big but very filthy like New Delhi or India in general. Second filthiest is Malaysia.</i><p>Malaysia's a pretty decent size country, not a city. Can't say as I'd have referred to KL as filthy on any of my visits (admittedly only 3 times over the past 12 years). Kuching wasn't filthy either.
This is such an odd position to create a burner account to argue...
N=1 but my experience with Philippines and Malaysia is exactly the opposite.
what is the cheapest for a nomad
Vietnam.<p>source: I've been to almost every country in SEA at least 3x. (Brunei was once, never went to Timor-Leste).<p>Check the forex changes and rent prices if you don't believe me.<p>Harder to factor in is visa costs. Vietnam, you need to leave every 90 days. So you need to buy a $25usd visa + flights/buses + hotels for 3-5 days while you get your next visa. Thailand, you only need to leave every 6mo on the DTV.
> <i>very filthy like New Delhi</i><p>Think you mean <i>Delhi NCR</i>? New Delhi is pretty small, and mostly houses political and social elite.
The nightlife is wildest in SEA but definitely for the bold and brave.
Thanks for sharing. I’m wondering whether they have a large retro computing market?
Thanks for posting this. Really interesting perspectives<p>Whats the food like for vegetarians/ vegans?
If you're strict or allergic, very difficult. Fish sauces and pastes like terasi and patis are culinary staples on the level of soy sauce and make it into otherwise seemingly vegetarian dishes.<p>If you're willing to flex a bit and just avoid obvious meat/fish, you'll survive, there's plenty of tofu, tempeh, veg etc. Gado-gado is always veg, nasi/mee goreng, etc.
Tempeh is an Indonesian staple and from what I understand pretty popular with vegans.
Is being an attractive vacation destination necessarily a good thing for a city? They're the biggest city, didn't they "win"?
Sounds wonderful if you're OK with Indonesia's ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing of West Papua.<p>> Widespread atrocities committed by Indonesian forces have led human rights groups to describe the situation as a genocide against the indigenous Papuan population. Reports of mass killings, forced displacement, and sexual violence are extensive and credible. According to a 2007 estimate by scholar De R. G. Crocombe, between 100,000 and 300,000 Papuans have been killed since Indonesia's occupation began.[19][23] A 2004 report by Yale Law School argued that the scale and intent of Indonesia’s actions fall within the legal definition of genocide.[24] State violence has targeted women in particular. A 2013 and 2017 study by AJAR and the Papuan Women's Working Group found that 4 in 10 Papuan women reported suffering state abuse,[25] while a 2019 follow-up found similar results.[26][27][Note 1][Note 2]<p>> In 2022, the UN condemned what it described as "shocking abuses" committed by the Indonesian state, including the killing of children, disappearances, torture, and large-scale forced displacement. It called for "urgent and unrestricted humanitarian aid to the region."[28] Human Rights Watch (HRW) has noted that the Papuan region functions as a de facto police state, where peaceful political expression and independence advocacy are met with imprisonment and violence.[29] While some analysts argue that the conflict is aggravated by a lack of state presence in remote areas,[30] the overwhelming trend points to systemic state violence and neglect.<p>> Indonesia continues to block foreign access to the Papuan region, citing so-called "safety and security concerns", though critics argue this is to suppress international scrutiny of its genocidal practices<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_conflict" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_conflict</a>
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