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 wild, 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.
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.
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.
Jakarta is definitely for the adventurous though, and you had better have an iron stomach.
Nitpick: Sounds a lot like Tagalog (Filipino), another SEA language.
I'm pretty fluent, but my pronunciation was as good as it's gonna get like 10 years ago which is a frustration.
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.)
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.
I mean I note that there are some Chinese languages, with millions of speakers, where the largest written text they have is a bible written in a Roman script. If those are a challenge surely Vietnamese must be as well.
Vietnamese used to be written using Chinese orthography just like Japanese.
The French forcibly cracked down on this form of orthography, and following independence, later modernists attempting to copy Ataturk along with latent Sinophobia due to the Chinese colonial era meant this for of orthography has largely been relegated to ceremonial usage.
A similar thing happened with Bahasa Indonesia, as Indonesia's founding leadership was more secular and socialist in mindset compared to neighboring Malaysia where Jawi remained prominent because of the Islamist movement's role in Malaysian independence.
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.
Jakarta has a noise problem. The temples blasting the prayers is disruptive to sleep and inner peace. The traffic does not make anything either.
Also, Indonesian food IMHO is at the bottom of SEA food culture. MY has wayyy better food (both in quality and diversity).
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.
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.
Also Malaysian Indian food is one of my favorite foods (especially the sweet roti).
> Jakarta has a noise problem.
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.
I don’t think Tokyo is considered loud.
Yes, temples blasting prayers.
I take it you haven't been to Burma / Myanmar
Burmese food is absolutely delicious. Burma Love in SF, Rangoon Bistro or Burma Joy in Portland. They're some of my favorite restaurants.
Of course, that crazy guy didn't really like Thai food...
.... what? Either works?
Clean safe water from the sink was definitely not something I experienced in Bali in 2024 and I had the similar impression in Jakart
[1] https://www.aqi.in/us/dashboard/indonesia/jakarta/jakarta/hi...
There is slow adoption of electric vehicles, but still very low adoption rate (like less than 10% of motorbikes).
Heh. To get a sense of what the page's numbers might mean, I checked on Kaohsiung, where you can taste gasoline in the air as you walk down the street.
And hey, reported air quality in Kaohsiung is abysmal, so that checks out. Jakarta even looks good by comparison.
https://www.aqi.in/us/dashboard/taiwan/kaohsiung/kaohsiung
https://www.aqi.in/us/dashboard/indonesia/jakarta/jakarta
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.
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.
Whats the food like for vegetarians/ vegans?
> 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]
> 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.
> 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
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.
The cleanest city is without a doubt Singapore.
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].
What Bangkok are you referring to?
Malaysia is wayyy cleaner than Indonesia, both in air quality and trash on the ground.
[0] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/24/bangkok-pollut...
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.
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.
source: I've been to almost every country in SEA at least 3x. (Brunei was once, never went to Timor-Leste).
Check the forex changes and rent prices if you don't believe me.
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.
Think you mean Delhi NCR? New Delhi is pretty small, and mostly houses political and social elite.
Key Facts: Number of megacities, urban areas with 10 million or more inhabitants has quadrupled from 8 in 1975 to 33 in 2025.
Jakarta is now the world’s most populous city, with nearly 42 million residents. The current population of Indonesia is 286 million.
In 2019, Indonesia said it will be moving its capital to Nusantara, a new city which is under construction.
And separate of it's economic power it remains a center of power where the city mayor/governor always becomes a major national political figure.
Indonesia is actually a plurality of distinct island cultures, but with Jakarta, Java and Javanese culture sits at the top of the national political hierarchy. (Not to mention a sort of internal Javanese colonialism similar to the USSR).
The new capital could be part of dismantling some of the legacy internal Javanese power structures.
(To add a further detail re. Java vs. Indonesia, because of the mercator projection it's hard to see how big Indonesia is. It would stretch from Maine, past California almost to Anchorage).
1) Lack of institutional knowledge. No one even knows how to get started and bringing in foreign expertise may be prohibitively expensive.
2) Economics don’t pencil out even in higher income countries compared to BRT systems, especially because high density and heavy traffic means the lines usually have to be grade-separated which adds additional costs compared to an at-grade system.
3) Corruption makes development impossible. No well-established processes for expropriation exist, or the country is given over to clientelism such that landlords won’t give up what they own and hamper the development process via political connections.
BRT is usually the most effective solution in places where grade-separated rail is not yet viable as it allows a right-of-way network to be established that can later be upgraded to rail. This doesn’t solve problem 3, which requires a comparatively authoritarian approach to overcome the incentive problems at play; this is why the Chinese have generally excelled in the space over the last 20 years.
China built A LOT in the last 15 years. Beijing before 2008 had line 1, 2, a couple of suburban lines (13 and another one out east), and that was it. I don't think any other country has ever built infrastructure so quickly, so it isn't really fair to compare them to China.
Eminent domain and mass demolitions were very common in 1990s-2010s China, and to a degree that I have not seen in other authoritarian and nominally communist states like Vietnam or even Laos, let alone other less authoritarian states.
Entire neighborhoods, villages, and towns were razed to build the urban areas that make up China today.
Beijing [0][1], Shanghai [2][3], and other cities across China [4] all saw massive urban demolitions until the Central Government banned them in 2021 during the Evergrande crisis [5] due to limited utility and rising urban discontent.
Back in the day, it was somewhat common to see news about some random Jie commiting a terrorist act in retaliation for being evicted from their homes [6][7] due to this urban demolition program, and partially helped Xi consolidate power as most officials affiliated with these programs were deeply corrupt, and were often felled during the anti-corruption purges (ironically, Xi oversaw similar initiatives in Zhejiang in the 2000s).
Most other governments don't see the utility of implementing a similar style of program.
[0] - https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollecti...
[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jun/06/sport.china
[2] - https://web.archive.org/web/20130324195541/http://www.unhabi...
[3] - https://archive.nytimes.com/sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/201...
[4] - https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1002775
[5] - https://english.www.gov.cn/statecouncil/ministries/202108/31...
[6] - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-18018827.amp
Wow...
After democracy, Taiwan shifted towards trying to preserve traditional neighborhoods or working to normalize unofficial neighborhoods and slums - basically adopting a bottom up instead of top down approach [0]
[0] - https://www.taiwan-panorama.com/en/Articles/Details?Guid=5fc...
And this all is 20 years back. During this time thing have gone worse many times over.
Because Jakarta is literally sinking into the ocean. It also has a terrible flood problem which is only going to get worse. Doesn’t bode well for the population.
Almost 300 million people but it rarely comes up in the news or pop media
It’s a Muslim majority country and very conservative, so a lot of the themes you’d find in American film, music, and literature wouldn’t make much sense there, and the media that has commercial potential outside of Indonesia is generally coming from wealthy households that don’t have much to do with how the average Indonesian really lives (Nicole Zefanya being the example that comes to mind).
Indonesians (at least the ones who speak English) are quite similar to Latinos in that they have a desire to be accepted into the English-speaking world not only personally but culturally. This can manifest in attempts to whitewash oneself to fit in, adopting whatever seems to be popular on English-speaking social media, leading to comparatively old trends propagating in these countries.
You saw the same thing with the Chinese and the Koreans back in the 2000s and both developed their own internationally-competitive culture industries, but those were both secular countries already well-integrated into the international system. I wouldn’t expect to see anything quite like that in Indonesia until at least 2030, when more of the digital natives come of age.
Like, Indonesia (and together with Malaysia) makes up a really significant portion of all muslims. As an outsider it still seems like there isn't much cultural overlap- which seems like, even if Indonesian culture wouldn't reach Europe or the USA, at least it would reach to the middle east / north africa because of the the religious link.
I could have drawn some parallels between Catholics and South America, but there's already two Popes that have Latin American roots.
They have very little in the way of exported cultural products ("The Raid" films?), are much worse in sports than would be expected based on population, spend relatively little on their military and don't do much in the way of regional power projection, and are growing economically but not remarkably, so there just aren't that many avenues for them to make international news.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/python-kills-woman-swallowed-in...
Many such cases.
1: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_per...
I suppose it shouldn't be too surprising though, I mean Christianity sure as hell got around too.
I live in Australia, and when I was growing up I thought the same, even though Indonesia are a very close neighbour of ours. Indonesia is featured quite a bit in our local news these days, and that together with lots of Aussie tourists in Indonesia, plus lots of Indonesian students studying here, has made us a little more knowledgeable about our neighbours.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-25/jakarta-overtakes-tok...
It was posted to HN recently (not by me):
And the full report as PDF: https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.deve...
Highly fragmented metro areas are regarded as smaller than consolidated metro areas, whereas they might be the same size overall.
does the government build a bunch of public housing and a publicly owned commercial district? i guess they kind of have experience doing this with military bases, but at some point you need to encourage a bunch of private development and ownership, right?
or would the government just incentivize private developers to start building in the middle of nowhere and hope that a city arises as an emergent phenomenon? that approach seems like it would be rife with abuse and waste.
seems like this would be a lot easier to do with an authoritarian regime that could just decree "we're building a city here. the following industries will move their headquarters"
The government simply asks large companies to open offices/factories in the new city in exchange for tax breaks/subsidies. Or give funding to a university to open a satellite campus. All you need is a promise for like 20k people to initially move. Then the government builds roads and utility networks. Private developers will also build housing if given the right financial incentive.
The 20k people will automatically lead to the same number moving in due to cheap housing, or for creating every day businesses, hospitals, schools etc. Within a couple of years you can setup up a feedback loop where the population is growing at 5-10% every year. There is no need to force anyone to do anything. Financial incentives are enough.
That said, for a project the scale of building a city, I can imagine it might actually be faster and more efficient for the government to just plan and build everything itself and then sell it off to private entities later.
I wouldn't call it "building a city", but if you look at Northern Virginia today, you'll find that vertical districts are popping up along the Silver Line metro that now extends past Dulles airport.
At the end of the metro, there is literally a "town center" residential area on one side with buildings around 5 stories tall. On the other side of the tracks is literally fields, but the roads have been laid out like Sim City with empty plots and developers are now beginning to construct buildings starting from the outside perimeter first, working their way toward the metro station.
Throughout the DC suburbs, you will find densely populated areas with relatively tall vertical buildings (15-20 stories) that simply were not there 20 years ago. Reston is a good example. I've watched 4-6 buildings (over 10 stories) get built in Reston alone. They mostly started when the the metro line was finished.
I haven't travelled the entire country but I've never seen anything quite like Silver Spring, Bethesda, or as you say, Reston. Super interesting.
Even HN is much less welcoming of the "I think I agree with you, but walk me through your thinking" replies than it used to be.
I presume this is reflective of a few broader societal trends, and it's.. not good.
It's also easy to have cities grow fast, if you're primarily a rural/agrarian nation, and suddenly have a transition to become urban. This was (for example) Canada in the 1900s. Mostly rural, yet now it's mostly urban.
Canada saw fast growth of cities back then.
It's maintaining large cities once the fast growth is over, that is a different story. How will, for example, China look in 50+ years? 100+ years? When all its newly built mega-city projects are crumbling.
It still does—Vancouver and Calgary have both almost doubled in population over the past 30 years [0] [1].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Vancouver#Demographics
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Calgary#Civic_...
This is generally true, but Indonesia is neither
> The UN figures include a mixture of city proper, metropolitan area, and urban area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities
I haven't looked into the details of that definition.
But there is a somewhat standard definition to "metropolitan area" derived from something like "area where there is at least X per square km"
So it's not related a somewhat random definition of a "city" and its borders.
But simplified it's maybe exactly this from the UN reports glossary:
> Cities: According to the Degree of Urbanization methodology, contiguous geographic areas with a high population density (at least 1,500 people per km2) and a total population of at least 50,000 inhabitants.
https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.deve...
