Jakarta: Where the air is as thick as the pile of paperwork

Jakarta is a big, polluted, hazy, concretey, endless sprawl of a city.  A bit like Los Angeles. The city has a population of 9.5 million.  Take into account the Greater Jakarta area (ie. the suburbs and commuter belts) and the population jumps to 28 million, making it the second biggest city in the world (or fourth, depending on how you count). It's polluted, the sky is very hazy and the roads are constantly packed.

We’re in Jakarta at the start of our fieldwork.  This is because the Indonesians love their paperwork. There are lots of forms to fill out, stamps to get hold of, and queues to be queued in.  And it has been taking us days to get sorted so we can actually fly out and begin fieldwork. We reckoits not realy whats on he forms thats important, its about having the right forms.  There's no way that anyone has the time to look at all of the forms for everybody that passes through the immigration office. We’ve been having meetings, travelling to Immigration offices (there are eight of them), getting hold of permits in order to go and do our fieldwork, and sorting out all of the equipment we need to take with us.  Much of our time has been spent in taxis in the endless traffic jams in this endless city so this photo seems pretty appropriate. I don’t really have many others as we’ve been busy and not really touristing around much. A thirty minute PhD, I wish!

The roads are reasonably chaotic, but as nobody is travelling particularly fast, its more jostling for position, and therefore the whole thing doesn’t really feel that dangerous. Lots of motorbikes and scooters, but not as many as, say, Hanoi.  Perhaps this is because Indonesia is a more affluent country and so more people can afford cars.  I dare say the city would go more quickly with more bikes and fewer cars.  But then again, a decent public transport system wouldn’t go amiss either!