When Oscar had asked me what I would most like to see in Jakarta I said the markets and the old town, everyone was quite puzzled by my second request and as we arrived there I could see why, there is hardly anything there. Sadly the old part of the town has been totally neglected, there are the skeletons of some beautiful old buildings but they are now almost totally beyond repair. Further eyebrows were raised when I asked if we could see the harbour which was just around the corner as Reggy as had never seen it before. Also very dirty and undeveloped but what was interesting was that all the boats were original old sailing wooden ships, not a modern ship in sight, actually looked really beautiful to see all these old ships lined up.
Jakarta Harbour
The best thing about the old town though was Café Batavia (Batavia was the Dutch name for Jakarta) It has a real old colonial feel to it, with live music in the evenings, very cool. Had an amazing dim sum lunch.
Cafe Batavia
Am learning that the traffic in Jakarta is a total nightmare. I really wanted to see Oscars shop before we worked with the next group of weavers to get an idea of his style and also how he uses fabric. My big mistake was trying to do this in rush hour. What should be a 15 minute car journey took almost 2 hours. The alternative is to take a motorbike taxi, but dont feel brave enough to do that quite yet
It was worth the wait though, very cool shop, a mix of modern architecture and old Indonesian furniture and the cloths are beautiful, I now have a much better idea about his aesthetic and which kind of fabrics work well with the garments. He has an amazing collection of new and vintage Indonesian textiles as well which was very inspiring. Also got to meet Kenji the Dalmation, really made me want a dog (don’t tell the kids though)
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