Lost
There's nothing worse than being lost in the streets of Jakarta with a map and nowhere and no time to stop and read it.
I was driving to pick up Sav on Saturday to go and meet some friends but they closed the road I normally take to get to her place because of a street festival so I had to take an alternative route, one that I was familiar with some years ago, was being the operative word here. One wrong turn and it took me halfway to the outskirts where a common market spills on to a four lane road leaving only one lane for cars and buses. Anyone familiar with Jakarta can imagine how far off the course I got.
I needed to get to Pejaten so I got on the outer ring road from Pondok Indah fully intending to turn left at Ragunan but I turned left one street ahead at Ampera and somehow ended up at Pejaten Raya which isn't that far from where I wanted to go but there's no way to get there. With the traffic flowing rather slowly in a very narrow road that barely fits two cars going both ways, there was no place to stop and read the map that I had on the passenger seat. Slow-moving traffic doesn't mean I can steal a look, I gotta keep up with the flow.
Anyway, somehow the flow took me to Pasar Minggu which is literally the Sunday Market though it opens in other days as well. It's expansive, smelly, dirty, colorful, and chaotic, not a place for your average tourists. Turns out there's a massive underpass construction project on the main road nearby which is one of the reasons of the heavy traffic I was caught in. As luck would have it, I had to take that road to find my way back to civilization and I nearly ended up in Depok, which is an outer city of Jakarta. People don't generally go there unless they're students at University of Indonesia. Luckily I recognized the area enough to know how to get back to Pondok Indah.
Later I found out that had I turned left instead of going straight to Pejaten Raya, I wouldn't have found out where the National University is and I wouldn't have been lost for 1.5 hours.
I was driving to pick up Sav on Saturday to go and meet some friends but they closed the road I normally take to get to her place because of a street festival so I had to take an alternative route, one that I was familiar with some years ago, was being the operative word here. One wrong turn and it took me halfway to the outskirts where a common market spills on to a four lane road leaving only one lane for cars and buses. Anyone familiar with Jakarta can imagine how far off the course I got.
I needed to get to Pejaten so I got on the outer ring road from Pondok Indah fully intending to turn left at Ragunan but I turned left one street ahead at Ampera and somehow ended up at Pejaten Raya which isn't that far from where I wanted to go but there's no way to get there. With the traffic flowing rather slowly in a very narrow road that barely fits two cars going both ways, there was no place to stop and read the map that I had on the passenger seat. Slow-moving traffic doesn't mean I can steal a look, I gotta keep up with the flow.
Anyway, somehow the flow took me to Pasar Minggu which is literally the Sunday Market though it opens in other days as well. It's expansive, smelly, dirty, colorful, and chaotic, not a place for your average tourists. Turns out there's a massive underpass construction project on the main road nearby which is one of the reasons of the heavy traffic I was caught in. As luck would have it, I had to take that road to find my way back to civilization and I nearly ended up in Depok, which is an outer city of Jakarta. People don't generally go there unless they're students at University of Indonesia. Luckily I recognized the area enough to know how to get back to Pondok Indah.
Later I found out that had I turned left instead of going straight to Pejaten Raya, I wouldn't have found out where the National University is and I wouldn't have been lost for 1.5 hours.
This entry was posted
on Monday, December 19, 2005 at 3:35 AM.
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