Tidak Inggris

In the frenzied free-for-all that is Jakarta rush hour, a few skilled drivers stand above the rest. These chariots afire blaze through the streets, eeking around motor bikes and sputtering buses alike. Edging inches by their counterparts to jetty tourists to the not-so-far reaches of Jakarta, and playing chicken with oncoming traffic, these taxis are the lifeblood for our trip, without which we’d be stranded like West Point cadets on a boat. While there are many taxis that pour throughout Jakarta, foreigners are advised to stick to the trusty Blue Bird, or their top-flight Silver Bird Mercedes counterparts. One too many expats has told the story of hopping into an off-brand taxi and finding the back seat taken up by a mysterious white powder sloppily packaged in plastic. Luckily the trusty light blue Toyotas that squeeze through the packed streets are aplenty and offer us a means to travel to interviews and cultural sites.

Hailing a taxi in Indonesia is more of an art than a science. First you must extend the right arm (the left hand is considered unclean and is bad juju) and perform the subtle finger flap, no wrist movement! Sometimes the maneuver works a little too well and you’ll have four taxis pull up seeking your business. Competition is even worse at airports, where LT Prager is often seen as the Pied Piper of taxi drivers, leading droves around because his friendly Midwestern tastes prevent him from shutting down their hopes and dreams.

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Once in the taxi things take a different turn, as most drivers don’t actually know where things in Jakarta are—after all it’s a city of over 18 million. In order to get to your destination you need an exquisite mastery of slow English, where you repeat the same destination over and over until the driver decides to pull away and figure it out on the fly. Nearly every trip results in ballparking the destination to within a few hundred meters and finishing the journey on foot, or your driver pulling over and holding a meeting with the nearest pedestrians to determine the best route to your unknown destination.

“Oh yes, Mordor is just over that mountain, the one with the eye.”

Luckily, what the taxi drivers lack in navigation skills, they make up for in ambition. After experiencing several near-death experiences, I’ve grown to trust their abilities. Though every taxi ride is a struggle in some way, we’ve found a few diamonds in the rough that speak enough English to hold a conversation and tell us about the upcoming elections. One of the candidates even moonlights as a taxi driver!

Not actually the presidential candidate, General Probowo, but he assured us that they’re friends. Luckily the business strategy is a little flawed, and the meter price is based on distance, not time. Thus our two-hour-seven-kilometer journey costs us about 50000 Rupiah, or $5. All in all we’d love to thank our happy feathered friends at Blue Bird. We couldn’t do it without you!