Jakarta, Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

When Ririn and Sarah, the two young women in the Jakarta tourism office, told me about Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, I thought it might be a miniature world where there were small buildings that were famous in Indonesia.  It thought it would be an interesting way to spend a couple of hours on my last afternoon in Jakarta.  So I decided to head off on the Busway to find it.  I ran afoul of lousy directions yet again, and wound up sitting drinking tea with a man named Luhut in his neighbours' "yard" about his job, my job, and life in general.  Here are the neighbours.

Unfortunately, I didn't think to take a photo of Luhut.  Oh well.  Then he took me on his bike to the bridge across to the park.  It was so much more than a miniature land.  It was actually a micro representation of Indonesia.  There were a whole bunch of pavilions where each province of Indonesia is represented.  They have a little compound where they present the culture of the province and its people.  Here is one of those compounds, the one for West Kalimantan.

My grave mistake was in thinking it was an amusement park of sorts.  Inside the buildings in each pavilion area was a small museum, showing the dress of the people of the province, or some of the history, or some other aspect of culture.  It was fascinating.  In addition, there was a bird zoo/museum, an animal zoo/museum, multiple other museums covering everything from history to transportation.  There was even a couple of pavilion/compounds for Europe and other parts of the world.  It was a fascinating area and would have taken two weeks easily, let alone the three hours I ended up having available to me.  It is quite the place even if it doesn't, as the foreigner I met there cynically told me, represent Indonesia as it is.  Of course it doesn't.  But neither do the Maori cultural shows in New Zealand or the Native American presentations in North America show the current state of those cultures.  It shows the way it was.  And that is fine.

Late in the afternoon, a fair-sized monster of a storm rolled through to the north.  I was glad I was south of it.  I imagine it was a fairly nasty thing to be under.  But it looked interesting.