Remember that old jingle made famous by the Ink Spots? I like coffee, I like tea, I love the Java jive and it loves me. It got me thinking. Java, the most densely populated island on earth, heaving with people? For a relaxing holiday? By train? Indonesia, once the Dutch East Indies, ruled by the Netherlands for 350 years, is the world’s biggest Muslim country. The 13,677 islands making up this immensely diverse archipelago stretch some 5,000km from the western tip of Sumatra to the tiny speck of Roti off Timor in the east.
I chose only Java, mainly because it has a rail network second in Asia only to India, and, like India, the railway network was a permanent and unifying legacy of the colonising power. And I’m a fan of train tra-vel. It’s the best way to escape traffic, meet people and avoid long waits in airports and traffic.
Unless you are an ardent backpacker with a penchant for a bit of suffering, avoid the ekonomi trains. Much better options are bisnis (usually a fan, but no air con) and eksekutif (with AC, reclining seats and maybe even a video!), unless you opt for the real luxury night trains with sleepers that zoom between Jakarta and Surabaya. Day trains, though, are the thing if you want to enjoy the view and just sit back and soak it all up.
Politically, the vast country has been a stable democracy under the recent presidency of Susilo Bambang Yudihono – a genial and generally popular figure who prefers singing to long speeches. He’s just released his third album. There have been violent glitches in Indonesian history. Separatist movements in the far west and east exist, but the days of 1965 – The Year Of Living Dangerously – are over, and the bold skyscrapers and malls are witness to investor confidence. The people one meets are busy getting on with their lives and yet have time to be open to visitors.
On one memorable occasion, attracted by the sound of a gong orchestra, this interested foreigner lurking outside at the edge of a wedding celebration in a hotel was not only invited in but met the entire bridal party and was treated to a drag cabaret of classical Javanese dancing, which ended in burlesque. A restrained good time was had by all.
The guests were a microcosm of modern Indonesia, with women dressed in everything from the Muslim headscarf (krudung) to bare-shouldered Javanese batik sarongs and even miniskirts. The men sported smart, short black jackets and sarongs with the typical Javanese cap. Java is far more westernised than you might expect, but the rich traditions of Javanese culture still run deep. Indonesians are generally mild-mannered and losing control in a situation is a social no-no.
Arranging a comfortable hotel or guesthouse, online too, is not a problem – choose one close to the station. The old established company of Bluebird taxis are metered, cheap and the most reliable. Jakarta’s new airport is an easy place to spend some time doing last-minute gift shopping too. Stock up on that aromatic coffee, excellent tea, superbly made crafts from batik to woodcarving, and make your next booking as soon as you get back home.
Being astride the Equator, the climate doesn’t vary much. It’s humid and can rain almost every afternoon, but temperatures even in the low-lying areas are bearable except in the wettest ones of January and February, and the hills are never that far. Evenings there can be nippy, so pack a sweater. Quality clothes are cheap and readily available from small local shops to glitzy mega malls. A good-quality silk batik shirt will set you back only RO8 or so. The Indonesian rupiah is roughly 24,000 to the Omani rial, and you get pretty good value for that.
You won’t need to spend more than two days in Jakarta, wryly described by one of its fans as a tropical Gotham City. It’s a heaving steamy capital city that daily draws more and more people from all over seeking a better deal. Kota, the heart of the old Dutch administrative area of Batavia, has a spacious colonial square with fine old buildings dating back to the 18th century. Not far off are the Maritime Museum and the port. Here those magnificent Pinisi schooners from the island of Sulawesi moor and load up with cargo in the world’s biggest sailing fleet. It’s a splendid sight when these huge elegant craft, manned by weathered Bugis sailors from the high noon of sailing unfurl their sails and head off into the main back to Macassar and beyond to the fabulous Spice Islands of the Moluccas.
After a good walk around, and take an umbrella for the odd shower, repair to the timewarp of Café Batavia, an absolute must-do. It’s all big band crooners from the 1930s and 1940s, walls filled with old portraits of royalty and stars of yesteryear. A great watering hole to unwind and gird your loins for the rush hour! The Cikini district is a good place to stay. It’s near Merdeka Square, bristling with national monuments, and the National Museum is a good place to begin appreciating Indonesia’s cultural diversity.
Bogor, a lush city set in the hills where one of the earliest Javanese Hindu civilisations bloomed, 60km south from Jakarta, is the first stop. The Dutch and the British, during their short occupation when Sir Stamford Raffles was governor of Java, headed for these cooler hills to escape the humidity and the malaria of the coast. There are higher hill resorts and tea plantations above Bogor, but Bogor’s main claim to international fame is the magnificent Botanical Gardens, opened by the Dutch governor in 1846.
From these early gardens the very practical and green-fingered Dutch, with a sharp eye on profit, of course, experimented with imported cash crops that would make Indonesia the jewel in the Dutch crown and shape modern Indonesia. Cultivation of tea, coffee, rubber, cassava and cinchona (for quinine) all spread from this point, and the local people were forced to grow them. Set within the gardens and reflected in a lotus pool is the elegant presidential summer palace, once the scene of many colonial parties and one of Sukarno’s (freedom fighter and first president of Indonesia) favourites. Spotted deer roam across lawns under gigantic trees in the park,where you can stop for a moment and reflect at the simple monument to Olivia Raffles, who died of malaria in 1814, like so many others.
The next leg is from Bogor to Bandung, either back via Jakarta or across the Puncak Pass. The track rises and winds through hills feathered with bamboo and sculpted into contoured rice fields, and the ever-present volcanoes, now mainly extinct, rise in a long chain all along the length of Java. In a paradoxical twist of nature, these potentially lethal mountains have shaped the country and made it a garden unrivalled in soil fertility. They supported the first civilisations with an abundance of food and rain, and raised the World Heritage Hindu-Buddhist temple sites of Borobudur and Prambanan over a thousand years ago, near Yogyakarta.
This is a very pleasant place to spend a few days and immerse yourself in Javanese culture, especially dance drama and shadow puppet shows. Yogyakarta and nearby Solo (Surakarta) are the seats of the two remaining royal courts in this republic. Many hotels stage the Hindu epic Ramayana for tourists, but if you can, head for the regular evening performances at Prambanan, the dramatic carved stone Hindu temple complex set in acres of garden.
The Javanese raise two crops of rice a year on their rich soils. Just how intensively and industriously Java is cultivated is very clear from your train carriage. Farmers are constantly building and repairing the embankments, which enclose the rice fields, ploughing, fertilising, flooding, planting and harvesting.
From a train, you can almost see into people’s neat homes at times, with glimpses of everyday domestic scenes. Malang is a lov-ely optional city stop on a river, and then it’s on to Surabaya. This is East Java’s capital and bent on rivalling Jakarta, so it’s wise not to linger longer here, and head for Probolinggo instead. Here you’ll have to take a bus for the strange volcanic moonscape of Mount Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park. The view at sunrise is worth the effort.
On the north coast, fringing the shallow Madura Sea, you can entrain again and stop overnight at Semarang and Cirebon on the way back to Jakarta – a very laid-back two- or three-week trip if you make the time. Intercity journeys vary from two to eight hours and it’s best to wake early for a morning departure. The stations are something else too – often grand monuments to colonial ambition, but very practical too.
The gentle roll of that round-trip experience on the tracks is addictive, so be warned. The Java jive can be contagious and compulsive.