Next month, the Indonesian capital will turn 495. Its position as the business and economic hub of the nation will likely stay for many years to come, although it will soon be stripped of its special status as the country’s seat of government. The administration, […]
To my international readers the name Tegal might sound distantly foreign, but those from Indonesia would almost certainly have heard of it. It’s a city in the western part of Central Java whose residents speak a dialect of Javanese that is so distinct compared to […]
Part 2 of 4 Only time will tell. This cliché has been proven over and over again. We’ll never know what the future has in store, and despite our best efforts to anticipate what lies ahead, in the end we have to let time do […]
Hong Kong has always fascinated me since my first trip to the city back in January 2012, and since then I have returned five more times, with the most recent visit being in December 2019. I always tell people how Hong Kong’s hiking trails, white […]
If you think this post is about the American South or Southern Europe, it is not since I have never been to those parts of the world. Rather, this is a story about the southern part of Jakarta, a city I have called home for […]
Rainy season has officially arrived in Jakarta, after a prolonged dry season which rendered a lot of parks and gardens in the city brown and barren. Those which received a regular watering schedule, either from the city government or from local community associations, fared slightly […]
Hong Kong is a fast-paced city – no doubt about it. Those who have been there must have come across and seen firsthand how fast the people walk, how efficient and punctual the MTR trains are, and how quick the service at restaurants is, to name […]
“What if we prefer Sydney?” James raised a question out of his slight worry that both of us would actually like Australia’s biggest city better than Melbourne, its perennial rival. A lot of people have remarked on how wonderful the latter is, and numerous indices […]
“Semarang is squeezed in the middle,” a pun my father once told me about the Central Javanese provincial capital which is also my hometown. We were discussing about how slowly Semarang developed compared to other major cities in Java – Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung and even Yogyakarta. […]
What is there to love about Jakarta? That was a question I asked myself when I first moved to the city back in 2008. The city’s traffic has been consistently ranked among the worst in the world for many years. In my first few years […]
This is a story of three Asian metropolises whose modern hustle and bustle dates back to many generations ago. Money and trade had helped propel these cities into prominence, and they will continue to do so in the years and decades to come. One is […]
September 2004. First time in almost five decades that the Indonesian National Games (PON) were hosted by a city outside the island of Java. A 40,000-seater stadium was built in Palembang, the capital of South Sumatra province, quite possibly the second biggest in the country […]
What an Amazing World! 