 Pinisi at Sunda Kelapa / Street musicians, Jakarta |
 Jakarta “commands neither affection nor commitment”, as one guidebook author put it, but this is where the rest of the Indonesian archipelago gets its marching orders. The Batak, the Sundanese, the Minahasa, the Irianese and the Javanese are all pieces of this ethnic jigsaw.
South East Asia’s favourite fruit provides an apt metaphor for a city which no longer deserves to be dismissed as squalid, dirty and charmless. A rich feast of sticky, custard-like flesh awaits those eager enough to withstand the noxious smell of this football-sized fruit and wrest open the formidable spiked carcase.
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