After two decades, 12 albums and 40 million records sold, Japanese four-piece rock group L’Arc-en-Ciel is still going strong. But while the band has a devoted following across Asia, it’s not resting on its laurels.
JAKARTA – New government restrictions on beef imports are hurting Jakarta’s ubiquitous meatball soup vendors.
The micro entrepreneurs that peddle hot bowls of “bakso” from carts across the capital say a policy aimed at helping farmers in the countryside is hurting their street food businesses in the city.
In January the Agriculture Ministry slashed the country’s beef import quota to 34,000 tons a year from 90,000 tons in 2011. Meanwhile the quota for live cattle imports was lowered to 283,000 head of cattle from 400,000 last year. Indonesia imported 600,000 live cattle in 2010, mostly from Australia.
JAKARTA – Increasingly gridlocked traffic and regular flooding of much of Indonesia’s capital continue to be the main concerns of Jakarta’s citizens as they gear up to vote in the gubernatorial election scheduled for July.
The University of Indonesia’s Center for Political Studies said over the weekend that more than 25% of the 742 residents it surveyed in the city picked traffic as Jakarta’s biggest problem. Almost 22% named floods as a major scourge in the sprawling, mega metropolis. Trash and pollution came in third with about 11% of those surveyed saying it was their top gripe.
Starbucks launched its VIA instant coffee brand in Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia recently, so Southeast Asia Real Time took the sachets to an unlikely group of coffee connoisseurs: Jakarta’s street baristas.
They are the common man’s Starbucks and have colonized much more of the Indonesian capital than the Seattle superpower. You’ll find them crowding every major intersection and most of the winding alleyways of the megacity, selling a surprising selection of coffees off the backs of their bicycles.
No need for a drive-through in Jakarta: If you want a shot of coffee or even a cappuccino as you sit in traffic, it is delivered right to your window. These boys don’t have expensive Italian espresso machine or even electricity. All they need is the small wooden shelf behind their bike seats as a home for their hot-water dispensers.
Their collections of coffees, cocoa and ginger concoctions dangle off their handlebars in long strings of plastic sachets.
The miles of graffiti along Jakarta’s messy motorways have become surprisingly preachy recently as the megacity’s street artists have stumbled on an unlikely sponsor: the police department.
The 29-year-old artist who goes by the name Bopik had been marking the city’s concrete walls, pillars and flyovers for years when the Jakarta police department asked him to start using his prowess for good, in the form of public service messages on traffic safety.
When Jakarta’s governor said this week that the government was officially scrapping a $600 million monorail project in the Indonesian capital, he was only confirming what many residents have long believed was inevitable. Construction of the project was halted years ago amid financing shortfalls and other problems, and few commuters expected it ever to restart again.
So now Jakarta residents can focus on the next big question: What to do with the dozens of abandoned concrete monorail pillars that now snake through the center of town?
JAKARTA — A garbage picker named Bagus sifts through mountains of Jakarta garbage every day — but he doesn’t need to commute to the megacity’s far-flung landfills to do it. The trash comes to him by the ton – on the city’s rancid rivers. Bagus, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, works next to one of the many metal gates Jakarta has placed across its canals and other waterways to catch floating debris coming from across the city.
Lisa Virgiano is the co-founder of one of Jakarta’s trendiest dining experiences, but her recipe for success flouts conventional business wisdom: She keeps what she’s selling a secret.
Started in 2009 to preserve and promote Indonesian cuisine, Underground Secret Dining, or USD, takes advantage of the country’s rising income levels and a middle class eager to try new things. Guests sign up for the monthly events in advance but only receive venue information the night before the dinner. The food is always a surprise.
While more than half of the new cars on Indonesian roads are built by Toyota Motor and its subsidiary Daihatsu Motor, the companies’ executives say the infamous traffic jams in Indonesia’s megacity Jakarta are not made in Japan.
After 40 years here, the Toyota group dominates Indonesian roads. Toyota’s cars have a close to 40% market share, while Daihatsu models have a 15% share.
Southeast Asia Real Time provides analysis and insight into the region, which includes Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Brunei. Contact the editors at SEAsia@wsj.com.
Only 37% of Indonesians rank their economy as doing well, according to a new report by the Pew Research Center.
A Malaysian court Thursday sentenced to death four men found guilty of murdering a cosmetics entrepreneur and her three employees in 2010 in a much-watched case that yet underscores little tolerance for violent crimes in the Southeast Asian country.
Philippine tourism officials are upset with bestselling-author Dan Brown's portrayal of Manila in "Inferno" as a city of poverty, pollution and child prostitution.
Two U.S.-based medical examiners on Wednesday dismissed theories that American researcher Shane Todd was murdered in Singapore, agreeing with the findings of the city-state’s pathologist that he died from “asphyxia due to hanging” in a suicide.
More than eight million residents and tourists in southern Thailand -– many of them in famous travel hubs such as Phuket, Hat Yai and Koh Samui –- were caught off guard by the country’s biggest-ever power blackout Tuesday night, plunging much of the region into darkness.