It’s a situation that many long-term expats in Jakarta will have to deal with eventually –

The family have finally decided to come over to visit you, curious to find out what has kept you away for so many years.

“Holy shit!” you exclaim. The panic bells ringing like crazy.

“Just where the hell am I going to take them?!!! I can hardly drag them over to Red Square or the Blok or God forbid the Oasis Café in Mangga Besar (having said that, old Uncle Charlie would probably regain his zest for life if he had one of their soapy massage specials!!!).

In the old days, about the only bar you could take them to in Jakarta - where your whole charade about living a decent and wholesome life in the tropics wouldn’t come crashing down – was Bugils. Nope you wouldn’t have had to mention to them that Bugils was a pun on the Indonesian word naked – which also means “crazy white man” - and a visit here wouldn’t have made your mother weep while wondering where she went so horribly wrong.

Although Bugils is alas long gone (it closed in 2008), there are actually more bars in Jakarta nowadays where you can take your mum (many of them owned by Bartele, the affable Dutch businessman - who also owned Bugils, funnily enough).

One of his bars is Eastern Promise in Kemang, a once-quiet backwater in suburban Jakata, but now a lot more developed and with even a few monstrous high rise towers looming down on top of you. Pretty trippy, really.

Eastern Promise has been created in the mold of a traditional English-style pub and, by most accounts, is probably the best bar in Jakarta.

Sure it doesn’t quite have the character of a 16th century pub in the English Countryside (*) – or the fine ales – but, hey, this is Jakarta and we should be thankful for small mercies and good ol’ Bintang on tap.

The pub specialises in British and Indian food. It’s good grub overall but the Indian cuisine, whilst tasty enough, is hardly what you’d call authentic.

The vindaloo, for instance, is actually rather sweet (rather than fiery) and will certainly not leave you crapping red hot Krakatau lava streams the following morning - which can be the case after eating a really hot vinders the night before back in Blighty.

The lamb, however, was tender, and the lassies fresh and tangy.

If your mum gets bored here, you can always take her into the billiards room to shoot a few games of pool – or perhaps watch the latest sports game on the large screen.

Just remember: Mangga Besar can wait.

Till next week at least!

Eastern Promise
Jl. Kemang Raya No. 5
Bangka
Mampang Prapatan
South Jakarta
Telp: (021) 717 9 0151

(*) A sort of mirror image of the Eastern Promise is the Scarlett Arms, a quintessential English pub, located in the quaint village of Horsham in Surrey (making it easily accessible from SW London), which claims to be the only pub in the UK which specializes in Malay food! But I warn you: under no circumstances click on the link if you are currently in Jakarta and have a fondness for English pubs. The sight of the on-tap real ale is enough to bring any man to his knees and weep!

I spotted a nice little article in Kompas by a guest blogger named Budiman Hakim. Here’s a quick translation:

After having lunch at a restaurant in Sudirman (the main business district of Jakarta), a friend and I waked toward our office chatting. Suddenly, however, our conversion was interrupted by the sound of motorcyclists honking their horns behind us.

“Oi!!!! Get out the way asshole! Wanna die?,” screeched the motorcyclist.

It seems that because the traffic was so bad, many motorcyclists had taken to the sidewalk to quicken their journey. Because we felt we were doing nothing wrong, we ignored them. But then what happened?

Wack! A motorcyclist suddenly smashed his helmet against my back. Naturally I was mad and confronted him. But things rapidly got out of hand and we were soon embroiled in a fist fight.
 
Fortunately, however, a ******man quickly stepped in and broke up the fight.

A few minutes later - after we had calmed down and a small crowd had gathered - the ******man asked (to noone in particular) why the fight had erupted.

He was drawn to the errant motorcyclist and screeched at him. “You were wrong! You know that the sidewalk is for pedestrians and not motorcycles! I should fine you!”

(here is when the story takes a turn into some other world where normal logic does not apply)

Yet the motorcyclist was completely unfazed.

“Go ahead then. Fine me. But if you do, then you must fine all the other people here as well!”

He continued, “I warn you! Don’t fuck with me. I am a lawyer!!!”

So, did the ******man fine the motorcyclist? No, of course he did not. But he DID approach me.

“YOU are wrong! Why didn’t you let this motorcyclist go past freely?” “After all, if you had let him go past, this incident would not have happened. Please come with me!!!”

Although a simple story, it is a perfect example of how justice works (sic) in this part of the world and how it differs from what is known as justice in the “west” (however imperfect it may be there).

The facts of the case - although not entirely irrelevant - are also not the overriding concern when it comes to meting out “justice”.

What really matters is the power and status of the disputing parties.

This can explain many things. From relatively trivial matters – like when a negligent car driver knocked over my PARKED motorcycle (and I was told I was wrong because I was a foreigner and the driver of the car was not) to much more serious matters like when my friend’s girlfriend was mu*****ed at a university in Surabaya and the guilty party “let off” for having a ******* as a father.

And it can also explain why corrupters walk free and chicken thieves do not and also why junkie kids of politicians get rehab while foreign dope heads get the slammer.

And even why gun totting businessmen can sneak weapons into shopping malls and threaten to blast away disrespectful waiters!