And some more things about Jakarta:

The difference between the rich and the poor is palpable. Completely different worlds coexist (or struggle) within the one tangled city –- different economies, different temperatures.

When the rich are rich they are obscenely so. They make their way from large houses to shiny mega-malls in chauffeured SUVs, air-conditioned, cool, barely needing to step outside into the sweat.

Some people hide from Jakarta. Estates complete with apartments, malls, restaurants, gyms and offices are bursting about. They are cities contained within a sprawling city simply too big to handle.

It costs the same to buy a cup of coffee inside a mall as it does to buy approximately two meals and two iced teas from a street vendor outside.

They are two neighboring worlds –- the inside and the outside.

This is the second part of “Collecting words in a complicated city” originally published in gang re:Publik (2008).