There are just too damn many people living in Jakarta and all over Indonesia for that matter. Why a country such as Indonesia would think that by having a huge population would bring prosperity?? Is it religion that teaches to breed? or the culture dictates it? Wealth evenly distributed among a lesser population is more attractive. Jakarta may well be a city with no chances of changing for the better. One said that Jakarta should be like Los Angeles....OMG, has this guy ever been to Los Angeles. LA is not really a city (it is so spread out without any means of easy public transportation). Visitors to the city need to rent a car and drive for miles. No one walks around. Even San Franciscan would not visit LA unless it is absolutely necessary for that matter...In Indonesia, I understand that there are easy modes of transportation such as Damri airport buses, ample good taxi services from airport to city but foreign visitors primarily from the West are not dependent on taxis or chauffeured driven cars. Nonetheless Westerners are not ashamed to use public mass transit in an attractive cosmopolitan city. Therefore to attract more visitors to Jakarta, repair all infrastructures concerning every street, add a mass transit in the city to alleviate traffic. Beautify places of interest like old Colonial Kota, introduce the old trams around the area, clean up the canals, introduce outdoors cafes and restaurants and place little cruise boats along the canals, repair the museums etc....What now that Indonesians do not want the old Colonial Dutch come back to haunt them?? Oh, please Mary, get over the old days and bring back the nostalgic era of the past in Old Jakarta for the sake of tourism purposes. The culture and Tourism ministry should have experienced, Western minded (god forbid!!), serious and organized officials to grasp the idea that Jakarta is in dire need of a major face lift. Educate the population for a cleaner environment and give back to the city a sense of pride. And that would be the real truth to alleviate inconvenience to visitors.

The floods and traffic jams are not THAT well known.

Only to us who live here, I'd say.

Even my parents "back home" only knew that there are many slums.

But the floods and photos of macet surprised them.

And before you say it, I consider them to be pretty well-informed.

The problems are real, yes, but many of them are not known to people before they have traveled to this city in person.

They just know Jakarta to be a place of poverty.

At first, the skyscrapers impress them, until they stayed in the city a few days.

THEN they know, rubbish, macet, floods, etc.

Lovely comment Jeanne!

The government wants to force me using public transportation? Which public transportation? West Jakarta is still not connected to the bus ways, although the busways itself are constructed since a few years and the waiting stations are silently rotting away and the roofs of the pedestrion flyovers have mostly missing (stolen I guess) roofs! Commuter public transportation to the busways itself - I simply refuse using filthy, stinky dangerous Metro Minis or Kopaja buses, they should be instantly removed from the roads - they are endangering their passengers, all other traffic, blocking roads, junctions etc! A little bit better are Bajajs (apart of the belching smoke) and of course my favorite - the Angkots!

Talking about side walks which side walks again I need to ask? the one filled with garbage, holes from broken sewage lids, every 50 meters or so there people have to step on the road to walk around obstacles (and need to be afraid to be caught by a passing car or motor bike)!

Garbage separation and collection is another issue! My home town in Europe was already in the 80's able to provide collection bins every few house blocks for paper, plastic, white & coloured glass and batteries. Here, even if some entrepreneurial and forward thinking mind would provide them, within a few days I bet, they would be either stolen or the garbage pulled on the street by private garbage collectors.

Facit: I would love using public transportation as I would save lots of time, nerves, money for fuel while standing for hours in traffic jams, and driving kilometres for u-turns to reach the other side of the road - well I probably could even do without a car at all!

Garbage - I don't mind to separate my garbage but I also know as soon I dump it in a bin (mixed of course as there are no means to separate it here) someone comes, rips the bag open and strews all the garbage not worthy to be collected around the bin!

Fix the garbage collecting , recycling and processing problem first , that will help the dredging problem a lot but as usual, officials in Jakarta are just dumb asses who couldn't organize a piss in a brewery.

Jakarta, truly Africa, that should be the top selling T-shirt. The first one should be given to Fauke!

Anybody and any country in the world would take precedence in beautifying a place to welcome foreign visitors. This is a common sense step along with a visionary long term planning in which unfortunately some Indonesians do not perceive it that way. The first thing that a visitor would see is the airport and an avant-garde smooth service given to a visitor as he or she steps out of an airplane and straight to a downtown hotel. Jakarta lacks far behind its neighbor cities such as Singapore, Bangkok and Hongkong for that matter. The excellent infrastructure, the public transportation for the people to use and to educate them as well that by taking a public transportation is not a shameful thing to do. I am just amazed in Jakarta that no one on the busy streets ever walk even half a mile to any place. In comparison to Bangkok, Singapore and Hongkong people from every background enjoy in stride that walking is healthy and that abundant sidewalks are purposely designed for it. It is an embarrassment in Jakarta that people are just too damn busy in minding their own turf instead of having a communal understanding for the rest of the entire population to enjoy the usage of public transportation and having safe sidewalks. It is true that inconvenience by fault may as well be a way of life in Jakarta.