Local Jakarta: The Insider Guide to Jakarta, Indonesia

By Selina Wijaya

Jakarta: Hectic, crowded, multicultural, multilingual, historic, futuristic, and a jumbled pile of everything that makes megacities great.

 

But nobody knows Jakarta. Foreigners think it's only a stopover on their way to Bali.

 

This book brings you the joy of Jakarta, from a locals' perspective. Twelve million of us live in this city; there must be something good here.

 

We'll eat tons of street food, go high-end and low-end shopping, ride a bullet train, roam the waterfront, see rock shows, visit mosques and cathedrals, and, of course, drink a lot of coffee.

 

This is local Jakarta: what we Jakartans love about our city, and what we'd show to our visiting best friend. That's what I show you in this book.

 

We'll dive into the Jakartan experiences the foreigner-centered and ChatGPT-written guidebooks have no idea about, and we'll come out alive. I promise.

 

You don't need to speak Indonesian. You don't need to know anything about Indonesia. And this book has QR code links to map points of our destinations, so Jakarta will be navigable for even the most directionally challenged.

 

Ayo! (Come on, let's go!)

 

Jakarta hebat! (Jakarta is awesome!)

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Indonesia Guide Publishing
• Release date: Dec 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223571810

Selina Wijaya

Selina Wijaya is a Jakarta native and a die-hard Indonesian. An economist by education, Selina loves writing about Indonesia for an English-speaking audience.

Book preview

Visa and Airport

You most likely need a Visa on Arrival to travel to Indonesia. As of December 2023, the only countries eligible for visa-free entry to Indonesia are the Southeast Asian ASEAN member states. Any information claiming visa-free entry for US/UK/EU/AU citizens is outdated; that was the case before covid, but since 2019, covid (and not korupsi) has been the excuse for requiring visas.

You can see updated details about Indonesia’s visa policies here:

https://www.imigrasi.go.id/en/bebas-visa-kunjungan/

Indonesia’s visa is a visa-on-arrival. That means if you want, you can board your flight to Indonesia with no visa, only your passport and about $35 in cash for the 500K IDR visa fee — then, when you arrive at the Jakarta airport, stand in a line to exchange your USD to 500K IDR at an extortionary exchange rate, look for a pen, then fill out your visa application holding it up against a wall, then stand in another long line (a few hours if a few flights arrive at once) to submit your application, then wait for an unspecified amount of time for visa processing, then go stand in another line for a passport check, and through the whole process be totally at the mercy of greedy and unpredictable Indonesian immigration officials. Many people’s VOA procedure goes perfectly fine, of course. But many people have nightmare stories about a whole day spent trying to get that VOA at the airport, after having spent all that time flying to Jakarta.

I recommend that instead of the risks and hassle of applying when you arrive, you get your visa ahead of time, online.

Apply here:

https://molina.imigrasi.go.id/

You can apply for your Indonesian visa as long as 90 days before your planned date of entering Indonesia, and you can apply all at once for a group of up to five travelers (as long as all five will arrive together).

You want to choose visa on arrival 30 days in the drop-down menu of what kind of visa you want: visa B213.

Avoid the 60-day tourist visa. It costs $100 USD (three times as much as the 30-day visa) and requires you to submit a bank statement.

Also don’t choose the multiple-entry one or two year visas. The multiple-entry multi-year visas are a huge hassle, require Indonesian letters of reference and bank statements, and cost $200 USD plus bribes.

The most important tip for applying for the online Indonesian visa: use Firefox, and as clean (extension-free) a Firefox as you can get. Chrome, Safari, as well as any browser extensions, will make the visa website crash. Specifically, if using Chrome or Safari or extensions, you’ll get an error after you upload your passport page or your photo, saying something like document not received or document cannot be processed — no matter how many times you re-upload it. Use a clean version of Firefox and it should be ok. If you keep having errors, try a different browser or device. Even if the site tells you the problem is in your image, it’s most likely in your browser.

The online visa portal accepts payments by credit card, and international credit cards seem to work fine.

Most people from first-world countries receive their electronic visa in their email a few minutes after applying. If your application raises red flags and needs manual processing, it might be a few weeks before you hear back. Anyway, better to experience Indonesian visa problems when you’re comfortably in your home country, rather than when you’re at the Jakarta airport and at the mercy of Direktorat Jenderal Imigrasi.

Print out your visa document PDF. Despite it being an e-visa, you’ll need to present the actual printout to the officer. Also, if you are from a developing country, at the airport you may be asked for a printout of your hotel reservation and your return flight, so bring those just in case.

Before you arrive in Indonesia, in addition needing a visa, you’ll need to make an online customs declaration: 

https://ecd.beacukai.go.id/

There is no option to make an offline paper declaration, so you’re better off doing this in the comfort of your laptop at home (can be done up to 72 hours before your anticipated arrival, though their website incorrectly says at least 72 hours), rather than trying to do this on your smartphone using the spotty airport WiFi when you’re exhausted from a flight.

There is also a smartphone app available for Indonesian Customs, Mobile Beacukai (bea cukai means customs) that supposedly can be used to make the customs declaration. As every Indonesian would expect, it’s very buggy and usually doesn’t work. The website works better.

There was recently a scam of people standing around the Jakarta airport customs area directing arriving passengers to pay a customs declaration processing fee. It’s a scam, one probably run by someone at the customs office. (Government corruption in Indonesia? No way!) You will see signs all over the airport telling you not to pay anyone any fraudulent customs declaration processing fees — so those anti-corruption drives must be having some effect. Or so we Indonesians like to tell ourselves! 

Once you’ve submitted your electronic customs declaration, the website or app will give you a QR code. Screenshot that QR code. You’ll need to show it to the customs officer and they’ll scan it before waving you in. I suggest that if you are from a first-world country, when you show them your QR code, you also hold that first-world-country passport in your hand. That is how you warn them against trying to shake you down for bribes. If you are not from a first-world country, well, best of luck, because Indonesia customs still does shakedowns, especially of people from Asia (including us Indonesians), but it’s at least not as bad as it used to be.

Anyway, you’ve arrived in Indonesia! You’ve even gotten past Customs! Congratulations!

You’ll step out into the arrivals hall. I recommend you use a currency exchange there to get some walking-around money. The rates aren’t too bad, and unlike the case with dodgy money exchanges on the streets of Jakarta, you are unlikely to be cheated. The different exchange desks do have slightly different rates, so shop around. Mandiri is generally the most reliable and has a decent rate. And do keep an eye on your currency and try to count it; even a big, reputable bank can have an occasionally larcenous employee. Especially in Indonesia.

You can also withdraw some cash (2,000,000 IDR, about $150 USD, is the per-transaction maximum) from a Mandiri brand ATM in the arrivals hall.

Most importantly, though, when you’re in the arrivals hall, look for the Telkomsel booth, where you can buy an Indonesian sim card. You’ll pay around 200K-300K IDR (only IDR cash accepted) for around 20-30GB of data. The exact prices and data allotments change every few weeks, but those are the basic ranges. The employees are friendly, speak English, and will install the sim in your phone and test it, as well as securely packing up your existing sim card for you to hold on to. They will need to take pictures of you and of your passport — nothing personal, just the law in Indonesia. The worst thing that can happen here is there is sometimes a line at this desk, so you might have to wait a bit.

One way to avoid waiting at the Telekomsel desk is to pre-buy a sim card online on Klook. It’s a bit cheaper than at the airport, and you can use your credit card to buy it from the comfort of your home — the only small challenge will be finding the Klook desk at the airport when you arrive in Jakarta, but that desk is usually prominently marked right in the arrivals area.

Great. You’ve got your mobile internet up and running. You can also use the airport wifi, which often (but not always) does actually work. All you need now is getting into Jakarta from the airport.

There is now an airport train, called the Airport Rail Link, connecting the airport and the city center. It costs 70K per person.

That’s a bad deal, because that airport train is not much cheaper than a Grab car, especially if you have multiple people — and the train brings you only to the train station, or if you transfer to the MRT (with all your luggage) to the nearest MRT station to your hotel. If you take the airport train, you will almost definitely need to take a Grab car or taxi for the final trip from the train station to your hotel anyway, especially if you have luggage. Nobody walks in Jakarta, and I especially don’t advise foreigners walking through the city with luggage in tow and passports and cash obviously on their person.

Other demerits for the airport train:

You have to take an airport shuttle train, the Skytrain, from the terminal in order to get to the actual airport train station — and you might spend ten or twenty minutes waiting for that airport shuttle train. You have to get to the actual airport train station before you can buy a ticket. The airport train ticket machines only take debit cards (no cash, no credit cards), and there is no human ticket seller to help you. And the ticket machine will only sell you a ticket for a journey that’s at least twenty minutes away — so you have to wait at the very least twenty minutes from buying your ticket (after having already waited for the airport shuttle train to take you to the place where you buy your ticket) to departing. A lot of trouble after a long flight. Or even after a short flight.

That’s why very few people use that airport train. It’s always running nearly empty. We Jakartans only use the airport train when we’re headed to the train station anyway, e.g. taking a train to another city. Indonesia hebat! (Indonesia is great!, originally a government propaganda slogan, now used sarcastically when Indonesians complain about our messed-up