Of course, calling it epic is an exaggeration to most Jakartans, whom I believe have been caught in worse traffic than this but, in my experience, this was by far the longest we took from our place to Social House in Grand Indonesia to meet a friend of Hub's for brunch before everyone flies out of the city for December holidays.
We left at 11am to make it for brunch at 11:30. What would normally take half an hour on weekend traffic ended up in a close to 2 hours journey, just because the local authorities closed up the main road i.e. Jl. Jend. Sudirman until 12pm to allow city folks that live in the area to literally "take to the streets" for some recreational activities. The funny thing about this road closure is that nobody seems to know exactly which Sunday that the road is closed. Some say is 3rd Sunday of the month, while I read somewhere it seems to be on every Sunday now, apparently.
A city folk leisurely cycles by along Jl. Jend. Sudirman, inhaling fumes
contributed by cars choking the side road. Mind boggling logic!
Due to the road closure, the authorities diverted us into a nightmare traffic that took us on a snaking detour into neighbouring Menteng. Just getting into Menteng itself was a snail-paced crawl...
... and one wonders why when cars, motorbikes and even a
man-pulled cart shares the road. Welcome to traffic, Jakarta-style!
And just when I thought that traffic would ease up once we reach Menteng, it turned out not to be so. We had to battle Sunday church traffic and an Indonesian wedding traffic at a mosque, which both places of worship are opposite of each other on the same road.
To add salt to injury, by the time we reached the vicinity of Grand Indonesia, the authorities had opened up Jl. Sudirman and traffic was back to normal. If only we had delayed leaving the house by half an hour!
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