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Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

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Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#91
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which assumptions are those?

Mostly just that it's easy for an American (or at least, myself circa several years ago) to assume that the overwhelmingly vast majority of Muslims live in middle eastern countries, and when I first learned that Indonesia was the world's largest Muslim majority country it proved that mental heuristic to be entirely inaccurate. I suppose it shouldn't be too surprising though, I mean Christianity sure as hell got aroun…

The top five countries in the world by Muslim population are not in the Middle East/North Africa region: Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nigeria.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Indonesian food IMHO is at the bottom of SEA food culture I take it you haven't been to Burma / Myanmar

??? Burmese food is absolutely delicious. Burma Love in SF, Rangoon Bistro or Burma Joy in Portland. They're some of my favorite restaurants.

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Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#94
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent a month in Jakarta earlier this year and wasn't impressed. Traffic was terrible. I almost missed my flight due to taking a bike over a car, but then it started pouring rain and I had to huddle under a bridge while I waited for a car. Jakarta has a noise problem. The temples blasting the prayers is disruptive to sleep and inner peace. The traffic does not make anything either. Also, Indonesian food IMHO is at…

> Indonesian food IMHO is at the bottom of SEA food culture I take it you haven't been to Burma / Myanmar

Having been to both Indonesia and Myanmar, I can say confidently Burmese food is much better. The one exception is the dessert Martabak you can get in Java is to die for.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#95
post #32

I used to spend a lot of time in Jakarta for work, and it's an underrated city. Yes, it's hot, congested, polluted and largely poor, but so is Bangkok. Public transport remains not great, but it's improved a lot with the airport link, the metro, LRT, Transjakarta BRT. SE Asia's only legit high speed train now connects to Bandung in minutes. Grab/Gojek (Uber equivalents) make getting around cheap and bypass the langua…

I was there ~20 years ago. I had made friends with some Indonesia students in college and joined them on a trip home. We were mostly in Surabaya, but did spend some time in Jakarta as well. We had a great time. The language is a hidden gem, you can learn enough to get around on the flight over which I can't say about any other SEA language. Phonetic spellings, Latin alphabet, no tonal sounds, dead easy grammar and a…

> ...which I can't say about any other SEA language. Phonetic spellings, Latin alphabet, no tonal sounds, dead easy grammar and a million loan words you already know.

Nitpick: Sounds a lot like Tagalog (Filipino), another SEA language.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#96

I used to spend a lot of time in Jakarta for work, and it's an underrated city. Yes, it's hot, congested, polluted and largely poor, but so is Bangkok. Public transport remains not great, but it's improved a lot with the airport link, the metro, LRT, Transjakarta BRT. SE Asia's only legit high speed train now connects to Bandung in minutes. Grab/Gojek (Uber equivalents) make getting around cheap and bypass the langua…

Bangkok is not what you described. Bangkok is a great city, not too polluted, there are not a lot of poor people. Bangkok is like Manila. I spent a lot of time working is South East Asia. Jakarta is the worst city, yes it is big but very filthy like New Delhi or India in general. Second filthiest is Malaysia. The cleanest city is without a doubt Singapore.

> I spent a lot of time working is South East Asia. Jakarta is the worst city, yes it is big but very filthy like New Delhi or India in general. Second filthiest is Malaysia.

Malaysia's a pretty decent size country, not a city. Can't say as I'd have referred to KL as filthy on any of my visits (admittedly only 3 times over the past 12 years). Kuching wasn't filthy either.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#97

I used to spend a lot of time in Jakarta for work, and it's an underrated city. Yes, it's hot, congested, polluted and largely poor, but so is Bangkok. Public transport remains not great, but it's improved a lot with the airport link, the metro, LRT, Transjakarta BRT. SE Asia's only legit high speed train now connects to Bandung in minutes. Grab/Gojek (Uber equivalents) make getting around cheap and bypass the langua…

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Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#98

I used to spend a lot of time in Jakarta for work, and it's an underrated city. Yes, it's hot, congested, polluted and largely poor, but so is Bangkok. Public transport remains not great, but it's improved a lot with the airport link, the metro, LRT, Transjakarta BRT. SE Asia's only legit high speed train now connects to Bandung in minutes. Grab/Gojek (Uber equivalents) make getting around cheap and bypass the langua…

Thanks for posting this. Really interesting perspectives

Whats the food like for vegetarians/ vegans?

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#99

How is "city" defined, for the purposes of this metric? Is it the administrative boundaries of Jakarta according to Indonesian law? The catchment area where a large fraction of people commute to the city center? Something else?

I was wondering the same. I guess it comes from this "UN figure":

> The UN figures include a mixture of city proper, metropolitan area, and urban area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities

I haven't looked into the details of that definition.

But there is a somewhat standard definition to "metropolitan area" derived from something like "area where there is at least X per square km"

So it's not related a somewhat random definition of a "city" and its borders.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#100
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent a month in Jakarta earlier this year and wasn't impressed. Traffic was terrible. I almost missed my flight due to taking a bike over a car, but then it started pouring rain and I had to huddle under a bridge while I waited for a car. Jakarta has a noise problem. The temples blasting the prayers is disruptive to sleep and inner peace. The traffic does not make anything either. Also, Indonesian food IMHO is at…

Rain, noise, traffic... welcome to SEA

The regional abbreviation, or the airport code?

.... what? Either works?

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