Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world • Hacker News Board

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#211

Post by exidy » Wed, Nov 26, 2025, 5:52 AM UTC

itake wrote: post #77

moneywoes wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is the cheapest for a nomad

Vietnam. source: I've been to almost every country in SEA at least 3x. (Brunei was once, never went to Timor-Leste). Check the forex changes and rent prices if you don't believe me. Harder to factor in is visa costs. Vietnam, you need to leave every 90 days. So you need to buy a $25usd visa + flights/buses + hotels for 3-5 days while you get your next visa. Thailand, you only need to leave every 6mo on the DTV.

Thailand is cracking down on visa runs and people staying quasi-permanently on short-stay visas: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/visit/thailand-step...

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#212

Post by numpad0 » Wed, Nov 26, 2025, 5:54 AM UTC

wahnfrieden wrote: post #197

spacechild1 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese pitch accent actually varies across regions. Some have no pitch accent at all! I think this shows that it's not very important unless you want to sound like a native speaker. I never bothered to learn the "standard" pitch accents but I tend to imitate the Kansai pitch accent of my wife :)

Kagoshima where there is no pitch accent is like a different language entirely though, and nearly unintelligible

Native Kyushu conversations are literally unintelligible to me as a Japanese speaker. There are actually numerous Japanese dialects and accents that aren't so mutually intelligible, though of course post-TV generations understand TV Japanese.

That's kind of a secret to how CJK languages are each supposedly being a unique linguistic isolates: the rest of the families are hiding in the "dialects".

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#213

Post by kabes » Wed, Nov 26, 2025, 5:55 AM UTC

Affric wrote: post #129

itake wrote: 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…

Putting Indonesian below Filipino food is quite something.

Made me remember again how disappointed I was (food-wise) that time I went backpacking in the Philippines after backpacking in Thailand. Most days we had to choose between dry rice with tasteless fried chicken, or tasteless fried chicken with dry rice.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#214

Post by exidy » Wed, Nov 26, 2025, 5:57 AM UTC

ecshafer wrote: post #14

ghaff wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also imagine a lot of people who are admiring these megacities have never been to one. Jakarta has oceans of scooters and, when I was there to visit some customers with our country manager, she had a driver. With some exceptions like Singapore, SE Asian cities are horrible to get around.

Other than Singapore. I am not sure why SE Asian cities aren't going as all in on mass transit like China. Jakarta has a single subway line for 42 million people. They have some light rail line and buses. If you compare this with Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing its really night and day.

It's a case of better late than never. KL has a reasonable mix of subway, monorail, elevated and suburban rail. Bangkok's above-ground BTS has been very popular and they have been building subways as well. Hanoi has a master plan and has opened its first subway line in 2021 and second in 2024. Manila is also digging subways right now and has wisely called in the Japanese to do it, given that city is simultaneously subject to typhoons, floods and earthquakes.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#215

Post by fuzzythinker » Wed, Nov 26, 2025, 6:00 AM UTC

seattle_spring wrote: post #81

phainopepla2 wrote: post #69

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.

Not sure if it's still there, but Burma Super Star is the one I go to and it's good.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#216

Post by exidy » Wed, Nov 26, 2025, 6:03 AM UTC

pat_erichsen wrote: post #21

If anyone is looking for a good movie to get a sense of what Jakarta is like, highly recommend "The Year of Living Dangerously" with Mel Gibson/Sigourney Weaver https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086617/

Maybe 50 years ago, and with Manila standing in for Jakarta.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#217

Post by esperent » Wed, Nov 26, 2025, 6:05 AM UTC

wiradikusuma wrote: post #193

vladgur wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea why that is? Why is safety of tap water high(I hope) priority in some parts of the world and not the others? Is it simply the economics of water purification and delivery or something else?

Bottled (mineral) water is a big business in Indonesia. Not sure if "people" are incentivized to change that anytime soon.

I don't think there's any conspiracy like this. It's just economic + (lack of) beauracracy. Installing and maintaining a functioning potable water supply across an entire country is expensive, but even harder is setting and maintaining standards.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#218

Post by faizmokh » Wed, Nov 26, 2025, 6:08 AM UTC

eaksa wrote: post #166

rafram wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of. Indonesian had Jawi, based on the Arabic script. People in today's Vietnam mostly wrote in Chinese AFAIK. Those methods of writing were dominant among the people who could write. But the populations were mostly illiterate, so it was easy for colonial administrators to supplant the existing writing systems with Latin as they introduced European-style schooling.

Despite its name, Jawi wasn’t used all that much in Java – it had always been more popular in the Malay peninsula. Java, as with many parts of Indonesia, used Brahmic abugidas descended from the Pallava script of Southern India (just like the Thai and Khmer scripts). Latin was chosen to write the Indonesian language for the same reason Malay was chosen as the language’s base: it was a politically neutral choice to un…

Jawi is also not popular nowadays among the malaysian malays.

Every now and then it will pop up in the news due to politicians using it as a tool to cause racial divide.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#219

Post by kopirgan » Wed, Nov 26, 2025, 6:14 AM UTC

Been going there since mid 90s, not that often recently. Seen it change and yet stay the same.. Not cheap anymore but ofc not comparing to Singapore.

Issue is getting around.. For a city of that size + national capital, public transport options very limited. More like HCM or PP than Bangkok or KL.

Comparisons to Thailand inappropriate cos almost no pub culture and "entertainment". Even top end hotel bar like Raffles had near zero choice for wine etc. And lots more expensive.

Wish them well though.. Nicest people, nice memories.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#220

Post by wraptile » Wed, Nov 26, 2025, 6:29 AM UTC

bogota69 wrote: post #48

decimalenough wrote: post #17

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'd take Bangkok over Singapore any time of the day/month/year. There's still a bit of chaos in Bangkok in 2025 but once you spend a few days there and learn how to avoid peak traffic hours and areas it's incredibly charming and charistmatic city with loads of activities and opportunities for all classes of people. Singapore while clean is incredibly dull and characterless unless you're a billionaire.