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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

#371

Post by wraptile »

kafkaesque wrote: post #290
wraptile wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Learn how to avoid peak traffic hours." Most people living in Bangkok cannot do this. Also, a very high percent of the time, the Icon Siam area is extremely congested (even on weekends). Yes, you can avoid living in or going to that area, but there are also very few nice areas in Bangkok in general. Most don't have the luxury of the flexibility to avoid certain areas and/or certain peak travel times (which in BKK ar…

> "Learn how to avoid peak traffic hours." Most people living in Bangkok cannot do this

you can absolutely do this. Once you learn how to live there and design your own routes with motorbike taxis, sky train etc you do save a lot of time. It's still quite bad but it's 20 minutes vs 2 hours sort of better.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#372

Post by jdminhbg »

kjs3 wrote: post #349
throwaway2037 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We just make it work, no time for gatekeeping. This is nice to hear. A real win. Real question (because it took me, sadly, too long to learn it as an adult): Why don't they gatekeep? Do you think there is compassion for those who fled war in Ukraine, so people are more forgiving about linguistic and cultural differences?

Does "I'm just not going to be a dick to these people for ultimately trivial reasons" really need an explanatory framework in your world?

The problem here is just that upthread Muromec said “it’s that I want to gatekeep” when surely they meant “don’t,” and now there’s a whole chain of misunderstanding.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#373

Post by manquer »

screye wrote: post #350
Froztnova wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There no middle-eastern countries among the top 5 muslim countries by population. It goes: Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh & Nigeria, in that order.

It is a little bit wild that 3/5 all came from the same country. Without the partition of ‘47 - India would have by far the largest group of about 600M a full a third of the global Muslims and also at the same time be only a minority in that hypothetical country with 1.1B Hindus

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#374

Post by chickenegg »

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…

> it's hot, congested, polluted and largely poor, but so is Bangkok.

That's a wild comparison, makes me wonder how much time you spent in Bangkok. Bangkok has a much higher standard of living compared to Jakarta, and I've yet to meet anyone who spent more than a month in both places and prefers Jakarta. Living costs are cheaper in Jakarta for sure, but that's about it.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#375

Post by exidy »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #359
zarzavat wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to put into words how unsafe Singapore makes me feel. No, literally, it's hard to put it into words. I feel that if I criticize the country, the govt might take revenge the next time I visit. (See also: Bald JD Vance) Metrics aren't everything. Singapore might be on paper a great place to live, but it could never be a home.

Oh, for goodness' sake, drop the melodrama and hyperbole. I take it you haven't lived in the country either. Singapore is not North Korea, the PRC, or any of the Gulf countries, where people just get disappeared (or sawn into pieces and stuffed into a suitcase) for 'criticising the government' or 'criticising the country'. I am Singaporean. I can absolutely call the ruling People's Action Party a bunch of ivory tower…

I agree with everything you say, however I would note that Singapore has a substantial resident (ordinary definition of the word) population on various types of work permits who, rightly or wrongly, don't feel so free to speak out as you do.

A substantial proportion of those would like to become PR or even citizens, but can't risk prejudicing an already-opaque process in doing so.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#376

Post by delta_p_delta_x »

wraptile wrote: post #370
zarzavat wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to put into words how unsafe Singapore makes me feel. No, literally, it's hard to put it into words. I feel that if I criticize the country, the govt might take revenge the next time I visit. (See also: Bald JD Vance) Metrics aren't everything. Singapore might be on paper a great place to live, but it could never be a home.

I agree it's hard to explain why Singapore is so dull. I go there every year or so as that's where the closest Lithuanian embassy is and the entire country feels like a shopping mall. It's a great example how "on paper" metrics don't match reality but it's hardly surprising given that manipulating paper is the entire function of the country.

Lots of people labouring under weak and old stereotypes here...

I wonder what people would think if I said that about London, if I only visited central London and said 'it feels like a tourist trap'. London is huge, as is Singapore (for a city, it's pretty big— it has a larger population than all of the Baltics and the Nordic except Sweden).

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#377

Post by vldx »

tim333 wrote: post #114

For Europeans wanting a megacity experience within weekend jaunt range, Cairo can be kind of a mad experience, with things like the Garbage City https://www.adventuresnsunsets.com/cairo-garbage-city/ and cave church https://www.egypttoursportal.com/en-gb/blog/egypt-attraction... plus the usual pyramids etc. Very cheap Ubers like $8/hr.

Perhaps Istanbul would be more accessible (and safe) for Europeans in terms of megacity experience?

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#378

Post by jacquesm »

Muromec wrote: post #152
throwaway2037 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Japan/ese, the pitch/stress thing is overrated, and so are regional language differences. When natives point it out to me, it strikes me a little more than cultural gatekeeping. Linguistic context matters much more. How often are you listening to your own native language and you are confused by two words that sounds similar (like 'hashi' in Japanese for bridge/chopsticks)? Almost never. Advice: Ignore it when nati…

>How often are you listening to your own native language and you are confused by two words that sounds similar It confuses the hell out of me when non-natives misplace stress in Ukrainian and use wrong cases. It's that I want to gatekeep, but above certain rate of mistakes it's just difficult to follow what is being said.

We have the same in dutch, but, surprise twist: it is often the dutch that get it wrong. And indeed, it is confusing, but then again, it is just a bit of noise injected into the bitstream and easily worked around once you attune to that particular speaker.

Note that for people not attuned to a language some differences that are clear as day to the natives are absolutely inaudible.

The difference between 'kas' and 'kaas' in dutch is obvious to me and if your language uses stressed vowels it probably is obvious to you too but if your language skills do not yet include that difference you will not even hear these as two different words.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#379

Post by immibis »

markdown wrote: post #153
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…

Sounds wonderful if you're OK with Indonesia's ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing of West Papua. > Widespread atrocities committed by Indonesian forces have led human rights groups to describe the situation as a genocide against the indigenous Papuan population. Reports of mass killings, forced displacement, and sexual violence are extensive and credible. According to a 2007 estimate by scholar De R. G. Crocombe,…

Is there any place you can go now that isn't doing a genocide? USA is out, Europe is out, Russia is out, China is out. Obviously the middle east is out. Most of Africa. Australia? They're strongly aligned with the USA though. And they did one in the past. Tiny Pacific islands but they're basically USA colonies?
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