Another one of my bugbears about living in Jakarta –

A lack of Indian restaurants!

I say this because as someone brought up in Old Blighty (the UK), and having lived in the curry-mecca cities of Birmingham and London, I am more than a little partial to a good Indian curry – and not only after a few beers either!

I realise that Jakarta doesn’t have sizeable Indian communities like either Malaysia or Singapore but that doesn’t offer any consolation when you’re craving fresh naan breads, spicy tandoori chicken and other Indian gastronomic delights.

Of the Indian restaurants in Jakarta most are medium-to-high priced and only a few are in the cheap and cheerful mould.

So what are your options?

Well here’s my list of the top ten Indian restaurants in Jakarta (the ones I’ve visited at least!)

- Satoo in the Shangri-La Hotel – excellent and authentic Indian cuisine as part of the restaurant’s excellent Asian buffet. It’s a classy and plush setting but lacks an Indian ambience.

- Bart’s Eastern Promise - a friendly English style pub with decent British-Indian curries (chicken tikka masala, beef vindaloo etc etc), but not quite your authentic deal;

- Koh-e-Noor – small Indian restaurant which offers moderately priced Indian and Pakistani dishes. The service is not always the greatest, however.

- Restaurant Pakistan – moderately priced food in small and humble restaurant nestled amongst rug stores somewhere out on Jalan Fatmawati but a real bitch to find and get to (unless you live around there, of course).

- Queen's Tandoor Restaurant – great central location on Jalan Thamrin near the famous Welcome Statue but a rather formal and business-like environment. Bit pricey too.

- Ganesha ek sanskriti – fine Indian dining with a view (they are on the 9th floor of the BRI Tower). They also have a branch in Kemang which offers a moderately priced buffet lunch on Saturday.

- Taj Mahal – probably the cheapest and most down to earth Indian restaurant in Jakarta. Located near to Pasar Baru in central Jakarta, where a small Indian community resides, this unassuming eatery offers a limited selection of dishes but at affordable prices.

- Jewel of India – Used to be a good choice if you were in the Blok M area and wanted a curry before hitting the bars. Not any longer though; it’s since closed.

- Hazara - very upmarket joint in the diplomat zone of Menteng. Specialises in dry north Indian cuisine. If you can stomach the very high prices, this is a great place to impress someone.

And then there’s Kinara:

This is probably my favourite Indian restaurant in Jakarta.

Located on the first floor of its own building in the plush expat enclave of Kemang, a great job has been done to create a very classy interior.



One instantly notable feature is the high ceiling – this gives the restaurant a very spacious feel to it. Great if, like me, you are a bit claustrophobic.

Dinner is really nice here. The lighting is on the dim side and candles are placed on the solid teakwood tables to create a very nice and calm ambience.

Thankfully, the background music is played at low levels (there’s nothing worse than having to shout to someone to be understood when dining out).

The cuisine is pretty good as well.

Our garlic naans were fresh and tasty and the whole Tandoori Chicken I ordered was both tender and perfectly spiced.

The lassis are also excellent.

They go down as easily as Beer Bintangs on a hot afternoon - although the original, sweet lassie is the best one.

Prices are moderate given the high standards but top value is the Sunday “all you can eat stuff yourself silly” lunch for Rp100,000++ - although this will probably put paid to the rest of the weekend if you get too bloated!

Kinara Cuisines of India
Jl. kemang raya 78-B
Jakarta, 12730

Phone
(021) 7192677

Operating Hours
Lunch 12 noon — 2.30 pm (11.30 am for Sunday brunch)
Dinner 6.30 pm — 10.30 pm (1.00 am on weekends)

A bizarre thing happened last week.

Michael Jackson’s old man – Joseph Jackson - swung by the Big Durian as an honored guest of Michael Riady, CEO of the St. Moritz & Lippo Shopping Malls Group!


Quite a surprise I’m sure you’ll agree!

But why was he invited?

Well, ostensibly as an interested investor in the Rp11 trillion superblock project being built in Puri Indah, West Jakarta.

Or that is how it was reported.

But the real reason is quite different, of course.

Indonesian property is off limits to foreigners and Joseph doesn’t exactly have the sort of cash needed to make him the ideal investor anyway (he makes his cash mostly through product endorsements and entertainment bookings).

Even so, perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised by Joseph’s visit to Indonesia.

Lippo does, after all, have deep linkages into America.

The Jackson’s are good friends with the Clintons, for example.

As are Lippo.

And Lippo’s superblock project is in many ways as vacuous and over-the-top as the very worst American showbiz entertainment.

Even the name of the Lippo development, St. Moritz, is a rip-off of the idyllic Swiss resort town in the Engadine valley, famous for its skiing, snowboarding and hiking. Only 5,600 people live there.

Lippo’s “superblock” monstrosity, in contrast, is being built on 12 hectares and comprises 17 skyscrapers (including a 65 storey tower), and will, when finished, cover an astonishing 1 million square metres in all!

According to Lippo, the development is “beyond luxury” (whatever the hell that might mean) and it is slated as the new global city in Jakarta (huh?)



On their website, Lippo even reckons St. Moritz will rival London and New York. Yeah right!

Among the facilities are an “international grammar school” - presumably imported brick by brick from Old Blighty and rebuilt at St. Moritz; a clubhouse (for golf or cricket?); and an erotic exotic spa (sounds good to me!).

There will also be Michael Jackson music piped into the apartments 24 hours a day (okay, that's still only an idea!).

As for prices, well luxury doesn’t come cheap of course: you’re looking at Rp20 million per square meter with prices projected to rise to a cool Rp40 million a square meter in the near future.

More than enough to keep the kampong riff-raff out, don’t you think?

If Wikleaks cables be the food of love, then read on.

A new batch of cables have been uploaded by Wikileaks, and whilst most of them are a bit too tepid for my demanding palate, there are thankfully some really “tasty” morsels to sample as well – including some marked “TOP SECRET” (which really get the juices flowing!)

So without any further ado, here they are:

1) James Riady finances the travel of NU participants to Israel as an “inducement”
for them to participate in a “hush-hush” Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KADIN) delegation. Why? http://bit.ly/ndJAvj

2) The US Embassy seems impressed by polygamy, quoting a high ranking member of NU who says that “polygamous institutions actually fulfill women's desires and reproductive rights”. http://bit.ly/oS2YwR Could it be that the US sees polygamy as a way of bringing down the US’s high divorce rate?

3) PERTAMINA MUST NOT BE USED "AS AN ATM MACHINE" No, no, no! This cannot be true!!!! “*** allowed *******’s wife to partner with *********** and an unnamed intermediary to extract US$1 from each barrel of oil that Indonesia imports.” WTF!!!!!!! http://bit.ly/rfXwIy

4) FBI investigating Munir’s murder! “Ambassador Pascoe confirmed the FBI had indeed extracted information from the cell phones and informed Suciwati (Munir’s wife) the information would be turned over to the Indonesian police in the next few days”. On top of that, the US Embassy obtains info that “meetings had been held with *** officials and others at which the assassinations of Munir and other human rights activists were planned”. http://bit.ly/n5Lmjj

5) Bali’s fears of the "ISLAMIZATION" OF INDONESIA http://bit.ly/qXNRya

6) the carrot and stick approach to fighting terrorism – simply offer heaps load of cash to individuals who “take out” terrorists. But this must be done secretly of course: “the funding of a rewards program should remain discreet and out of the public eye…” http://bit.ly/nVTzZb

7) CALL HIM NOTORIOUS!!!! – " what better palliative for a country hamstrung they claim by an overly deliberate president than this former ******** who demonstrated that he would never let a trivial thing like human rights stand in the way of a good crackdown.” Hahaha! I think you know who he is!!! http://bit.ly/mP9lLW

8) THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY (1965-66) Yes, there was a counter-coup! http://bit.ly/p4a0O8

9) Behind every successful man there is a woman. Includes details of “charm offensives”! Juicy! http://bit.ly/pf82vc

10) I’ve left my favorite till last cos it’s so hilarious: Coming to your screen soon – it’s KEYSTONE COPS AND SHOOT EM UP IN JAVA. Nice tongue in cheek write-up of what could have been a deadly incident. Having said that the account provided makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. What do you think? http://bit.ly/nm2c8X

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever. ~George Orwell

It was the 1960s. A time when the hippie mantra of free love was being spread in the west by LSD loving rock groups like the Grateful Dead.

Over here in Indonesia things weren’t quite so lush however, and an increasingly bitter struggle between leftist (communist) groups and their nationalist adversaries was set to culminate in the bizarre and tragic G30S “event” which set forth a savage orgy of killing in which up to one million communists were “purged”.

The G30S event - so called because it took place on 30 September 1965 - involved the murder of seven army generals.

But this was no ordinary murder mystery - far from it.

The backdrop to the murders was the increasing strength of the Indonesian communist party (PKI), whom Sukarno had incorporated into his “inclusive” NASACOM philosophy – an intrinsically unstable mix of nationalist, religious (primarily Islam) and communist interests.

Hell-bent on seizing power, the communists were making increasingly outrageous demands and in May 1965 they asked Sukarno to be provided with arms.

Despite strong opposition from the army, Sukarno agreed but also told them they would have to be trained.

This called for the establishment of a "fifth force", in addition to the three armed forces and the police, to be made up of workers and peasants. Training commenced at the swampy region near Halim called Lubang Buaya. It was under the control of Major Sujono, commander of the Halim base ground defense[. Among the participants were members of the PKI-affiliated youth group Pemuda Rakyat.

The reason why communists want to be armed is not exactly a closely guarded secret. But violent communist revolution is an unpleasant thing - just ask the Cambodians about that. A lot of blood gets spilt. Yet Sukarno had still agreed to arm them! I wonder why he hadn’t thought that the communists were up to something bad?

According to the official version of events, three of the seven army generals were killed whilst being kidnapped whilst the other four were taken alive and brought to Lubang Buaya and then murdered.

Quite why the communists chose to murder the generals before they were ready to undertake their bloody revolution raises a few questions of course. Like why hadn’t they waited until their training was over and they were all armed?

The murders of the generals were carried out in bizarre and chilling fashion. Even the contemporary Indonesian horror flicks which intertwine a rich sexual narrative with gruesome murders fall well short of what happened at Lubang Buaya:

… the Gerwani (women cadets of the Indonesian Communist Party) had mocked the Generals before they killed them by "playing with and fondling the genitals of the victims while at the same time displaying their own..." (Angkatan Bersendjata, 9 October 1965).

… Gerwani women were issued with small knives and razor blades which they used to slash and hack at the genitals of the captured Generals (Angkatan Bersendjata 5 November 1965).

…in the months leading up to the killings, the Gerwani and Pemuda Rakyat members at Lubang Buaya had "indulged in delirious sexual orgies which the ancient Romans under Nero would have been jealous of" (Antara 8 December 1965, morning edition).

… the Gerwani members were frequently injected with drugs to stimulate their libidos. As Saina (a captured Gerwani member explained), after receiving the injections she was "overcome with an irrisistable (sic) desire to indulge in all kinds of immoral acts" (Antara, 8 December 1965, morning edition).

You couldn’t make it up could you?



From left to right:

Brigadier General, Sutoyo Siswomiharjo
Brigadier General, Donald Izacus Panjaitan
Major General, R. Suprapto
Army commander Lieutenant, General Ahmad Yani
Major General, M. T. Haryono
Major General, Siswondo Parman
First Lieutenant, Pierre Tandean



Army commander Lieutenant, General Ahmad Yani pointing toward the well, about 20 meters in front of the statue, where the communists buried the bodies.

The front of the platform on which the statues stand is a bronze frieze that depicts the horrific and cruel acts of the communists.



Nearby the statue are the small living quarters of the communists, complete with original furniture, lamps etc. Inside is this sign:


Unfortunately I didn’t have the chance to visit the "Museum of PKI Treason".

Maybe next time :)

Further reading: Lubang Buaya: Myth, Misogyny and Massacre.