As soon as the sun goes down on Friday night, I hopped on a Lam Jiao taxi to check out Jakarta’s famed nightlife.
Always a fan of the clubs when I’m out travelling, I’ve heard about how Jakarta has the best nightspots in the region. Friends who have partied their nights away in the best of Singapore, KL, Bangkok all returned to say that none of those places beats the nightlife in Jakarta.
I was skeptical, especially since I was under the impression that Indonesia is after all a very religious and conservative country. Oh boy, how wrong was I.
I arrived at my first stop: Blok M.
My eyes nearly popped out when I walked in and saw this.
OMG. This isn’t Indonesia. This is Thailand, man!
I mean, I’ve seen “shows” when I was in Phuket, but even those girls at the supposed “sex-capital of South-East Asia” looks like innocent kindegarten kids compared to what these vixens had to offer.
At least in Thailand, you expected these things to happen. But in INDONESIA?
What kinda pole dance is this?!
What’s even more incredible is that these girls are NOT employed by the bar. Just your average sarong party girls who took a cab to Blok M, putting on these shows to lure rich white men to bring them back to their hotel rooms.
It’s a sad state of affair, really. Everywhere I’ve travelled to in Asia, it’s the same old story. As long as there are old white married men willing to pay, there will be cash-strapped young girls willing to bare.
I guess when you’re all out of money and when push comes to shove, dignity goes out the window.
Another dodgy nightspot I visited was Stadium nightclub.
Stadium was HUGE but very, very dodgy. This place was so dodgy that I spooted lots of dodgy people wearing dodgy sunglasses dodgily as they danced the night away. But it was already so dark inside the club, why were they still wearing sunglasses?!
When I made my way through the dodgy crowd, some dodgy old man tapped me on my shoulder wanting to sell me something dodgy . He spoke to me but I couldn’t understand him because he was speaking Indon, and all I could hear was that prolonged “Rrrrr” sound of his Indonesian accent. “Allo misterrrrr. MISTERRRRRRRRRR!”
Then I turned around and this teenage girl in sunglasses was shaking her head left and right non-stop. I figured she probably meant to tell me not to buy from this guy, so I politely declined the dodgy old man and walked away.
Then when I returned to thank the girl, she was still shaking her head left and right uncontrollably! Why lah, I just want to say thank you, you still shake your head at me!
After that disappointing and dodgy outing on Friday night, the next evening I had better luck when I followed some readers advice and checked out this club called Blowfish.
Blowfish is an upmarket sushi bar by day, but converted into dance club for the rich and idle by night.
I gotta say, I am impressed! This must be the “in” place to go in Jakarta. Blowfish’s Zen-inspired venue was beautifully decorated from top to bottom while the DJ flawlessly spinned out hit after hit.
Not only that, those Indon-Chinese girls in the club were all glammed up damn pretty like that. I swear, I scanned across the room and spotted at least ten Dawn Yang lookalikes in there.
Note: not an actual photo. 😛
I reckon Indon-Chinese girls are really really pretty.
They look different from our average Chinese girls in Malaysia or Singapore that’s for sure. Christien New (who’s half-Indon himself) told me that it’s because most Indonesian-Chinese have a hint of Dutch blood in them. And I have this thing for girls with like 10% of white blood in them.
Sipping my vodka in Blowfish, suddenly I was transformed back to my high-school days in Perth when I was this ugly fat kid having a huge crush on this hot Indon-Chinese girl in school. Despite my many attempts to hook up a conversation with her, I ultimately failed because I could only speak English with her, and her English was half-baked at best.
On our school’s prom night I saw her slow-dancing with another Indon guy, and I was heartbroken.
Suddenly I was jolted back into present day when this cute girl with an angelic face smiled at me from across my table. I don’t know her, but she was probably wondering why I was sitting there alone. So I smiled back.
But then as soon as she opened her mouth and started speaking in that heavy Indonesian accent, I was turned off immediately.
“Misterrrrr seorrrrang peerrrrrrgi clabbing kerrrr, misterrrrrrrrrrrr?”
What a pity.
Face of an angel, mouth of a machine-gun.
Indonesians like to prolong the “R” sound when they’re speaking. It’s amusing and can get quite funny when you watch the news caster speak, and all you could hear was “Rrrr… Rrrr… Rrrrrr…”
They also pronounce the alphabets differently. There’s a bank in Jakarta called BCA and the locals pronounce it as “Bee Say Ahh…”
So cute! Bees say “Aahhhh…!”