Indonesia is a big country (there are thousands of Islands and three timezones. We have only one timezone in India). It can easily take months to tour the whole country. Jakarta itself has so many attractions and with my work commitments I could not play a tourist. So just sampled the city.
When I asked my local manager to take me to a single place which will embody the country's culture, I thought he would take me to some museum. I was very pleasantly surprised when he took me to not one museum, but a handful of them. "Taman Mini Indonesia Indah" (Literally, Park Mini Indonesia Beauty) is actually a theme park, a wonderful attempt to showcase everything from a single country. I have never seen anything like this. This place has got at least a dozen museums (each on various themes: culture, energy, post [mail], transportation etc.) and different kind of dwellings and structures replicating various regions of the country (Personally I liked the ones from Bali & Java). Some photos are available at my flickr page along with the captions.
We first visited "Museum of Indonesia". Two things interested me the most here. (1) Statues wearing variety of ethnic wedding attire (There were hundreds of them!) (2) Influence of Indian culture through the early Hindu Kingdoms. The most noted one is the shadow puppet theater called Wayang. Incidentally, we still have it in India, though restricted to our villages.
After wandering a bit, we took a cable car which offered us a bird's eye view of all museums and structures. From the cable car, we could see an exact replica of the Indonesian archipelago.
While this trip was only a glimpse of Jakarta, it only made me wish for more in the next trip! Till then, Terima kasih (Thank you), Indonesia!
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