Jakarta, the Central of Indonesia

Jakarta, the capital city and province of Indonesia, is the biggest city in Indonesia. Located on the northwest of the island of Java, it has an area of about 660 km² and a population of 8.7 million at 2005. As a province, Jakarta consists four cities, these are Central Jakarta, East Jakarta, North Jakarta, South Jakarta, and West Jakarta. Jakarta also have one regency, the Thousands Islands (kepulauan seribu), formerly a subdistrict of North Jakarta.

As a biggest and major city in Indonesia, Jakarta also suffered many problems. Being on the top ten of the most densely populated city in the world, it suffers a serious problem about the traffic. In the busy time, for example 7:00-9:00, almost all of major roads are "jammed". The government also had to face that the population has risen sharply from 1.2 million in 1960 to more than 8.7 million in 2005. When the wet season comes, Jakarta suffers flood because the waterways are clogged by the citizen's trash that thrown into the river. This city also suffers a once on five years great flood. Start from 1997, then at 2002 almost entire city is flooded, and getting much worse at 2007.

Despite of all problems above, Jakarta has many reasons for you to live there. Firstly, as the capital city of Indonesia, Jakarta is the center of many activities in Indonesia, especially trading and bussiness. It has the Jakarta Stock Exchange (Bursa Efek Jakarta), which is only one of two in Indonesia (the other is in Surabaya). Jakarta is also the home of many companies, from the commercial-based company to state company owned by the Country. Bank Indonesia, the only bank that produce money in Indonesia, also located at Jakarta, central Jakarta for precisely. Beside that, Jakarta has a lot of shopping mall and market, for example the Plaza Indonesia, Ambassador Mall, the Mangga Dua trading center, and many others.

Located near the edge of Jakarta, there is Universitas Indonesia, one of the oldest and most favorite state university in Indonesia. there are many non-state universities too in Jakarta, for example University of Bina Nusantara, the first non-state choice for those who want to continue their study as an Information Technology master. Beside university, Jakarta also have many great high school, junior school, elementary school, kindergarten and even for the playgroups. For an international community, there are some international schools too, such as the Jakarta International School, Australian International School, the Ghandi Memorial International School and many others.

For the entertainment and welfare needs, Jakarta has many facilities too. There are about one hundred hospitals in Jakarta, consist of some specialized hospital, such as Dharmais Cancer Hospital. There is a blood bank too, organized by Indonesia Red Cross (Palang Merah Indonesia) located beside the major hospital of Indonesia, the Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital (Rumah Sakit Cipto Mangunkusumo). Jakarta has many entertainment and tourism spots, for example the Ancol beach located at the north of Jakarta. From Ancol beach you can sail to the Thousand Islands or go to the Dunia Fantasi, and the Seaworld aquatic park. In the center of Jakarta, there is Monumen Nasional (Monas), a monument for recalling the memories of heroic fight against the invaders built in 1960. Or if you want to know more about Indonesia, you can go to the Taman Mini Indonesia Indah (TMII), located in the southwest of Jakarta. in TMII you'll see a miniature of Indonesia and it's provinces, represented by an anjungan (bridge), for example anjungan Sumatera Barat, anjungan Irian Jaya, even anjungan Jakarta.

Jakarta nowadays also have several transportation facilities that would help us to avoid the traffic problems. It has some turnpike and highways that connect all of it's cities. At 2004, the government of Jakarta opened the TransJakarta first corridor, the busway system that connect Blok M to Kota. And at 2006, the construction of second and third corridor was completed, serving the route from Pulogadung to Kalideres. The two lines of Jakarta Monorail are under construction, the green line serving Semanggi-Cassablanca-Kuningan-Semanggi and the blue one serving Kampung Melayu-Casablanca-Tanah Abang-Roxy. Furthemore, there are plans for a two-line subway (MRT) system, and also the waterbus ferries as a transportation along the canals in Jakarta. These Project plans under consideration would begin around 2007-2011.

Considering of that many benefits you'll have, maybe you should think of living in Jakarta! =)

ps : finally can post at this blog, just discovered that my IE have problem with the site, so i use firefox otherwise =D

Good, thanks for posting.