We stayed in a western hotel - thus the armed guards and bomb checks. It was situated on a wide boulevard that housed many foreign banks and embassies. In other words, it was a nice area. Everything was guarded - not one driveway could be entered without a bomb-check or a once over from security. The Japanese embassy looked like a jail, its grey outer wall was fringed with razor wire of the same color.
Our hotel was attached to an upscale mall. Not upscale for Jakarta, upscale period. All of the famous "world brands" were represented: Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Chopard, Swarovski, etc. The way the world is these days, you can find certain brands almost anywhere in the world. It can be jarring to the senses. As I sat halfway around the world in one of the stores and tapped a foot to a Queen/David Bowie song, a song that came out during my college days, I felt transported somewhere. "Where am I?", I thought to myself. The store knew. She was whispering to me "feel nice? remember this song? now, go ahead and buy something, buy, buy."
Just one street away, the real Jakarta comes into view. It's a teeming city of ten million packed into 225 square miles. I imagine most of it looks like this: many people on foot or motorcycle, jumbled buildings and narrow alleys, street food stalls, electrical wires looped and re-looped, slackly strung between old, leaning poles. In one case, a long narrow alley connected the new world with this old world - see story about that here. I suspect much of the supposed violence is simply poor against rich rather than muslim against non-muslim.
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