You never left Makati when you come to Jakarta

JAKARTA, Indonesia – Everybody who’s anybody – including GMA and First Gent – is flying to attend the Big Wedding in Brunei today of Crown Prince Al-Muhtadee Billah, 30, and Dayangku Sarah Pengiran Salleh, 17 – yes, seventeen.

They’re passing underneath giant billboards into the capital city of Bander Seri Begawan, arched over the highway from the airport, declaring, next to a huge portrait of the betrothed, Allah Selamatkan Penganin Diraja.

This is because the royal dad, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, summons. GMA’s advance team is already in place.

Yesterday, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri interrupted her election campaign against a strong challenger, General Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono who almost bested her in the July 5 Presidential polls, and forced a run-off election between the two of them September 20. I guess campaigning for the hearts and minds (and ballots) of the 147 million voters will have to wait another day.

I passed through Singapore on the way here to find that Prime Ministr Lee Hsien Loong, his father Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, and former Prime Ministr Goh Chok Tong had already left for Brunei – which, after all, is just next door.

This morning they will attend the bersanding ceremony in which the wedding couple will sit side by side on a dais to greet guests. PM Lee and his wife, it was announced, will return to Singapore tonight, but Senior Minister Goh and Minister Mentor LKY and their wives will remain for the royal banquet tomorrow night.

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It’s very easy to get to Jakarta by Philippine Air Lines or by Singapore Airlines.

I hadn’t been back in our old stamping grounds of Jakarta for more than eight years, so I hopped in a Singapore Airlines jet in Manila early yesterday morning, a three hour and 15 minutes to Singapore’s perpetually bustling Changi International, then, on another SQ Boeing 777, a swift one hour and 15 minutes to Jakarta, the capital of an archipelago of 220 million (88 percent Muslim), composed of more than 100 distinct ethnic groups and speaking more than 300 major languages and myriad dialects. In the fourth most populous country in the world, not everyone speaks Bahasa Indonesia (the "national language" based on Malay).

And do you know what the latest craze is – in Jakarta? Learning English. (Which is why they even "imported" more than 1,000 Filipino teachers as "native English speakers". (I’ve got news for them – Filipinos have forgotten English, and someday twice as many Indonesians will be speaking it.)

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It was a pleasant drive into the city from the Mohammed-Hatta airport – but I found that much has changed. More modernity, more skyscrapers, more . . . well, snazzy shopping malls.

When one watches cable TV or reads the newspapers in Manila, you get the impression that Jakarta is full of fanatical Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists, raring to shoot Christians, bomb churches, and every woman going about all muffled up in Muslim headscarves, etc. Sure, there are those types lurking around "outside", but Jakarta is a streamlined metropolis, where young people dress and act just as jauntily and casually as they do in Makati, Ortigas Center, or Greenhills.

Just a kilometer from my hotel stands the Plaza Senayan Mall, built on the original sports complex – a cross between Greenbelt, Glorietta, Rockwell and Megamall, and just as glitzy and upmarket. It’s full of shoppers. When you drive in, one of the first sights you encounter is the "Coffee Bean". There are, of course, McDonalds, ANZ Spot Coffee Club. On the fifth floor you’ll find "STARBUCKS" complete with all the usual – Frappuccino ice-blended, Caffe Latte, Espresso, "Coffee of the Day" etc. Everybody seated there, enjoying, looks just like the crowd in Makati, or at the Podium. The coffee is a bit more pricey, though. A Frappuccino goes for Rups 29,000 or P240, a Cafe Latte costs P140, coffee of the day is 12,000 rupiahs or about P90.

Next to the coffee shop is one of the biggest English-language bookstores you could hope to see – Books Kinokuniya, as huge as Power Books, Fully Sketched, bigger than Goodwill – you name it. In the old days, we never dreamed Jakarta would have immense English-language book stores, you had to go hunting all over for a small nook, peddling a handful of sun-stained, dusty volumes.

Now there’s so many. Kinokuniya alone has everything you can get in Metro Manila – including Bill Clinton’s My Life, or Woodward’s Plan of Attack, or King Arthur, and The Da Vinci Code, Digital Fortress, The Rule of Four, et cetera.

You look for it, they got it.

Two floors down, another book shop, QB, also has almost every paperback you could imagine – all up-to- date.

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The Senayen has everything, from Du Ponts to Giordanos, Cerutti, Lancombe, Nine West, you can find in Greenbelt or Glorietta, or Rockwell. Even the same kind of lookers among the femmes and young guys in t-shirts and denims. The Pierre Cardin lingerie store has flyers and posters with bosomy girls posing under the come-one blurb: "Funky – sexy – sporty." (Beli Braset Rp, 95,000 – Dapatkan Diskon 50 percent Untuk Pembelian Kedua.)

There are many more malls of similar quality: the Mal Kelapa Cading, the Taman Anggrol (Garden of Orchids), the Pondok Indah (Beautiful Place) – a far cry from the old government-run and fly-specked Sarinah of our old days!

I could go on and on. They have it all here in Jakarta, where once it was an old-fashioned, straitlaced dusty city. Of course, there is much poverty, but when you’re upmarket here, you’re upmarket.

In this teeming city of eight million – 15 million if you take in Metro Jakarta – it’s far from a "war zone" as is generally pictured on your television screens. Is it progress – or . . . uh depravity? The people seem to like it.