Wandering into the Past in Old Surabaya

Surabaya's historic quarters

Originally published in Venture magazine, January 2011

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Venture-Travel-Magazine/110370632349708 

I pick my way through the puddles, step lightly over broken packing cases, and dodge a passing becak. The street is wet after the recent rain. Century-old shop-houses rise on either side with arched windows and narrow balconies. Shutters stand open to dark interiors full of bulging sacks. The red splash of a Chinese calendar shows in the gloom on a back wall.

I have made my way along this same street many times, camera and notebook in hand, hunting out historical relics and colorful photo opportunities, but there is always some side alley still to be explored. I duck down a likely one, and there right in front of me is a magnificent building that I have never seen before – two storeys raised on columns with intricate ironwork balustrades. A century ago it would have been the home of a wealthy Chinese trader. Today it is slowly crumbling; decades of traffic fumes have left a grey patina on the walls, and a ramshackle food-stall has sprouted from the façade. A limp “for sale” banner hangs over the entranceway. This is Old Surabaya, the historic quarter of what was once the most important city in the Dutch East Indies, and on every alleyway there are forgotten treasures like this, slowly giving way to dereliction with each passing wet season. This is why it’s a place where I love to wander, hunting out these melancholy reminders of a bygone age…

***

Surabaya, capital of East Java, Indonesia’s second largest city, and a swirling metropolitan mass of congestion and construction, is better known for traffic jams and shopping malls than for tangible history. But three kilometers north of the modern downtown is an area forgotten by more recent developments. This was the heart of the original city, a trading port that grew up on the banks of the Kalimas River. On the west bank a European quarter sprouted from the 17th Century, with Dutch-style, hipped roofs and sturdy walls. Across the water was Chinatown, a warren of steamy alleyways and red temples; to the north lay the Arab Quarter, built around the city’s oldest mosque, and along the river was the port, with its white schooners from Sulawesi and beyond. Though the whole place is slowly falling to pieces today, this is still one of the most extensive historical areas of any Indonesian city, with endless opportunities for wandering street photographers and history buffs.

***

Old Surabaya starts in Chinatown. The names of the roads here – Rubber Street, Tea Street, Chocolate Street – hint at past imports, and tucked between old shops and homes there are Chinese clan-houses with bowed rooflines, and temples built by the first settlers from the Chinese mainland, many centuries ago. The oldest – the Hok An Kiong – stands on the corner of Chocolate Street. It is dedicated to the Goddess of Seafarers. There is always a gaggle of old men hanging around here whenever I wander by, and they always call me in for a chat and a drink.

The biggest temple lies further north, on an alleyway of mechanics’ shops. The Kong Co Kong Tik Cun Ong is a complex of dark, smoky chambers where three-meter-high candles flicker in the incense-scented gloom and old women go quietly through their prayers. Dragons writhe on the roofs, and bug-eyed lions guard the gateways.

North of Chinatown there is a great maze of alleyways around Pasar Pabean, the biggest traditional market in Surabaya. Here ramshackle residential quarters sit cheek by jowl with ranks of fruit and vegetable stalls, and a massive, bustling fish market. But above the dust and noise and the Madurese women in bright bandanas hawking garlic and onions, there are the upper storeys of fine commercial buildings from the days when wealthy people did their shopping here.

***

I often pause here to take a photo or scribble a note, before hopping into a becak to carry me out to some other quarter. Becaks, the three-wheeled Indonesian version of the cycle-rickshaw, are the workhorses of Old Surabaya. Peddled by men with iron calf muscles, they carry both people and great bundles of produce. Many are spectacularly decorated, with metalwork painted in colorful patterns. A becak ride along narrow, potholed streets is the best ways to wend your way through the old city.

A becak often carries me to Ampel, the Arab Quarter. From the 16th Century onwards traders from the hard brown hills of Yemen settled here, opening shops to sell the produce of their homeland – dates, cloth, perfume and religious books. Their descendants are still here, and the atmosphere of a Middle Eastern Souk still lingers in the street that leads to the grand Ampel Mosque.

***

Much of the palpable history in Old Surabaya is fading slowly from the scene. Elsewhere – especially in Singapore and Malaysia – old quarters have been saved from collapse; Chinese-style buildings have been repainted in bright pastel colors, and one-time time colonial shop-houses have been turned into boutique hotels. As I wander through these alleyways, however, that kind of thing seems like a distant dream – though I hope that one day the authorities will realize the value of all this heritage before it is gone forever. For now, however, there is a gritty authenticity in these old streets, and the ever-present chance to stumble on some fresh surprise, some grand mansion abandoned to the ghosts, or some quiet family scene played out in halls that once must have echoed to the sound of accumulating coin, when Surabaya was a wealthy port mentioned in the same breath as Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore…

And there is one part of the Old City where a direct link to that past still remains strong. Once I have toured the Chinese temples, ridden a becak, and bought a bag of dates from the great-grandson of an immigrant Yemeni, I cut west through quiet lanes until I reach the sluggish channel of the Kalimas. It is still a place for ships from other places to drop anchor, and on its final reaches, before the city gives way to the sea, I wander along a dockside lined with magnificent white schooners, still built to the lines of the original Bugis phinisi from Sulawesi. Here, a world away from the air-conditioned chain stores of the downtown shopping malls, barefoot sailors are padding up bouncing gangplanks, and tossing wrapped bundles down into dark holds, cargoes set for far off places beyond the Java Sea. Here, with the sun slanting away to the west and the becaks trundling homewards, the trade and the connections that first made this place a city continues – the original heart of Old Surabaya is still beating…  

© Tim Hannigan 2011

Ampel: The Holy Heart of Surabaya

The Arab Quarter of Surabaya

Originally published in Jakarta Post Weekender Magazine, December 2008

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/12/12/ampel-the-holy-heart-surabaya.html

The light falls in dusty sheets and the alleyway smells of perfume and rosewater. Narrow tables are piled with bundles of cloth and bags of pistachios. There are stacks of Arabic books; colored prayer beads hang from racks above doorways, and ranged along counters are glass jars full of sticky, amber-black dates from the palm groves of Tunisia and Iraq. The traders, sipping tea or frowning over account books, are Arabs; tall men with the bruise of devout prayer on their foreheads. But this is not Marrakech or Damascus; this is Ampel, the very heart of the Javanese city of Surabaya.

Ampel, sometimes known as the Arab Quarter, lies north of throbbing tangle of highways and shopping malls at the modern centre of the East Java capital. It is surrounded by the old parts of what was once the principal city of the Dutch East Indies: Chinatown, the Pabean Market, and the Kalimas harbor. But it is Ampel, or rather the mosque of the same name, that is the oldest place of all. The first record of a settlement named Surabaya comes from the mid-14th Century, and the Ampel Mosque, dating from 1421, is the oldest identifiable point in the city, the hub from which a metropolis has grown.
The mosque was built by Sunan Ampel, one of the Wali Songo, the nine, semi-mythical holy men who spread Islam in Java. According to the standard history, Sunan Ampel came from the Champa kingdom of southern Vietnam. His father was a wandering Arab Sayyid, and his aunt was a Cham princess who married the Hindu king Brawijaya of the Javanese Majapahit Empire. Following his aunt to Java, Sunan Ampel was given land on the banks of the Kalimas River where he built a mosque and set about converting the locals. His descendents eventually helped to topple Majapahit.
An alternative theory suggests that Sunan Ampel was a Chinese Muslim, but this is a controversial claim. And it is best not mentioned in the alleyways of the quarter that takes the Sunan’s name; here sometimes even his Champa connection is excised, making him a pure Yemeni Arab.

Close to the port, Ampel became a ghetto for later foreign Muslims who arrived in Surabaya. The earliest Dutch maps of the city record it as a Malay, rather than Javanese, area. But there were not only Malays in the teeming alleyways around the mosque. Acehnese and Ambonese settled here, as did Bugis and Bajo from Sulawesi. More exotic immigrants came from further a field – Indians, Persians and Chinese Hui Muslims. But the people who truly made the area their own were the Arabs.

There have been Arab trading communities in the ports of Southeast Asia for centuries. Today the names of the shops that line Jalan Sasak, the anteroom of Ampel, hint at a past of spice, sandalwood and cargoes bound for Aden: Mesir, al Hudah, Ma’ruf, Abu Yaman.
An elderly Arab named U’ess who owns a shop selling sarongs on Jalan Sasak says that his grandfather arrived in Surabaya in the early years of the 20th Century.
“They came for business. They sold cloth and sugar,” he says, explaining that most of Surabaya’s Arabs trace their ancestry to Yemen, a poor place from which there was good reason to emigrate. U’ess is also quite certain that Sunan Ampel was a Yemeni.
Two doors down another Arab named Usman says his family have been in Indonesia for many centuries; his own parents came to Surabaya not directly from Yemen, but from the old spice-trading Arab community in Ambon.
“Ampel is not only for Arabs,” says Usman; “it’s mixed. There are Malays and Bugis. Most of the people here are immigrants, but it is the Arabs who are famous.”

And the Arab shopkeepers of Ampel trade on their fame. The whole area functions as a religious emporium, the place to go for anything remotely Islamic from a carved Pakistani Qu'ran stand to a bag of Tunisian dates to break the Ramadan fast.
The centre of this commerce is the narrow alley known as Jalan Ampel Suci, a classic Middle Eastern-style souq or covered bazaar. Roofed in against dry season heat and wet season rain, and lined with hole-in-the-wall shops selling all manner of exotic goods, it could be a back alley of Cairo.

Surabaya’s Arabs may have kept the exotic atmosphere of their neighborhood, but most use Indonesian as their daily language. A teenage shopkeeper on Jalan Ampel Suci named Abu Bakar claims that Arabic is his first language. But a jab in the ribs from his assistant, a Javanese girl called Fitria, prompts a sheepish grin.
“I do know Arabic,” he insists, “but not one hundred percent yet. All Arabs must learn Arabic, but it’s very difficult…”
Abu Bakar and Fitria argue for a minute about the origins of Sunan Ampel, but eventually repeat the official line: he was half-Arab, half-Cham.

The souq runs north for 200 dark, perfumed meters before opening into the sunlight of the mosque courtyard. The Ampel Mosque is no longer the largest in Surabaya, but it is the most sacred. The old teak-wood core is hidden beneath later extensions; shining expanses of marble floor open at the head of white steps beneath tall, lighthouse-like minarets, and between prayers, people snooze in the cool interior where fugitive breezes cut the tropical heat.
But the real focus of this place is not the mosque but the cemetery that lies in its shadow. Here, beneath hibiscus and frangipani trees, a world away from Arab traders and formal prayers, is the grave of Sunan Ampel himself. There is a murmur of voices here, quieter but more insistent than the shrill wailing from the loudspeakers on the minarets. Sitting cross-legged amongst the tombstones are dozens of people, each making their own private prayer to the Sunan, or to the members of his family enshrined nearby. And these people are almost all Javanese pilgrims. The Wali Songo are hugely important for traditional Javanese Muslims, and people travel long distances to visit their tombs, places where the currents of older powers meet with those of Islam.
This graveyard is the sacred heart of Surabaya. It is also strangely paradoxical: the tomb of a Cham-Arab, or possibly a Chinese Muslim, the oldest point of the city, surrounded by a neighborhood of Yemeni Arabs, and yet a place that is uniquely Javanese.

A small man with a thin moustache and a green sarong is leaning against the wall at the back of the graveyard. He is in his early forties and he comes from Cirebon in West Java. His name is Wayudi. He has traveled here as part of an organized tour, stopping in Demak and Kudus along the way, visiting the sacred graves of the Wali Songo.
“The Wali Songo are special for everyone in Java,” he says. “They were the first Muslims.” For Wayudi the mosque, the souq and the Arabs are not important; it is the tomb that matters: “If you pray at the graves it can make you happy and successful. All Javanese people know this.”
And Wayudi is quite sure that Sunan Ampel was neither Chinese, Cham or Arab. “He was Javanese,” he says.

© Tim Hannigan 2008

Melting Pot of East Java

The old quarters of Surabaya, Java, Indonesia

Originally published in Bali and Beyond Magazine, November 2007

Indonesia’s second biggest city, the capital of East Java, and the closest major urban centre to Bali (just a 30 minute flight away), Surabaya stands on the north coast of Java between the towering green volcanoes of the interior, and the long, low island of Madura offshore. Originally an outpost of the great Majapahit Empire, and later the principal trading port of the Dutch East Indies, Surabaya was only eclipsed by Jakarta as Indonesia’s premier city in the 20th Century. A place with such an illustrious past should have something to show for it, and Surabaya certainly does. But the city is endlessly bad-mouthed by tourist guidebooks, and few visitors bother to stop there. This is a real shame, for those who take the time to go beyond the bustling downtown area with its plethora of shopping malls, banks and international hotels will find another city altogether where the pulse of the old world still beats.

The backbone of Surabaya is the Kalimas River, (“River if Gold” in Indonesian). It snakes through the city from south to north finally emerging into the Madura channel in the great port at the head of Surabaya. The modern heart of the city is the network of wide avenues around Jalan Pemuda. It’s here that you will find the malls and the hotels, but the original settlement lay some two kilometres further north, an area which still oozes with history.

As a port city Surabaya was always a melting pot, and even today its diversity is obvious in the faces of the people. Immigrants flocked to Surabaya over the centuries, as traders, manual labourers and fortune-seekers. The biggest minority has always been the Chinese and today Surabaya’s old Chinatown sprawls into quiet alleyways around the thoroughfare of Jalan Kembang Jepun. The main street is marked by great red and green Chinese gates, guarded by lion statues. Turn right or left here and you will find rows of quietly decaying shop-houses. They are not restored or prettified for tourists like in Singapore, but peer through the dark doorways and you will catch glimpses of candles burning before family alters, and sacks piled against walls in the warehouses of old-style traders. Here and there a bowed roof of heavy ceramic tiles marks a Chinese clan house.
Most of Surabaya’s huge Chinese population is Christian now, but Chinatown is the heart of the old Chinese religion, a blend of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. The aromatic smell of incense hits you long before you reach the centuries-old Kong Co Kong Tik Cun Ong temple on a narrow alleyway north of Jalan Kembang Jepun. Here huge, three-metre high candles burn in the darkness, and worshippers kneel and bow before bronze statues. Offerings of fruit stand on the alters, and joss sticks leach thin coils of sweet smoke. Not far away another temple, the Hok An Kiong is full of bright red and gold colour. This area has some of the finest examples of old Chinese architecture, and the street names hint at the old import-export trade of the area: Rubber Street, Chocolate Street, Sugar Street and Tea Street.
Further north from Chinatown is the vast Pasar Pabean market, one of the biggest traditional markets in Indonesia. At its heart is a huge covered area full of vegetables. The ground underfoot is thick with onions skins and the air is rich with the smells of garlic and spices. Tiny, cheerful women in bright clothes dash about the market carrying huge loads on their heads. At the western end of Pasar Pabean is a bustling fish market where every afternoon the freshest catches from the Java Sea are sold. Wander through this area and you will see everything from tiny prawns to huge tuna fish and even sharks. North and south the market sprawls on through tiny alleyways where everything imaginable is sold.

The streets of Old Surabaya are far removed from the traffic chaos of downtown. Walking is a pleasure here, but an even better option is to travel by becak. This is the heartland of the old-style pedicab, a human-powered passenger tricycle. becak drivers loiter on every street corner, their vehicles often spectacularly decorated. For a few thousand rupiah you can travel at a leisurely pace through the alleyways.

Beyond Pasar Pabean is another area full of echoes of Surabaya’s trading past. The Arab Quarter is a warren of narrow streets knotted around the great Ampel Mosque, the oldest and most sacred in Surabaya.
Like the Chinese, the Arabs – most originally from Yemen – arrived in the city over many centuries, drawn by the trade routes that carried spice and other goods across the Indian Ocean. The area, known as Ampel, became their ghetto, and even today it has all the atmosphere of a Middle Eastern bazaar. Hole-in-the-wall shops are presided over by tall, hawk-nosed men selling Tunisian dates, pistachios and sultanas. Brightly coloured prayer beads and embroidered rugs hang from the awnings, and the scent of rosewater and perfume cuts the air. The heart of the Arab Quarter is the narrow pedestrian alleyway that leads to the mosque. Covered in like the souks of Damascus and Marrakech, and hung about with bright cloths, batiks and beads, it eventually opens to the courtyard of the Ampel Mosque, built by Sunan Ampel, one of the venerated holy-men of Java. Sunan Ampel’s grave is next to the mosque, and the garden with its low frangipani trees is always busy with pilgrims.

If Surabaya is famous for one thing, it’s food. And though the modern city offers plenty of opportunities for fine dining, the old quarter gives a chance to sample more traditional cuisine. There is mouth-watering Arab-style roast lamb on sizzling hotplates from simple cafes in Ampel; on any street in early evening the delicious scent of sate (skewered chicken, beef or lamb) sizzling over charcoal whets the appetite, and all manner of sweet concoctions are available. But the ultimate in al-fresco dining can be had every night back in Chinatown. Jalan Kembang Jepun is closed to traffic and as the sun sets the street takes on a new name: Kya-Kya. After dark Kya-Kya bursts into action as a huge spread of food stalls and outdoor cafes. Take a seat at any of the tables laid out on the tarmac to try traditional Chinese, Indonesian, and even Western food. Seafood is a speciality. Street entertainers wind their way between the tables and you can reflect on your day of wandering amid the history of the old city.
There is no doubt that Surabaya is a rewarding stop for culture vultures, photographers and inquisitive wanderers, and when you’re done with old city, there are some great shopping opportunities in all those malls!

© Tim Hannigan 2008

Beguiled by Becaks

Indonesia's three-wheeled, peddle-powered public transport

Originally published in Kabar Magazine May 2007

http://kabarmag.com/blog1/2009/01/16/beguiled-by-becaks/

“…and a small squadron of the tricycle-rickshas called betjaks. As soon as they sighted Hamilton and Kwan most of the betjaks creaked into motion like a flock of ponderous birds, wheeling towards them. Hamilton regarded them with some fascination, as everyone did for the first time, with their black canvas hoods, their sides painted in hurdy-gurdy colours with pictures of volcanoes and wayang heroes, and lettered with names such as Tiger and Bima, they belonged to another time…”

Christopher J. Koch was writing of 1965, that simmering era of impending violence, when he penned those lines in his novel The Year of Living Dangerously. They belonged to another time even then, and yet, more than forty years later only the old Dutch spelling has changed, and the becaks are still creaking into ponderous action throughout the kampungs and alleyways of Java.

The becak is the Indonesian incarnation of the ubiquitous pedicab, or cycle-rickshaw, found everywhere from New Delhi to Taiwan, and even now as a tourist attraction in London’s Soho, and parts of New York. But it is Indonesia, and especially Java, (perhaps along with Bangladesh) that is the true heartland of the pedicab. The becak is as much a motif and symbol of Indonesia as the silhouette of a wayang kulit puppet, or the smell of a clove cigarette.

The becak, a three-wheeled peddled-powered bike with a passenger seat is the descendant of the original hand-pulled rickshaws that originated in Japan in the 19th Century. The design and style varies from country to country, and even from city to city, but in Indonesia the passenger sits up front, with an uninterrupted view of the busy streets. Despite the best efforts of municipal governments becak still provide transport and employment for millions of people across Indonesia, people like Hilal.

It is early afternoon, and Hilal, a wiry man in his early thirties, born and raised in Surabaya, is eating his lunch. He hunches over a bowl of oily bakso – noodle soup with meatballs – and a glass of sweet iced tea, sweating in the yellow heat, at a tatty little foodcart on Jalan K. H. Mas Mansur on the edge of the old Arab Quarter of the East Javanese Capital. He has been awake since well before dawn. He rose in the darkness for the first prayers of the Muslim day in his house on a narrow alleyway not far from the great Ampel Mosque, sacred heart of Old Surabaya. Then he went out into the blue pre-dawn light, limbs still aching from the day before as he strained at the peddles of his becak. His first passenger was a regular customer, a woman from the Quarter who Hilal takes each day to the dawn vegetable market. After that he fell into the typical slow hours of a becak driver, waiting on street corners, chatting with friends, rousing himself from time to time to try to solicit a fare. In late morning he took an Arab trader to the mosque for midday prayers, and later he will take the same man to the shop of a partner in another part of the Old City.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of becaks in Indonesia, but this was not always the case, and despite their timeless image, they are actually a relatively recent addition to the urban landscape. Before the Second World War becak were virtually unknown. There had been tricycles used for transporting goods for many years, but it was only in 1936 that the first passenger-carrying becak hit the streets of Jakarta. The Dutch authorities took an immediate dislike to the new invention, worrying about safety and congestion, and setting the tone for government attitude to becaks until now. They might have acted to stamp them out altogether, but History intervened.
In 1942 the Japanese Imperial forces landed in Indonesia, ousted the Dutch, and brought about an even more oppressive form of colonial rule. While Indonesian national identity felt its way towards the light, cities choked. The Japanese tightly controlled availability of petrol, banned private ownership of motor vehicles, and eventually strangled the old bus and tram networks. It will no doubt pain commuters who deal with the gridlock of modern Jakarta and Surabaya to know that both cities once had comprehensive and efficient public transport systems. The only major source of urban transport that survived under the Japanese was the horse-drawn dokar, which filled the roles served by both becaks and taxis today. But a horse was an expensive commodity, difficult to feed at a time when many people were going hungry, and they soon began to disappear too. Enter the becak, until then an oddity and a novelty. Cheap, low maintenance, and requiring no fuel other than the strength of its driver, the becak soon became the main – sometimes the only – form of public transport. Post-war turmoil and the protracted independence struggle meant that organised transport networks never really recovered; bolting the stable door was no use after the horse had gone, and dokars never returned in any numbers. But the becak proliferated. By 1953 there were an estimated 40, 000 in Surabaya alone, and by 1981 becak drivers constituted some 3% of the workforce of that city. In the 1980s there were well over 100, 000 in Jakarta.

Mid-afternoon, and Hilal is idling with friends at the point where Jalan Sasak widens at the gate of the long covered bazaar that leads to the Ampel Mosque. It is a good place to find a fare as worshippers and shoppers who come to the area to buy the religious paraphernalia sold by the Arabs of the Quarter must pass through the mob of becaks when they leave. Hilal has pushed his grimy red baseball cap back on his head and is lounging on the passenger seat of his becak. He has been a becak driver for five years. Before that he worked in a small warehouse south of the Arab Quarter in the old Chinatown, carrying sacks and moving boxes for a salary. Little by little he scrimped and saved until he could afford to buy his own becak, not so expensive, he says, at one million rupiah brand new. Hilal is happier as a becak driver. It’s hard, peddling in the blazing heat of the day, but he is his own boss, and there have been days when he has earned as much as fifty thousand rupiah: far, far more than he ever made when he worked for a wage. But like many in Indonesia, he dreams of a life abroad. He has a cousin in Korea who works in a factory there, complains about the bitter winter cold, but sends meaty remittances back to his family in Surabaya. Someone once told Hilal about the tourist rickshaws in London, and he wonders if he could emigrate there to work. But he has grave doubts about the cost of shipping his becak.

No one seems sure when, or why it started, but becaks have become a canvas for the deep-seated artistic urge of Indonesia, and are often spectacularly and idiosyncratically decorated. They are given names (anything from mythical figures to boy-bands), and painted in kaleidoscopic colours. In Yogyakarta – a becak stronghold – the mudguards of the heavyset becaks there often carry complex and well-executed pictures, while the leaner, longer becaks of Surabaya come in a multitude of patterns. There is a wild array of colour schemes, from Union Jacks and Stars and Stripes, through Coca Cola and Manchester United to the regalia of various political parties (PDI-P is a favourite of becak drivers, perhaps because the bull makes a fine decorative motif rather than because of any particular political sympathy). Tassels sometimes adorn peddles and the wooden slats of the passenger seats often carry bright floral designs, hinting at classical Islamic art.

But despite their visual appeal, becak have always had a rough ride from the authorities. Since the first prohibitive traffic laws in Dutch Batavia in 1940 they have been seen as the enemy by those who wish to impose order on city streets. From an early stage city councillors complained about becaks. They sometimes righteously suggested that they were a symbol of human exploitation, ignoring the fact that the becak is a form of independent self-employment available even to very poor people like Hilal. But the principal complaint was always that a trundling becak clogs the city streets, impeding the progress of the air-con Kijangs of the rich, and that they are unsightly, despite their bright colours, unbefitting of modern Indonesia. Registration schemes across the country have attempted to reduce the numbers of becaks, as have police crackdowns on illegal operators. In the 1980s under Soeharto the first major attack on Jakarta’s becaks took place. Unregistered becaks were regularly confiscated and destroyed, and finally in 1988 Bylaw 11 was passed by the City Council, banning them altogether from the city streets. Some forty thousand beautifully decorated becaks, the pride and livelihood of their drivers, were impounded in the name of progress and toppled from barges into the murky waters of Jakarta Bay.
In Surabaya too the road of the becak has been rocky. Becaks, and their notoriously rough-spoken drivers, often economic migrants from Madura, are the bugbear and the butt of jokes of people who like to see East Java’s metropolis as the next Singapore. Their manufacture was outlawed in the 1980s and periodic purges have targeted unlicensed drivers. They have been banned from the major roads of the downtown area so the glittering facades of the multiplying shopping malls are not sullied by the reflection of a quietly rolling becak.

But the becak endures away from the multilane highways, rolling through kampung alleyways too cramped for a taxi and beyond the bemo networks. In Jakarta too they cling on in quieter residential areas, despite ongoing official hostility. They have even received support from unexpected quarters in recent years. Environmentalists praise the becak as a totally green form of transport, and point to their increasing appearance in European and North American Cities. In any case, the becak still fills a gap in the infrastructure of urban Indonesia, and as long as there are narrow side streets and people willing to haggle with a dark-faced, grinning man with iron calf muscles for a sedate, gently rattling ride over potholed tarmac, they will exist.

It is evening, and soon the maghrib prayer call will echo out over the red tiled roofs. Hilal is straining at the peddles. He has taken one last fare further south than his usual territory, beyond Pasar Atom, and now he is heading back towards Ampel with tired limbs, back towards his wife and five-year old son. The sun has dropped far into the West as he crosses the smooth metal of the train tracks and he catches the smell of goats from the rough kampungs beside the rails. Throughout the Old City, and across the whole of Surabaya off the main roads, and indeed all over Java, becak are riding slowly into the dusk.

At the end of The Year of Living Dangerously as Hamilton, the hero of the book, flees an imploding Indonesia the image he carries with him is of a becak, creaking its way through the kretek-scented darkness. The Year of Living Dangerously is long past, and many more dangerous years have come and gone; both Sukarno and Soeharto have faded from the scene and urban Indonesia has changed almost beyond recognition. But in the quieter side streets of the nation’s cities, with the rattle of a tin bell and the creak of an ill-oiled chain, the becak is still rolling, making its way slowly into the 21st Century.

© Tim Hannigan 2007