Who wants to be a billionaire?
Have you ever had the dream of becoming a billionaire, and to your dismay, found out that there is hardly any chance of making your dream come true despite working your socks off? If so, come to Indonesia, for there are hundreds of thousands of billionaires here; and they are ordinary people, like you and me.
How so? Well, it is the massive inflation and a steady decline in the value of Indonesian rupiah that has apparently made almost every other person here a billionaire.
Things started going south for the rupiah during the Asian financial crisis of 1997, which hit most of the East Asian countries hard, taking an especially heavy toll on the economy and currency of Indonesia.
The decade-long crisis resulted in the rupiah losing value more than six-fold against the US dollar, with one dollar currently equivalent to 14,600 rupiahs. To ease monetary transactions, the central bank has phased out small currency bills such as of 100 and 500 rupiah denominations, but there seems to be no end to the currency's continuous slide. If one has to buy a bus ticket or even a pack of chips, he or she needs to deal in tens of thousands of rupiahs.
So, if you do want to turn into an overnight billionaire, hurry to Indonesia, but just make sure you bring a wallet fat enough to carry all those massive currency bills.
KING OF THE ROADS
Indonesians seem to have an obsession with motorcycles. There are all sorts of transportation modes available -- buses, metro, taxis, trains, tuktuks, human haulers, etc. -- but one that rules the roost is the bikes. Bikes are so much in vogue that you would even find small children dressed in school attire -- both boys and girls -- riding a motorcycle or a scooty to their destination (of course without a valid driver's license).
This obsession with bikes has perhaps been borne out of necessity more than anything else because traffic here is notorious and not everyone can afford to hire taxis, let alone own cars.
And to tap into this enormous market, ride hailing companies have sprung up quite some time before Uber or Pathao came to Bangladesh. Go-Jek is one such company that has become a business giant on a global scale. The other is Grab, a Singapore-based company doing big business here by tapping into people's demand for comfortable rides. These companies have other ventures, but ride-sharing is the one they are most famous for.
Hence, if one has trouble getting around in the Jakarta traffic, downloading the Grab or Go-Jek app will solve your issues. There is one big obstacle though, and it comes in the form of the language barrier when hiring these rides. But with Google Translator available, nothing really comes in the way of a smooth ride.
