Jakarta, (formerly Batavia under the Dutch) is the capital and largest city of Indonesia. Located on the northwest coast of Java, it has an area of 661 square kilometers and a population of about 10 million (last census count in 2010).

The city is Indonesia’s economic, cultural and political centre. It is the most populous city in Indonesia and in Southeast Asia, and is the tenth-largest city in the world. Established in the fourth century, the city became an important trading port for the Kingdom of Sunda. It grew as the capital of the colonial Dutch East Indies. It was made capital of Indonesia when the country became independent after World War II.

It was formerly known as Sunda Kelapa (397–1527), Jayakarta (1527–1619), Batavia (1619–1942), and Djakarta (1942–1972). The city's name is derived from the Old Javanese word "Jayakarta" which translates as "victorious deed", "complete act", or "complete victory" when the Batavians’ (Javanese won many bloody battles in their struggle for independence against the Colonial Dutch).

It’s my first night in Jakarta and I am already missing Jogja, the city where pace of life was a little less frenzied. Yeah, that should be the world; it’s not “hectic”, but “frenzied” here in Jakarta. Things might be slightly cheaper, but only slightly cheaper than in Singapore, but nearly ten times the cost of Jogja, where I could spend on something and feel happy about spending that rupiah.

But over here I calculate and re-calculate my sums before deciding to spend on something. The locals here are less courteous and welcoming (Singapore all over again?) and extremely competitive on just about everything.

To pay rent on my apartment, I had to withdraw over four million rupiah at once from the ATM since many places don’t accept credit cards, the main bulk of transactions are still done using cash.

FOUR MILLION RUPIAH. The ATM only dispenses 50,000rp denominations, so that’s 80 notes in all. For a sum of S$581, I was carrying such a thick wad of notes that it looked as if I just got paid my gangster protection fee or I just exchanged a kilo of pure cocaine to the Yakuza.

It’s ludicrous that my wallet was ridiculously thick just by carrying five hundred bucks. What if I wanted to buy a computer that cost S$3,000? Carry 414 notes? That’s obviously impractical. Money wasn’t such a problem in Jogja because costs rarely exceeded a million per transaction. But the real problem is that the largest denomination in Indonesia is the 100,000rp note, or an equivalent of S$14, which is very inconvenient considering many countries have a USD $100 or USD $1,000 note. USD $100 = 1,000,000rp.

Since pushing the value of the currency up would take tremendous federal and economic resources to bring the rupiah back to pre-1997 Asian financial crisis levels, the easiest option is to introduce a larger note; maybe a 500,000rp (S$72) note or even a 1,000,000rp (S$144) note, an equivalent of USD $100.

During the weekend I somehow managed to find ourselves at two different malls and a hypermart. Lotte Hypermart, MOI (Mall of Indonesia) and Mal Kelapa Gading.

MOI turned out to be a nice pleasant surprise, it is large and spacious and had an indoor amusement park and somewhat reminded me of Time’s Square in Kuala Lumpur though. Another big expensive mall to explore was Mal Kelapa Gading (Mal 1,2,3 and 5) that is quite popular with the locals here and there are crowds almost everyday.