Jakarta: Hectic, crowded, multicultural, multilingual, historic, futuristic, and a jumbled pile of everything that makes megacities great.

But nobody knows Jakarta. Foreigners think it's only a stopover on their way to Bali.

This book brings you the joy of Jakarta, from a locals' perspective. Twelve million of us live in this city; there must be something good here.

We'll eat tons of street food, go high-end and low-end shopping, ride a bullet train, roam the waterfront, see rock shows, visit mosques and cathedrals, and, of course, drink a lot of coffee.

This is local Jakarta: what we Jakartans love about our city, and what we'd show to our visiting best friend. That's what I show you in this book.

We'll dive into the Jakartan experiences the foreigner-centered and ChatGPT-written guidebooks have no idea about, and we'll come out alive. I promise.

You don't need to speak Indonesian. You don't need to know anything about Indonesia. And this book has QR code links to map points of our destinations, so Jakarta will be navigable for even the most directionally challenged.

Ayo! (Come on, let's go!)

Jakarta hebat! (Jakarta is awesome!)