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Derided for being densely populated, Jakarta could well pull in a crowd.

- Bhavya Dore

Under a bridge outside Glodok, Jakarta’s Chinatown, I spiritedly tried to bargain with a taxi driver a little after sundown. “Two hundred thousand Indonesian Rupiah (IDR),” he said, opening the proceedings. I pulled out my notebook and began scribbling on the last page. “Fifty thousand rupiah,” I wrote. This went on for five minutes as we parried using fingers, ink, and notes of Indonesia’s hyper-inflated currency to express ourselves. Eventually we settled on IDR70,000/₹345.

The driver was a rider, and the taxi a bike. In Jakarta they are slender Bajaj-like bikes known as ojeks. In the city’s famously congested highways, where traffic stalls for vast swathes of time, the ojek is the best way to get around. Clutching feverishly to the back of the bike and snaking through waiting cars, over bridges and through side lanes—here was a bespoke adrenaline rush in a sprawling East Asian megapolis.

Jakarta is panned as an overcrowded, hopelessly jam-packed city, but it’s still possible to eke out some good bits from Indonesia’s capital. The beaches are in Bali and the culture is in Jogjakarta, but if you’re passing through Jakarta, some fun can yet be had.