Sunda Kelapa, traditional harbour in Jakarta

On early May 2010 at weekend, some of us who like taking pictures went to explore Jakarta oldiest part accompanying our friend from Lausanne, Swiss who's interested in exploring Indonesia. Departing from hotel at 09:00 we directly went to Sunda Kelapa, at present is an active and an inter island port in Indonesia. It's crowded with many trucks unloading their commodities.


Formerly Sunda Kelapa, better known as Pasar Ikan (meaning fish market) is located at the mouth of the Ciliwung River. The fish catch of the day was auctioned in the early morning at the old fish market. The harbor is still one of the most important calls for sailing vessels from all over Indonesia. The magnificent and brightly painted Makassar schooner called Phinisi is still an important means of transporting goods to and from the outer islands. This is one of the best touristm place in Jakarta.


We parked near the traditional big boats, it's rather cloudy at that moment, so we could not get a clean blue sky, anyway there were so many objects that're good to capture. An old man followed us wherever we took pictures, he kept offering us to ride a small boat along the harbour with Rp. 40.000,- for 3-4 persons/boat. There were 6 of us so we decided to take two boats.

There was no special ladder or stair to go down to the boat, so we had to climb the wall and jump to the boat carefully. The boat was not steady enough, so you had to maintain your balance avoid failing down to the water while you had to take care your camera too from water splashing.

Fisherman village was the first place we visited, the people were living on the boat and floating small house. Everyday they find fishes for their living, some fishermans were fixing their nets, cleaning the boat, tuning their motor boat to prepare for sailing. Some childrens were playing on the boats, or just chatting with their friends.

The water is not clean at all, it's muddy, sometimes oily from the boat fuel, I don't think that we could get a fresh fish here. Our sailor kept sailed toward the firth, it's quite a long journey. After around 30 minutes sailing, we could see a big wave at our see sight, the sailor didn't dare to go through the sea, because our boat was small and we didn't have any motor, it's only manual sailed. They were turning back, return to the way where we were.

All of us had taken many pictures, although it's cloudy, we still felt burning on our skin, so in the middle of the journey back, we decided to stop. We stopped the sailing and went through the gap in the middle of big boats who berthed on the piers. When we walked back to the car, we've just realized that it's still far from our destination. We're very thirsty, but we're satisfied of taking pictures and experiences the boat riding.

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