Throughout the journey, I’ve seen red-and-white national flags hung from buildings, decorating hotels, restaurants, shops and vehicles, in anticipation of Independence Day on August 17. On the day, I join the crowds at Merdeka Palace, one of the presidential palaces, but Indonesia’s outgoing president, Joko Widodo, is nowhere to be seen. He’s currently in Nusantara, the controversial new capital undergoing construction from scratch hundreds of miles away on the island of Borneo.
This brash, bold move to build a brand new capital from scratch is indicative of Indonesia’s forward momentum in the 21st century, and sums up my time in Java. The old culture and traditions are upheld and respected, finely balanced, but juxtaposed with rapid modernization as seen from the new high-speed railway.
At the end of the line, I found myself surprised by just how much I enjoyed this trip. I have always headed abroad to experience new cultures, traditions, language and cuisine, but I’d realized I can find all that right here in Indonesia—in some ways, it was like going to another country, such is the sprawling variety of Java. Transitioning from one city to the next, I noticed differences between each—sometimes major, sometimes subtle—and passing through one after another, slowly, by train, was the perfect way to do that.
