Jakarta Car Rally
You wouldn’t know what country you were in if I took a snapshot of my day in Jakarta last week. While this was somewhat unexpected a friend of mine arranged that I go with him and his Lamborghini to a massive car event.
The car event is put on by DNC Day and Night Car Club. This is no ordinary car club. Oh no this was pretty wild. We met up at Pik, which is a newly built city and you swear you were anywhere else but Jakarta. We were up early, 5 am to be exact, and rolled toward the event without even a coffee or breakfast. Off we went and with the top up on the Gallardo Spyder we rolled into the event. The drive was about 35 minutes and along the way, we rolled with Porsches, Ferraris, BMWs, Mercedes, and an AC Cobra replica.
Rolling into Pik
Pik is a man-made land extension essentially that has sprouted up with nearly 90 percent Chinese population in the area. This place is big with palm tree lined shopping mall roads that mimic Beverly Hills.
This place looked fancy, not to mention the rest of the cars that were rolling in as we drove on. Ferrari’s and Lamborghini’s were catching up and passing us. Despite all the crazy cars made for speed, not one single burnout was done, no smoke shows or tire squealing. This was rather unexpected. I was expecting to see some donuts and smoke shows but it was a classy show. We rolled on in and were led to the front of the line because we were in a Lambo. Now with the top down, I put on my hat so I wouldn’t cook and turn red like a lobster.
On we went.
The whole trip was planned to be about 3 hours. I was sure I would get burned somewhere, somehow on my body, but I didn’t. We drove out to the highway and headed to the center of Jakarta and drove right by my hotel The Grand Hyatt. I made a ton of TikTok videos, one of which went viral because a cop pulled us over.
The cop incident is kinda funny and stupid at the same time. The traffic laws in Indonesia are such that in a convertible…
“The occupants must wear a helmet”
Yup, but we got pulled over because we drove on the shoulder of the road, but then so was everyone else. Being a Bule in the Lambo, I was sure they would ask us for money. But I took out my phone and began recording the interaction and in the end, they let us go. The video has over 300,000 views and counting.
However, this is not the topic here. The car event was well done, organized, and clean. No close calls, not a scary event of any kind. The big plus here is that unlike in Canada, where there is a war on any car JDM or tuner cars, here the police were directing traffic for us and took pleasure in seeing the millions and millions of dollars’ worth of art on wheels roll down the city streets.
This was by far the event of a lifetime for me. When people ask me why I love Indonesia… The answer is always because I have had amazing experiences in Indonesia. This too was one hell of an experience and I cannot wait to do another one.
