How safe are you? How safe do you feel? Sometimes these are different questions. And then there’s “adrenalitics”: how safe do you wanna be?
As a general benchmark, I think Jakarta is much safer than San Francisco and New York City. This comes from statistics and reports, and people who’ve lived in these cities, including me. These stats show that, in terms of murder rates, Indonesia is almost the same as Singapore or Japan and much, much safer than countries like South Africa or Colombia.
The Indonesian archipelago, located just above Australia, is the same super-safe baby blue color, except for divided islands.
I note that there may be more guns in Jakarta than previously, which is bad. But having lived in dangerous places, I insist that Jakarta streets are much safer than Central Park or even Disneyland.
Why?
First very few guns.
Second Java is non-confrontation land. It’s not OK to show emotion here, or slam doors — let alone hit people. Let alone shoot people. And this makes a big difference in terms of how safe you are feel.
Third violence around here is often the organized, sanctioned and methodical type (notwithstanding the indigenous origins of the notion of running amok ). Essentially this means that hurting a foreigner could take a lot more “red tape” than a popping local. It will much harder to organize and very bad for you if it backfires.
Fourth while the default setting under the “Strangers” tab, here like most places, is “capture and enslave, ” the Dutch, Javanese, Chinesand the other tasty peoples in these richly-spiced islands long ago discovered optimized, non- or merely semi-confrontational settings for longer life and better performance. Such as: ask questions first, shoot later. Just think of all the popular foreign investment schemes — from marrying a foreigner to expatriate taxation — that require keeping the hapless foreigner alive and well for extended periods.
Fifth people in Jakarta like foreigners. Very much. The list of nationalities that Jakartans know about and feel a connection to is long and sometimes surprising, since it includes ignorant people, people who stand them up again and again, people who lose football matches, even favor former colonizers.
And finally, in a true one-on-one situation (which are rare — bad dude will normally come back with his crew to finish you off tomorrow), the Westerner is going to be be bigger. This helps.
Instant Expat 