People-watching at Jakarta’s train station (7 photos)
Two urchins asleep on the floor in the Jakarta Railway Station. Orphans or con artists? When it comes to kids like this, does it matter?
Yesterday the group travelled by train from Jakarta to Yogyakarta. It was our first train ride of the overland trip and, of course, our ‘chariot’ was delayed—by two hours.
But that gave us plenty of opportunity to people-watch in the station.
Some sights were heartwarming, while others were heartbreaking.
We saw quite a few urchins sleeping in the terminal. So very sad, so eye-opening. Were they orphans or con artists? We’ll never know, but they slept soundly and two of them scored some contributions from the group.
There were plenty of people catching a free ride on the top of the commuter trains. Amazing how they manage to get up there. One train roof was packed with several hundred freebie riders, while others had 20 or fewer. Sorry these two pics aren’t better, but it happened so quickly that I barely had time to react.
It was fun to see a train driver getting his meal and water delivered.
Then there were the cleaners—dashing to hop on the train as it rolled into the station. There were 20 or 30 of them and I could have watched them for hours, but won’t bore you with the many pics I took. Thanks goodness a few turned out okay.
Where to next? 
Goodness Peggy! They must have been very agile and desperate to ride for free.
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Some people do it for the adrenaline rush.
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How about women? do they ride on the same train? must be very hard. 😦
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Good question. I can’t remember if it was the case in this train station, but most trains in Indonesia have special carriages for women (and children) only. I think men could ride in those carriages only if they were travelling with their wife.
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