Monday, 10 July 2006 @ 6:23pm.
Last Saturday, there was a huge parade in Central Jakarta for Jakarta’s 479th birthday. Birthday celebrations have been going on for almost a month now actually, but usually the festivities are in North Jakarta, so it was a nice surprise to see the evening parade the other day. Here are some pictures:
This is the Garuda float:
Garuda is a mythical bird or bird-like creature that comes from Hindu mythology and is part of old Indonesian epic stories. Garuda is the legendary mount of Vishnu, a Hindu god. Garuda is an important, powerful symbol in Indonesia. It is on the Indonesian coat of arms for example. The national airline is also called “Garuda.”
The following float is sponsored by Indofood:
Indofood is a popular company in Indonesia. It is most well-known for its instant noodles. In February 2005, Indofood entered the Guinness World Records for “The Largest Packet of Instant Noodles” and also broke the record for “The Largest Serving of Noodles.” The latter involved cooking 30,000 packets of instant noodles.
Instant noodles are hugely popular here. They come in many different flavors - spicy, curry, shrimp, chicken, beef, special local flavors, etc. - and often come with several packets of seasoning, sweet soy sauce or oil, crunchy fried onion bits, and the like. Unfortunately, such food is not very healthy! Perhaps it’s not so bad, though, if you eat the noodles from a local vendor, who usually adds a boiled egg or chicken and some green vegetables… As a sidenote, would you believe there is a blog devoted to instant noodles?!? Click here to see it.
This picture is of a fancy float in the shape of a shrimp:
Shrimp is another popular food in Indonesia, though it’s much more common the closer one is to the ocean of course. There’s the shrimp one eats if it’s grilled, fried, or boiled, but there’s also shrimp paste and shrimp flavorings for different dishes and snacks (e.g., “krupuk” [shrimp-flavored crackers]).
