Surabaya Dusk ‘til Dawn

Every town shows a different face at night; Surabaya, little more than a vast collection of villages by day, seems like a real city after dark.  Tim Hannigan crisscrosses the city by motorbike to explore its nocturnal side.

The resounding call to prayer signifies that night is about to fall; by 7 p.m., the traffic is at its thickest, roaring through the web of one-way streets that wrap around Surabaya’s modern downtown. 

The crushing heat of the day has passed and people are outside, relaxing; cafes and ice cream parlors are packed. Taman Bungkul, one of Surabaya’s few public spaces, is crowded with families.  Teenagers in baggy jeans practice their skateboard tricks on the ramps and railings, and kids play with the cheap plastic toys sold by wandering vendors. 

And I am hungry.

Food is a passion in Surabaya, and the best place to eat is on the streets.  Since sunset the roadsides have been lined with makeshift cafes.  Each has a specialty, from the ubiquitous nasi goreng to obscure regional dishes.  Some are mediocre, some are excellent and some are famous.  Roti Bakar Citras is in the latter category.  On a roaring side street off Jl. Kertajaya, wonky tables are set up along a narrow strip of pavement. 

I order a sweet coffee – the first of many tonight – and one of Citras’ famed toasted sandwiches.

9.30 p.m.; north of the city center, past the Heroes Monument, towering into steamy darkness, along dark streets to Chinatown. The thoroughfare of Kembang Jepun is closed to traffic and plastic chairs and tables are set out under the red Chinese lanterns.  This is Kya Kya, the al fresco dining strip held every night.  At the end of the street a gaggle of women – of a certain age – are slyly knocking back Bintang beer and dancing enthusiastically to karaoke dangdut. 

From Kya Kya I drive east, way out into the suburbs along streets where lamps burn in simple night stalls, and burly security guards lounge at the gates of middle-class compounds.  Jembatan Merr, the bridge over Kali Jagir, is packed.  Pavements are lined with worn mats and low tables, crowded with young couples.  Coffee again for me, and some steamed peanuts in a twist of old newspaper from a vendor. 

It is after 11 p.m. and I notice that the traffic has thinned, with only a few motorbikes streaking through the night.  I finish my coffee, drop a few coins in the cup of the buskers playing battered guitars and head back for the center.

Midnight.  The downtown streets have an edgier feel.  Shops and restaurants are closed, though here and there lights blaze in an all-night warung or internet café.  Huge mobs of youths in skin-tight jeans and black sweatshirts crowd the pavements, vigorously revving the engines of their motorbikes.  Every Saturday these motorbike gangs gather in Surabaya, racing along dark streets and cruising the city in convoy. 

I fall in among one of the gangs for a while, and they call out cheerily to me despite their sinister appearance: “Hello mister!  Good evening!”

I make a sharp turn into a side street to avoid a police checkpoint and head north again.  The streets of the Old City are eerily empty.  I catch the smell of garlic and onion skins, and see one ghostly becak creaking through the night.  This part of the city, with its narrow alleys and derelict shop-houses, is a creepy place at night and I am glad when I see bright lights on a street between Chinatown and the Arab Quarter.  Men in rubber boots are lugging barrels of fish from trucks and tough Madurese women are haggling over prices. The fish market has been open since late afternoon and the ground is slimy underfoot. The air is pungent with the smells of fish and kretek cigarette smoke.

Tiredness creeps up. 

The dark band of the Kalimas River cuts through the night as I speed along empty streets.  The next two hours blur into a jumble of brief images: a pair of youths in hooded sweatshirts furtively marking a wall with graffiti; a group of men seated around a television in a narrow, blue-walled room;  streetwalkers of questionable gender stepping suddenly from the shadows; the shark-and-crocodile statue that commemorates Surabaya’s founding myth starkly white in the darkness; an enormous transvestite in a limp red dress striding along the cracked pavement, and the shadowy outlines of becak, loaded with mysterious bundles, rolling through the gloom.

I am tired, and hungry, and surprisingly cold.  I find a simple all-night café on Jl. Majend Sungkono. Indonesian pop music is playing on the stereo, and a boy with weary eyes serves me a bowl of soto – the Madurese version – and a cup of sweet, grainy coffee. 

A shining SUV pulls up on the street outside.  Three obviously drunk men stumble out and order food.  I have a good idea where they have come from: most of Surabaya may be sleeping, but there is a place where there’s still something going on.

3 a.m. – Jl. Dolly.  Somewhere among the graveyards and working-class kampongs on the high ground above the Banyu Urip Canal the narrow streets of Dolly and Jl. Jarak are packed.  Taxis and motorbikes clog the road and the throb of high-volume dangdut music shakes the air. 

This is Surabaya’s most notorious corner, claimed – wrongly, apparently -- to be Southeast Asia’s biggest red-light district.  Wonky neon signs glow along the

shop-fronts and bright strip lights shine in big-windowed “guesthouses” where bored women with blond-streaked hair and short skirts lounge on sofas, waiting.  I’m too tired to face the rough gloom of the dangdut bars, so I opt for a soft drink at a roadside stall. 

No one bothers me and the place seems lively, almost festive.  But I remember the reports I read almost weekly in the Jawa Pos newspaper of trafficked women, some of them horrifyingly young, in the brothels here: there is a darker side.

As I leave Dolly I sense a change in the rhythm of the night.  The darkness is as heavy as ever, but there is a little more traffic on the roads: the people who have been awake all night are beginning to meet the early risers of the coming day.

Beside the river the Keputran vegetable market is a blaze of light.  All night trucks have been rolling in from the East Java hinterland and porters squelch through the mud under enormous loads of carrots, onions and beans.  The workers and stallholders seem to get through the night on a brew of ready humor and I am met with cheerful greetings and bursts of riotous laughter. 

Then I hear something above the voices: the loudspeaker of a mosque across the river has been switched on and a taped prayer is playing into the darkness.  The end of the night is within reach.

As I ride away from the mosque people are out jogging in the first light.  Buses and trucks are rolling on the big streets now and a pearly color is leaching into the sky.  The new day is beginning and Surabaya is showing a different face.  But I am going to bed …

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