🇮🇩 Indonesia
Jakarta
Jakarta (the capital and largest city of Indonesia — 10.6 million in the DKI Jakarta province, 32+ million in the Greater Jakarta (Jabodetabek) metropolitan area, the largest urban area in the Southern Hemisphere and the 2nd largest in Asia after Tokyo) is the political, economic, and cultural center of the world's 4th most populous country and the largest Muslim-majority nation on Earth (Indonesia: 277 million people, 87% Muslim). Jakarta was established as the Dutch colonial trading post of Batavia (Batavia was founded by Jan Pieterszoon Coen of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in 1619 on the site of the Sundanese port of Jayakarta — the Dutch name of "Batavia" gave way to "Batavia" for 300 years until the Japanese occupation renamed it "Djakarta" in 1942 and Indonesian independence confirmed the name). The city is a fascinating contradiction: the old Kota Tua (old Dutch colonial city) with its 17th-century VOC warehouses and the Fatahillah Square (the former Stadhuis, or city hall of Batavia), beside one of the most intense modern megacity landscapes in Southeast Asia — the Semanggi interchange cloverleaf, the Jakarta BRT (TransJakarta — the longest Bus Rapid Transit network in the world: 241 km of dedicated bus lanes), and the vast shopping malls of the new CBD around Sudirman and Kuningan.