JAKARTA, Indonesia – Shortly after the Manny Pacquiao – Oscar Larios bout at the Araneta Coliseum on July 2, 2006, I traveled to Jakarta and stayed at the JW Marriott hotel located in the heart of what is called the Golden Business Triangle. The Triangle is in the world-class designed commercial district called Mega Kuningan Complex, 21 kilometers from the Soekarno-Hatta international airport.
That visit included dinner in what many local residents say is the finest Japanese restaurant in Jakarta, the Asuka, one of five outstanding lounges and restaurants in Marriott. Dinner was hosted by Filipino expatriate Nicky Santiago, director for Marketing of PT Excelcomindo Pratama, a relatively new but already a major player in Indonesia’s booming and vibrant telecoms industry. Together with four or five other telecommunications companies, Santiago’s outfit is aggressively competing for Indonesia’s huge 220-million population.
Santiago, who earned his spurs in Globe and Smart/PLDT in the ‘90’s, is one of many Filipinos recruited by Indonesian telecoms to streamline operations, product development, sales and marketing initiatives and remain competitive.
Santiago had as his other guest, Vince de Leon, another Filipino expatriate who, together with his Indonesian wife, Angela, founded and runs Tandika, a learning institute for financial services. Tandika recently entered into a partnership with the De La Salle Professional Schools Ramon V. del Rosario Sr. Graduate School of Business, to provide training services to banks, financial and quasi-financial institutions.
As expected, the dinner covered quite a number of topics ranging from Philippine and Indonesian politics, traffic, business practices, differences between Filipino and Indonesian telecoms and, of course sports, including the fabled De La Salle–Ateneo rivalry. Santiago and De Leon are blue-blooded Ateneans.
Coming close on the heels of the Pacquiao-Larios encounter, conversation naturally shifted to the internationally known 28-year-old Filipino boxing icon. Santiago, De Leon and the other Filipinos in the table, spoke of the popularity of Pacquiao among Indonesians. They narrated the Monday morning quarter backing which Indonesian employees of their companies and waiters in restaurants, for example, do right after a Pacquiao fight.
This latest visit was no different from the one I made a little more than a year ago. This time, I arrived Tuesday, Oct. 9, two days after Pacquiao’s fight with Marco Antonio Barrera of Mexico and I had the fortune of stepping again into Marriott’s impressive lobby.
After exchanging pleasantries with the congenial duo of Ms. Tressabel S. Beatrik and Ina Ilmiaviatta, Public Relations coordinator and Marketing and Communications manager, respectively of JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton, I talked to the people behind the Concierge counter (and later on to the hunk of a man who checks on the mini bar in my room and the male receptionist at the Alameda, Marriott’s soothing spa) about a matter of common interest.
As soon as the Marriott staff realized I am Filipino, our conversation drifts toward Pacquiao including an analysis of why Pacquiao was forced to fight Barrera’s fight. Indeed talking about boxing was indeed the best way to make a weary Filipino guest relax and feel very much at home after a journey that started with my waking up at 3 a.m. to catch a 6:30 a.m. flight to Jakarta via Hong Kong and arriving in Jakarta at 1:30 p.m. (2:30 p.m. in Manila).
Total traveling time therefore to nearby Indonesia was an incredible eight hours! Incidentally, this circuitous routing was forced by the heavy bookings occasioned by the end of Ramadan called Hariraya which is equivalent to Christendom’s Christmas.
The JW Marriott of today is a far cry from the hotel that was bombed on Aug. 5, 2003. The bomb exploded in a car in the hotel’s entrance directly opposite the lobby, sending marble panels flying off the walls and knocking off glass panes in the exterior. Eleven Indonesians (including several security guards) and one Dutch were killed while 150 were injured in the blast.
By the end of September, 2003, JW Marriott was back in business. Four years therefore after the blast, JW Marriott’s lobby is set back by about 200 meters from the street.
The new JW Marriott boasts of, among others, 333 beautifully designed rooms, outdoor swimming pool, children’s playground, state-of-the art fitness center and five restaurants and lounges: Sailendra – a multi–level restaurant offering a sensory dining experience; Pearl – authentic Cantonese cuisine with strong emphasis on fresh seafood; JW Lounge – an exotic venue for tea and pastries in the afternoon and where you bump into Indonesia’s “who’s who”; Cake Box – pastry shop offering wide range of confectionary specialties; and Asuka.
