Bitching on Kemang Festival, 26 August 2006

The Kemang Festival has been an event that occurs regularly for the last couple of years.  Honestly, today was the first time I went to see what it was all about.  And it was by accident, because I was having a meeting at Aquasport and all my friends decided to take a look at what Kemang Festival has to offer. First of all, the traffic to Kemang was nightmare.  This event has been happening regularly, why can’t they learn from the previous festivals on managing the traffic? The bitching starts. Anyways, I took the wrong road to reach Aquasport: I went through Warung Buncit from Kuningan, and turned right to Duren Bangka, go across the McDonald’s junction to reach Bangka Raya.  Should have taken the Kapten Tendean Road.  

Believe me or not, it took me about 1.5 hours to reach Aquasport.  This is how bad the traffic was:  I was able to put cutex on my toes on the way to my destination.  After the meeting, we decided to take a stroll to the Kemang Festival.  Due to the traffic, we used the ojek to reach the McD junction.  So, this whole deal, is all these stands mostly selling clothes, accessories, bags, etc.  Checking on the quality and the price of the merchandises, you can actually get better price by shopping at the Mall Ambassador or ITC, where there is air conditioner and the setting is more convenient for shopping.  Most of the things they sell are the same along the road, nothing unique, nothing exotic.  After walking for 30 minutes, we got bored and confused already.  So we decided to by yoghurt to refresh ourselves.  When we were trying to throw away the plastic cup, hey, where is the trashbin?  Looked around, being a good citizen to throw away trash, walked up the road a bit, and there was one little trash bin across the street.  Bitching continues: not enough trash bin around to accommodate the trash for thousands of people in the festival.  

Walking back to where our cars were parked (Aquasport), the traffic was still bad and it was already 9:00 PM.  Every space was used for parking.  I wonder how people that lives at the festival area reach their homes.   All in all, the festival was not impressive at all.  It causes traffic everywhere, parking spot was difficult, the merchandise was not impressive and monotone, not enough trash bins, people throwing their trash on the street, and not that many police around.  One would expect that the Kemang Festival would be more organized after having this event several times.  Nope.