On Sunday morning, my husband and I joined a fascinating historic tour through Jakarta with around 40 others. The focus was on the forerunner of the Indonesian railway network. The tour led us to the three oldest train stations in Jakarta: Kota, popularly known as Beos, Jatinegara and Pasar Senen.

The tour also visited a number of remarkable places from Scott Merrillees'€™ book Greetings from Jakarta: Postcards of a Capital 1900-1950.

The event was organized by local online community Sahabat Museum (Museum Friends) in order to encourage young people to learn more about the history of Jakarta.

Sahabat Museum invited Scott Merrillees as a guest speaker along with volunteers from the community. Cracking a joke or two, these speakers offered a detailed account of each historical site we visited.

We retraced the history of the city'€™s railways with a ride from the iconic Jakarta Kota station to Jatinegara and then to Pasar Senen. It was as if we had boarded a time-travel train, pulling us back into the past. We were taken on a visual journey through a bygone urban landscape.

Using a blown-up postcard, Scott showed us a time when Jakarta boasted one of the region'€™s most advanced streetcar networks. Taken in the decade before Indonesia declared its independence from the Netherlands, the picture featured an electrical tramline running through Fatahillah Square, the onetime political center of the Dutch East Indies.

The participants also learnt from Aditya, another speaker, that the railway network in Indonesia evolved more than 150 years ago. The first station ever built in Indonesia was not at Jakarta Kota or Tanjung Priok, but rather in Semarang, in 1864, to serve the region rich in sugar cane, coffee, tobacco, teak and other wood.

The participants also took the opportunity to retrace the picture from another old postcard to its modern-day site. Under the scorching sun, we ventured into the sprawling and polluted Jati-negara station, congested with traffic and disorderly rows of market vendors spilling over from the streets, to discover the former Mester market.

The speakers succeeded in turning a history that we might have associated with boredom into a colossal, fascinating journey into the past.

We came to know the beauty of Batavia, the Indonesian capital'€™s colonial past before the massive changes due to massive urbanization and modernization; the beautiful, centuries-old Batavia transformed into the concrete jungle of Jakarta.

What surprised me most were the different age groups present on the tour, with the youngest aged eight. In fact, I did not see many of the wrinkled faces or grey hair commonly associated with fans of museums and history. It'€™s heartening to know that many among the younger generation are interested in the history of the city we live in.

Taking a one-day trip back to the past is amusing. It'€™s lovely to walk around old sites, savoring the remnants of Indonesia'€™s colonial past. Yet it is sad to see that many old buildings have been demolished or left to decay.

It'€™s shocking to discover that so little is being done to protect the architectural heritage of this city.

Perhaps tours like this one are the best way to raise awareness and increase efforts to preserve the city'€™s history.

Yuni Herlina
Depok, West Java

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