TheJakartaPost
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Expat, local residents swarm Christmas market in tropical Jakarta
An online marketplace has held its first seasonal pop-up market that promotes Indonesia-made products.
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A visitor leaves a store selling Christmas decorations at Asemka Market on Wednesday in West Jakarta. Seasonal stores are seeing a surge in customers as Christmas approaches. (The Jakarta Post/Wendra Ajistyatama)
Christmas markets are a well-known German tradition and pop up all over the country during the festive season.
German national Thomas Weinmueller, however, faced a different situation ahead of the yearend holiday season in Indonesia, where he has been living for nearly two years: A Christmas market is rarely found here and if there is one, it is held on a bright, sunny day.
The 49-year-old father of two said that he usually started decorating his house at the end of November in his home country. He followed the family tradition during their first Christmas in Indonesia last year, and also played “particular songs to get a bit of feeling of Christmas”.
So when a Christmas-themed bazaar opened in Setiabudi, South Jakarta, he decided to pay a visit with his family, browsing each booth at the bazaar on Sunday.
“Since there are not so many Christmas markets [in Jakarta], whenever there is, we will [go take a look] and see what they offer,” Weinmueller told The Jakarta Post.He also plans to go to the Christmas market that the German community in Jakarta will hold next month.
The three-day seasonal holiday bazaar on Nov. 15-17 was organized by Ku Ka specifically for promoting local products, and was the first among the nine offline markets that the online marketplace had held since 2017.
“After our latest offline market in September ended, some customers and sellers asked us to create a yearend special edition [bazaar], because people would start looking for gifts,” Ku Ka manager Rilia Marina Lalamentik told the Post at the bazaar, which was held at the site of the former Batik 81 textile factory.
