Be sure to check out our new guide to the best places to spend New Year’s Eve 2015 in Jakarta!
Here are the five places you can go to celebrate New Year’s Eve 2014 like a true Jakartan. Mingle with the crowd, taste the best street food the city has to offer, and light up a firework or two when the countdown reaches zero.
Jakarta Night Festival 2015, Monas
For the third year running, the Provincial Government is celebrating New Year’s Eve with the Jakarta Night Festival around the Monas (National Monument) area. This year, there will be 13 stages built along Jalan MH Thamrin and Jalan Medan Merdeka Barat in Central Jakarta that will showcase acts as varied as pop music, wayang, and keroncong.
The Jakarta Night Festival is likely to be the most crowded New Year’s Eve celebration in Jakarta. It might be difficult to get around because of the crowd, but this is a festival you have to experience at least once in your life if you’re a true Jakartan.
Pulau Seribu (Thousand Islands)
Thousands of small islands to choose from (well, not literally, as there are about more than 100 islands in Pulau Seribu). Bring a lot of friends for this one. Get on a ferry, rent cottages, and do pretty much whatever you want as kings of your island.
We recommend a barbecue under the starlight on the beach, or playing the guitar around a bon fire. Just don’t get too sentimental or pretentious, though.
Cottages in Pulau Seribu are very popular and tend to be booked way in advance before New Year’s Eve, so hurry up and book yours now!
Book tour packages to any of Pulau Seribu’s island resorts at www.pulauseribu-resorts.com
Kota Tua, West Jakarta
Kota Tua, with all of its old Dutch colonial buildings, will serve up the most authentic Jakarta atmosphere on New Year’s Eve. It will almost be like every other night in Kota Tua, and in particular the famous Fatahillah Square, except that it will be even more crowded with locals and tourists, so much so that the police are going to cut off the roads leading into Kota Tua to prevent vehicles from getting into the area on New Year’s Eve.
The place will be alive with street performers and all sorts of family-friendly activities. If you’re the environmentally conscious type, you can stick around in Kota Tua the morning after New Year’s Eve to help out cleaning up the area with other volunteers.
Nightclubs
There are a plethora of awesome nightclubs to choose from in Jakarta to spend New Year’s Eve, so we’re listing three of the nightclubs that we think will have the most pumpin’ New Year’s Eve parties:
Skye – From the top of Menara BCA, one of Jakarta’s tallest skyscrapers, you won’t get a better view of the city on New Year’s Eve than at Skye. ‘Skyeve’, the club’s countdown party, opens its doors at 6 PM with a cover charge of Rp 250k. Looking at the event poster (which is definitely going for a Great Gatsby look), this is going to be quite an elegant affair. DJ Aay and Dj Hudi will provide the musical march to midnight.
X2 – The perpetually packed-on-the-weekends nightclub in Plaza Senayan will take on the theme “Mystical Wonderland” for its New Year’s Eve Party. It should be a lavish, colorful (and trippy) way to start the New Year.
Dragonfly – This nightclub in Graha BIP in Jalan Gatot Subroto will play host to Yves V, one of the hottest up-and-coming DJs in the industry, who played on the main stage of Tomorrowland music festival in Belgium this year. ‘Fantasia’, the club’s New Year’s Eve party, will start at 8 PM with a limited presale price of Rp 225k.
Your own backyard
Having your own backyard New Year’s Eve party doesn’t have to be boring as you can celebrate it the Jakarta way – by stocking up on lots of fireworks and competing with other backyard parties to see which has the biggest and loudest kabooms. Fireworks street sellers will be littered all over the city one or two days leading up to New Year’s Eve, but if you want to buy the best and cheapest fireworks, best go right to the source in the streets of Tanah Abang.
Of course, the night wouldn’t be complete without a delicious barbeque. And we hear it’s durian season, too.
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