Inconvenient Scenery of Ciliwung Riverside Settlements

Probably, Bogor Tourist Promotion Agency will damn me, or at least yell at me if they know that I tell people about the views captured not too long ago while I was waiting for my son in one part of Bogor. Honestly, there is a bit of guilty feeling to write this article, especially in English that may reach more people from overseas than Indonesian.

This may disrupt their effort to nuilt an image of Bogor City as a beautiful place worth to visit by foreign tourists. I understand they have done lots of work and spent lots of energy and time to setup such image.

I apologize for this. However, I believe it is also quite fair to tell the people truthfully. It doesn’t mean to ruin anything but just to give a more balance story about the city. Bogor is not a heaven but it is far from a hell. It is a nice and beautiful city but at the same time, it has also some bad sides as well. It is not different from all other cities in the world, it has two sides.

You can know what views I would like to show you if you scroll down this articles. There are few photos taken in a place near Pajajaran Street, not far away from the famous Bogor Botanical Gardens.

Those scenery for sure look awful and inconvenient, especially if you are a tourist coming to the city to find something beautiful and fabulous.

Definitely not.

The pictures show a riverside settlements on Ciliwung river, a river that flows through the city. This is the same stream that often flood Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia.

Do you agree with me that those riverside settlement scenery are not convenient to see, even for locals.

What are shown are still parts of Bogor. Like many other modern cities in the world, the city has been facing common problems of having limited land and the rapid growth of population.

The land price has been becoming more and more expensive year by year. Not all people can afford the current price of land. Unfortunately, they need a place to living, even though it is near the side of river which is actually not allocated for housing.

It won’t be fair as well if I don’t tell that although you and I may have uneasiness to see such views, people who lives in the settlemement don’t have the same feeling with us. Looking from the comment from some persons who were residents on Facebook, when I posted the pictures, they feel it is OK to live on riverside.

Even, some of them told about how the situation when the heavy flow occurred in rainy season as if they were in amusement park. For sure, it was because they adapted with the situation so well.

However, many others also feel that there should be a way to solve this kind of problem. The scenery besides inconvenient also show another thing, it is about how rivers in Bogor has been in critical condition due to this.

There should be a solution to normalize the river back to its original function as a river but still provide Bogor citizens who live there a more proper house and environment of living.

We believe there is.

Anyway, it is our problem, Bogor problem, not yours, if you are just tourists that want to relax in our city. We will find the way. This short story should only be considered something to add your knowledge about my city, my lovely Bogor.

O yeah.. I still feel Bogor is lovely although I know it has a bad part. That is why I make this blog to tell the world about how lovely my hometown is. But, with the consciousness that every city has some bad side as well, and there is no expection for Bogor. It does have the same side as well like you see in this article.