Public Transport and Cashless Economy
An unattainable joy and an attainable one.
This is a birthday post that is not about birthday reflection. I think I’ve done the reflection in the past two entries, and well, I (and you, loyal reader) have known how I got here and what to do next. And yet, I’m pleased to share some thoughts about two of my favorite things: public transport and digital payment.
I’m reviewing a very technical, very businesslike library book on the Octopus card, which started as a contactless card for the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway and quickly became the everything card for the Hong Kong economy. For convenience store. For social benefits. For apartment access. It’s a 20-year-old technology still central to Hong Kongers' lives.
I think I still have mine and intend to take a picture of it as a review illustration. As a tourist back in 2017 I used it for the subway and probably to buy some things at KFC and 7-Eleven as well. And yes, I positively used it at the Hong Kong Disneyland.
I was more used to Singapore’s NETS FlashPay card, and the book does a comparison between Hong Kong’s Octopus and Singapore’s EZ-Link. Octopus is more widely accepted in non-transport merchants, while EZ-Link is applicable to pay taxis and tolls, two things that Octopus cannot deal with, as toll operators and taxi associations see no point in accepting Octopus. For locals, and maybe seasoned visitors, Octopus needs no constant top-up as the value can be linked to an associated bank or credit card account, and a lost card can be blocked in three hours.
It's the same case for people with Singaporean bank accounts who can link their account to the NETS card, but EZ-Link is used mainly for transport purposes, with more limited ranges for non-transport payments. It also works in 7-Eleven and Starbucks.
Reading the book led me to rue the fact that I’m not in Hong Kong or Singapore, but more of that later. It led me to rue the fact that I have no public transport in Bandung. We had unscheduled, unincorporated minibusses that I had ridden a couple of times. We have good taxis. We have buses that are countable as well as bus shelters that are never used. And good share-ride apps.
Because there is a negligible operation of public transport, there is no public transport card. After all, it only exists in developed countries. But to cheat the evolution tree, there are plenty of contactless, cashless payment options. Banks have their contactless smart cards that are mainly used to pay tolls and parking, which are also applicable in convenience stores buses, and trains around Jakarta. I had one in Scooby Doo illustration and my active one has the picture of Brie Larson as Captain Marvel.
And that’s the late 2000s technology. Share ride apps arrived in Indonesia in the mid-2010s as the public could have a 4G phone and home Wi-Fi had become more affordable as well. Uber pulled out from Southeast Asia in a short time and left the competition to Singapore’s Grab and Indonesia’s Gojek. Both apps have payment systems that expand wide to cover everything: Phone and home Internet bills, mall merchants, video game vouchers, and online stores.
A couple of new technologies appeared in the late 2010s too that even challenged the prominence of Octopus in Hong Kong. Apple & Google Pay (both cannot be used for contactless payments in Indonesia). International debit cards including e-cards for international shopping. QR codes. I use them all. The Indonesian government pushes the universal QRIS system that can be linked to bank or share-ride apps. I have been cashless throughout the 2020s and no longer use my credit card since now I can pay for Substack subscriptions with an electronic debit card.
The last two years of my life, the happiest years of my life, are a meditation on the separation of physical reality and virtual reality. Physically I live in what I deem as the most liveable city in Indonesia. Statistics say it’s Yogyakarta with its cultural and academic scenes, but I disagree. Too small, too Leftie (think of Berlin or Canberra), maybe too Sinophobic. I believe there are many assimilated Chinese there who truly love Javanese culture, but we legally cannot own land there.
Bandung, meanwhile, was designed by the Dutch as the new colonial capital for many reasons. Cooler at the height of 700 meters, 2200 feet above sea level. Art Deco and other pre-war architecture. Much more navigable than the bloated Jakarta. Comparable amenities to Jakarta. It only lacks two items: High-paying jobs and consequently, a lack of white residents, who are concentrated in both Jakarta and Bali.
And well, metro railway. The Jakarta MRT is also a new addition, and I tried it in 2023. I paid the fares with my Brie Larson contactless card, and despite the horrible pollution (Jakarta has always had horrid air since its foundation centuries ago), dodgy stairs, and lack of comfortable connection outside the stations, the train itself was safe and clean, which cannot be said of many subway systems in the West today. The secret is too simple: Law enforcement. Which is not enforced in the West because the authorities fear being labeled racist.
At this point I’m thankful I’m not a Hong Konger as well. Sure, it has its perks, and a lot of letdowns. Living under China’s constant bullying. Super stressed life. I never forget the sight of a Hong Kong salaryman of my age despairing on the street while a pair of African men passing by him, laughing among themselves. A very unscientific talk somewhere in a forum or on Twitter said that the odds of seeing a Hong Kong man dating a white woman is 1:10,000 if not 100,000, and I still don’t understand why. Certainly, I had seen Chinese man – white woman couples in Singapore but I didn’t see one in Hong Kong, with the caveats that I went to Singapore more often, and that they could be Canadian or American tourists like the ones I encountered in Sweden, and interestingly the more common couples in Singapore were seniors instead of youth.
Finally, the tragic stories of Hong Kongers who migrated to Canada in the 1990s, for some reason feeling jaded or disappointed and returned to Hong Kong in the 2000s, only to try to return to Canada again in the 2020s. Again, I wonder what made them miss Hong Kong and what they didn’t like about living in Canada. Surely, they couldn’t miss the Octopus card that bad, as it didn’t exist in the 1990s.
That’s my life for now. I don’t get to ride the subways of Singapore and Hong Kong. I could buy some Australian products but not Japanese ones (the Southeast Asian version of Japanese soaps is inferior, according to the purchasing power). I dislike the reality that I live in the bad part instead of a good part of Asia – as usual, while I had the chance of migrating to Australia.
On the other hand, I’m not sure why, but we might not be mutual had I been a Hong Konger or Singaporean. There’s no good reason why a Singaporean or Hong Konger could not support your writing giving input on your minor predicaments or cheering you up, but it fell to this Indonesian. I’m more than welcome to have another Indonesian, or Asian on board. I’ve finally got to know a conservative Singaporean woman on X, we agree that it’s very hard to find a conservative Singaporean on X (most are far left, that’s another mystery), and I’m more than happy that she often takes pictures of Singapore, now arguably the most well-run city in history (Tokyo, I’m waiting for your response). The closest Hong Konger I know in my life is living in Paris.
In 2021-22 I watched a lot of HGTV and wished that I could get to know many apolitical, non-Leftie Americans. God answered that prayer, and every time I watch HGTV and TLC I cannot believe my blessing of being welcomed into the cyber-suburbia. A similar thing happens here – I don’t have the subway, but I could talk and empathize with many more people possible than had I got the subway. Life is strange.