Carolyn Steel: How food shapes our cities

Next travel stop: Indonesia's slums | ABS-CBN News | Latest Philippine Headlines, Breaking News, Video, Analysis, Features JAKARTA - Gridlocked traffic, filthy rivers, air that tastes of diesel -- there is much that keeps Indonesia's capital Jakarta off the global tourist map. But for broke filmmaker Ronny Poluan, there is plenty of interest amid the squalor of a city of up to 12 million people, where nearly half the population lives in slums jammed between shopping malls and luxury homes. Poluan's "Jakarta Hidden Tours," running more or less regularly since 2008, take small paying groups of foreigners to the city's warrens, river banks and rail lines to meet those whom he calls "the real people". Wizened 53-year-old Sana is one of them. Standing near a shack built on the edge of the tracks, she tells a group of half a dozen Australians about the local slum dweller's weekly dance with the authorities. Friday to Sunday, Sana said, the rows of shacks that spread off into the horizon are home. "If we don't hurry they take our things," she said. But this cash-in-hand approach has plenty of critics.

Jakarta Hidden Tours