Yet if you look beyond the concrete and the chaos, you’ll also find an odd sort of calm. That’s right: calm.

Flying in by day, Jakarta’s patchwork of terracotta rooftops rears up in the window frame like a vast game of Tetris. Arriving at night, the city appears suddenly from the blackness of the Java Sea, a twinkling bloom of phosphorescent creatures risen from the deep to spawn in the moonlight.

At street level, walk in any direction for more than 10 minutes and you’ll soon find yourself in one of Jakarta’s many kampung (villages). These labyrinthine backstreets are home to the vast majority of the city’s 10 million souls, but the pace of life has a distinctly rural feel. Songbirds warble from ornate wooden cages hanging in the eaves of houses, children fly paper kites from bridges and batik fabrics dry alongside sleepy cats in the sun. In this tangled warren, unlikely encounters lurk around every corner and infinite adventures are waiting to unfold, so long as you’re willing to say ‘yes’. Come in and join this wedding? Yes. Star in a music video? Yes! Care for a doughnut? Um… maybe next time?