When the Chinese traveller Chau Ju Kua came to Palembang in the twelfth century, he described Sriwijaya in most unexpected terms. He wrote, “The people either lived scattered about, outside the city, or on the water on rafts of boards covered over with reeds, and these (floating houses) are exempt from taxation.” This description of a floating city comes from classical Sriwijaya’s period of decline. Within living memory it was still much more a ‘city afloat’ than it is today. Friedrich Schnitger, the first man to write a book about Sumatran archaeology, investigated Palembang during the 1930s. The German was interested mostly in ancient inscriptions and statues, but in one of his most lyrical and romantic passages, he describes a city that was still partly ‘floating:
On moonlit nights, young Malays of Palembang hire a boat and go rowing with their sweethearts. They glide past the Chinese houses…
When it was time to leave Palembang, we decided to go by train, presuming it could scarcely be as shambolic as the rest of the city’s transport. While its becak and taxi drivers were a motley collection of drunks and thieves, we couldn’t imagine an entire railway system falling into the hands of the mafia. We were wrong, of course, and really we had no one but ourselves to blame; one of our guidebooks had warned us off Kertapati train station, depicting it as a viper’s nest of gangsters and lowlifes. The book dated back to the mid 1990s, so we had presumed, erroneously, that things might have changed in the last fourteen years. Thinking we knew better, we decided to check it out ourselves.
The station was set behind the Ogan Mosque, at the confluence of the Musi and Ogan Rivers. We went by minibus, crossing the Ampera Bridge and heading out through Palembang’s Ulu side of town, a rather run-down and impoverished district. Just before the station was the Wilhemina Bridge, spanning the Ogan River, just back from its mouth. Having crossed the bridge, we tapped on the roof, indicating that we wanted to get down. The minibus pulled over to the left and we climbed out through the narrow doorway, all legs and arms. On the other side of the road was Kertapati train station.
We crossed the road, finding a chain-link fence of the sort used to enclose industrial sites- the whole place had an abandoned look. At the entrance gate, someone told us that it was ‘Tutup’: closed. He probably thought he was being helpful, but as the messenger of bad news, he hardly endeared himself to us; we walked off, muttering darkly about busybodies. When we reached the main building- a singularly unimpressive structure- we found that it was indeed closed. There were a few men lingering on the front steps who explained that the ticket office opened for only two hours a day, from 4 to 6 p.m. But they assured us that they were the answer to our problems, offering to sell us scalped tickets on today’s train service to Lubuk Linggau. Anyone who ever seen a single B-grade action flick would have known better than to trust these dodgy characters, with their moustaches, leather jackets and hood-like machismo. We left, debating whether or not to try again in the official opening hours. In the end, we decided to give it another go, coming back at half past three.
Kertapati Train Station
In the meantime, Kertapati had undergone a transformation. The small group of scalpers and idlers on the front steps had increased threefold, and with the platforms now opened, numerous other categories of person had arrived on the scene. Passengers sat about with their piles of taped-up boxes, contemplating the trip upcountry, and noisy troops of schoolboys ran about, laughing and joking, in all likelihood having no other playground in the neighborhood. One particularly pesky group followed us about, daring each other to scream out ‘Mister’ and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Vendors had also arrived during our absence, offering rice parcels, diced fruit or packets of tempe, a popular kind of bean-curd. The only thing missing was the obvious presence of officialdom, though after a long search we did find one uniformed man, who stood looking at a train, as if trying to make it move by force of willpower alone. We approached him and asked where the stationmaster’s office was. He waved in the general direction of the building behind but said nothing.
I wanted to blow a little steam by telling the station master what he thought of the scalpers being able to operate with such impunity. The black market dealings were so blatant that they must have had the station master’s consent; no doubt he was getting his cut of the proceeds. But over time we had learnt that it was better to voice our complaints rather than let them stew, so off we set, expecting either blank-faced incredulity or nervous laughter.
When we got there, the door was open, and there were three men sitting inside.
“Is this the stationmaster’s office?” we asked.
Though it said so over the door, we had been thrown by the appearance of men in plain clothes, seated at the desks.
None of them answered, so we asked again. This time one of them confirmed that it was the stationmaster’s office, asking what he could do for us.
I explained that he was upset and disappointed by the number of scalpers about badgering passengers. I said that surely scalping was illegal and wondered why the station officials were so willing to tolerate criminal activity. At this point one of the men asked where we wanted to travel to, saying he might be able to help us. We told him our destination was Lahat, wondering what this had to do with anything. He said he had some tickets there and asked if we interested in buying them. Cameron asked him if he was railway staff, and he confessed that he wasn’t. I asked where the stationmaster was, and he said that he hadn’t come in yet- maybe we could meet him around 4 p.m. We then knew with complete certainty that preman–small time gangsters- not only had control of the entrance to the station but of the stationmaster’s office itself. I laughed aloud, telling them it was ‘parah sekali’, desperately bad, that the likes of them should be tolerated.
We walked out of the office and around to the front of the station, joining the queue in the ticket office.
“Look at that,” said Cameron with contempt, pointing out a huge banner which said the scalping of tickets was strictly prohibited and offenders would be reported to the authorities.
The pretense of integrity is familiar to anyone who knows Indonesia well. There are endless declarations that corruption will be stamped out and even oath-taking ceremonies in which civil servants disavow the nefarious ways of the past. Of course what ensues is ever more devious and byzantine corruption schemes. When the KPK, the leading anti-corruption agency, conduct raids on government offices, they often find envelopes stuffed with ‘lunch money’, relayed about by networks of office boys, janitors and toilet cleaners. These reports have given us the impression that the life of the Indonesian public servant is a cloak and dagger affair, resembling in many respects the world of international espionage. Yet accustomed as we were to the parlous station of public administration, Kertapati train station was still a surprise. Whereas corruption was usually a back room affair, on the Sumatran railways it took place in broad daylight, right beneath a banner asking you to report it to the police.
We were third in the queue, a position we had to fight hard to defend from a drunk who kept trying to barge through. We told him to queue like everyone else, refusing to let him past. But every other minute or so, he kept trying to push by on one side or the other. Unlike in Australia, public drunkenness is not a common sight in Indonesia. Whereas many Indonesian Muslims drink occasionally, it is usually done discreetly, certainly not paraded about for all and sundry. Yet this was our second run-in with a drunk local since we had arrived in Palembang. Combined with the evidence we had seen of pervasive low-scale lawlessness, this created a rather unfavorable impression. When Indonesian friends had warned us that Palembang was Kota Preman, the city of gangsters, we had dismissed this as uninformed prejudice. We were beginning to think that the city may indeed have a serious law and order problem.
The counter finally opened at 4 p.m., and the two customers before us were served in a matter of minutes. Arriving at the ticket counter, we said we wanted to buy two first-class tickets on the evening service to Lahat. The women at the counter shook her head, telling us that the train was sold out. This seemed preposterous, as there had been only two people in the line before us. We asked if it was possible to buy tickets for the following day and she confirmed that it was not; you could only buy tickets on the day of departure. We double-checked that there were absolutely no first-class seats for today’s service, despite the fact that the window had only opened a few minutes before. She said this was right. We asked her what tickets the customers before us had bought and she explained that there were travelling on the other line to Tanjungkarang. There were still tickets on that service, but there were no seats to Lahat at all. We asked if she was really telling us that every seat in the first-class carriage had been sold to scalpers, and she confirmed that this was the case, suggesting that we strike a deal with one of them: there were plenty to choose from. Realizing how hopeless the situation was, we walked off, shaking our heads in wonder. Though we cursed Kertapati train station at the time, in retrospect, it provides a valuable introduction to Indonesia’s sick bureaucracy. Where else is every last train seat auctioned off on the black market
As we have already said, Palembang is not a city with a high profile. Few people in Western countries are likely to have heard of it, let alone consider it as a tourist destination. In all our trips to the city, we have encountered only a handful of Westerners, none of them backpackers. The majority, expats working in the oil industry, have come for the money, not the chance to explore a little-known corner of the world. As the major tourist areas of the island are far off, in West Sumatra and North Sumatra, it does not even see travellers on the way to somewhere else. Therefore, the guide books have tended to cover the city in a rather perfunctory manner. This is a shame, because a quick look around downtown and the riverfront will not do the city justice. To get an appreciation of Palembang, you need to get out onto the Musi River and explore its traditional kampungs. However, the poverty, neglect and grime, which are such a feature of ‘old Palembang’, are likely to deter visitors from engaging in detailed exploration. This means that Palembang is still vastly under-rated as an historical destination. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the case of colonial Palembang- a part of the city which none of the travel guides even acknowledge as existing. Therefore, our ‘discovery’ of colonial Palembang was quite inadvertent. It just so happened that the Hotel Swarna Dwipa was set right in the middle of the former Dutch cantonment.
Right in front of the hotel was a pretty little park, set about a lake. In many places this might not seem remarkable, but it is most unusual to find green space near the centre of a major Indonesian city. Public space of any description is a rarity in Indonesian cities, the accent being on development at any cost. Yet the need for it is emphasized by this park’s popularity with the citizens of Palembang. The first night of our stay at the Swarna Dwipa was a Saturday, and when we went out for an evening stroll, we found the area around the lake quite a hive of activity. It seemed that on Saturday nights local youth turned up on motorbikes to hang out with their friends, or, just as often, girlfriends. The dark streets around the park provided a little bit of privacy for young couples. The larger groups socialized in the gregarious mode of young Indonesians, with laughter, noisy banter and even bursts of song. They sometimes bought cigarettes, boiled peanuts or fried rice from the little stalls that were set up on the roadside. For the better-heeled, there were cafes and restaurants, with terraces looking out at the lake and the coloured lights that had been added to the trees. These too were popular with young couples out on dates.
The lake- perhaps more of a pond, really- was set right at the heart of the former colonial cantonment. The streets around there still contained quite a number of Dutch houses. Like elsewhere in Indonesia, most of these were homely bungalows, with pretty, little gardens. The streets were lined with shade trees, a common practice in colonial times, but one which has not been followed since Independence. Many local governments now pay lip service to ‘greener’ government, but it is exhaust fumes, rather than greenery, which is the most common feature of larger urban areas. This is one reason why the former colonial neighbourhoods are still amongst the most desirable residential areas in larger cities, like Jakarta, Medan and Bandung. Like elsewhere in the developing world, the hard anti-imperialist attitudes of post-Independence rulers did not prevent them from moving straight into the villas of their former colonial masters. This pattern is also in evidence in Palembang. Just behind the pond is the grandest of these houses, a large, white colonial mansion, with stately columns in front. When we stopped to buy a cone of boiled peanuts, the vendor told us that it was now the residence of the governor of South Sumatra. We have no idea whether he was correct, but the armed guards at the front gate certainly suggested that some important personage lived inside; clearly, the new elite are no less keen than their Dutch forebears on keeping out ‘the mob’.
The following morning, we got up, intent on a walking tour of the area. We made an early start, expecting the heat to be intense by mid-morning. We soon found that it was the area as a whole, rather than specific ‘monuments’, which were the real attraction. But of course, some buildings were more noteworthy than others. Our first find was the textiles museum, on the corner opposite the park. Considering Palembang’s rich textiles tradition, this seemed promising. It was housed in an attractive building, in the tropical colonial style, with opened shutters on the windows. The ‘period’ feel was added to by the old cannons sitting out on the front lawn. Unfortunately, on that, and all subsequent visits to the city, the museum was closed. A worker claimed that this was due to renovations- and he was carrying a ladder- but, somehow, he did not leave us with the expectation that the museum would be opening anytime soon. The traveller wishing to learn about songket is best advised to visit a commercial showroom.
In the street behind the unsociable textiles museum was a small, out-of the-way Chinese temple, which looked very attractive, lit up by votive candles. Early morning devotees from the large Chinese Indonesian community were lighting incense sticks and candles in the altar hall. Having looked at this, we turned back and followed the street between the lake and the alun-alun. The buildings along this street formed the core of the city’s colonial-era administrative district, but many of the buildings have been insensitively modernized. Art-deco buildings from the 1930s have had black tinted windows and modern signage added, which substantially reduces their heritage feel. Fortunately the most important colonial building, Kantor Ledeng, is still in excellent condition. For us, this unusual building proved to be one of the city’s most interesting sights.
The town hall of Palembang
Today, the Kantor Ledeng is the office of the mayor of the city of Palembang. But it dates back to the end of the 1920s, when it was commissioned by the Dutch colonial administration. A multi-purpose design was created, whereby a thirty-five meter water tower was built on top of a boxish, flat-roofed office. The tower had a capacity of twelve hundred cubic metres- enough to distribute clean water to the whole colonial district. It was therefore an essential part of plans to make Palembang more amenable for its Dutch residents. But as a symbol of Dutch ambitions and authority, it was to assume symbolic significance in later decades. During the Second World War, drawn by the area’s rich oilfields, the Japanese gained control of the area. As a sign of the new political order, the Kantor Ledeng became the office of the Japanese Resident.
Though they would not have known it, the Japanese were just one of many invading powers to have occupied this ancient city. In 990 AD, the famous Javanese king, Dharmavamsa, had attacked and occupied Sriwijaya. Three years later, the Sriwijayan king, Culamanivarmadeva, staged a counter-attack, driving the Javanese from the city. These early Javanese were followed by Cholas from South India, Javanese from later, even more powerful, kingdoms, Chinese pirates and, finally, Dutch colonialists. Like the occupation of their tenth century predecessor, Dharamavamsa, that of the Japanese lasted only three years. But the Kantor Ledeng maintained its symbolic significance even after their departure. When Indonesian leaders declared independence on August 17, 1945, (now celebrated as Independence Day), local nationalists climbed atop the office building and unfurled the merah putih– the red and white national flag.
But even without knowledge of this history, the building was worth a look. Dutch colonial architecture is not a big drawcard with most tourists, but they left an impressive artistic legacy. Preferring an all-white colour scheme, it may seem austere to some tastes. But pay attention to the small detail on a building like this and you will see how much care was taken. The doors feature intricate decoration and a trim of dark stone is used around the bottom. This creates a pleasing contrast with the brilliant white of the rest of the building. It reminded us of some our other favourite buildings from the same era: the Cirebon Town Hall, in West Java, and the Sultan’s Palace in Kutai, East Kalimantan. It is best seen at night, when the flood-lit water tower glows above the Old Town.
The Balai Prajurit, a colonial era building in Palembang
Between the water tower and the Musi River, we found two more of the city’s best-preserved colonial buildings. The first of these is known today as the Balai Prajurit (Soldier’s Hall), and this large, solid structure was indeed the Dutch military headquarters. It is located near the western end of the old sultan’s fort, no doubt intended to remind the people of Palembang that military power had shifted to the Europeans. On the other side of the road, right along the Musi riverfront, is a much friendlier-looking building. Set in a wide, open garden is a gracious art-deco building, with elegant curves and a shingled roof. In Dutch times, this was a popular society meeting place. It now has a rather unloved appearance, but it is still in a reasonable state of repair. Far from deserving its reputation as a dull place, with little to see, Palembang has a wealth of architecture from a variety of periods. We gained a great deal of pleasure from just wandering around and looking at its remarkable collection of buildings. Ignored by tourists, guide book writers and the citizens of Palembang alike, colonial Palembang nonetheless proved to be one of a fertile hunting ground.
Srivijaya, the historic name for the city of Palembang, was one of the leading trade entrepôts of the East, with traders coming from Java, India, Arabia and China to buy its exotic store of jungle products. This post aims to introduce to some of the animal products, plants, woods, and spices which drew traders to the city on the Musi. The first of these is cubeb, a kind of pepper which is still extensively used in Indonesian cooking, but which was then widely believed to have medicinal properties throughout Asia.
Cubeb is a kind of pepper widely used in Indonesian cooking
Another popular purchase from Srivijayan warehouses was benzoin. This was a kind of resin taken from the styrax plant, and it was highly valued in Asia as a kind of incense and today it is still sometimes used in fragrances.
Benzoin was a kind of resin used to make incense
Another kind of aromatic resin which was sold in Srivijaya was known, dramatically, as ‘dragon’s blood’ resin. It was in fact obtained from the fruit of a jungle palm, but the name was a good piece of medieval marketing in my opinion.
Dragon’s blood resin had aromatic properties, too
Another olfactory delight was sandalwood, whose fragrant bark was also burnt in the temples of ancient South-East Asia and beyond. Similarly, cinnamon, known in Indonesia as kayu manis- literally, sweet wood- was a common sight in the markets of the great riverside city.
The bark of the sandalwood tree has a sweet smell
In addition to all these exotic plant products, the region’s plentiful fauna was also commercially harvested. The shopper in Srivijaya would have been able to buy ivory, rhino horn (from the woolly Sumatran rhino) and tiger pelts.
Tiger pelts have been sold in Sumatra since antiquity
When the Chinese traveller Chau Ju Kua came to Palembang in the twelfth century, he described Sriwijaya in most unexpected terms. He wrote, “The people either lived scattered about, outside the city, or on the water on rafts of boards covered over with reeds, and these (floating houses) are exempt from taxation.” This description of a floating city comes from classical Sriwijaya’s period of decline. Within living memory it was still much more a ‘city afloat’ than it is today. Friedrich Schnitger, the first man to write a book about Sumatran archaeology, investigated Palembang during the 1930s. The German was interested mostly in ancient inscriptions and statues, but in one of his most lyrical and romantic passages, he describes a city that was still partly ‘floating:
On moonlit nights, young Malays of Palembang hire a boat and go rowing with their sweethearts. They glide past the Chinese houses, built on rafts. Inside, one catches a glimpse of red-enamelled altars, coloured dragons, and images of smiling gods. If anyone in the house has died, lilac candles are burning, their quiet flame reflected in the water.”
These raft houses are known today in Palembang as rumah rakit. You can still find them in Palembang, but you have to know where to look. Since the 1960s, local governments have encouraged people to live ashore, and fewer and fewer of these kinds of houses are to be found in the city. In central Palembang, they are especially scarce. There are a few floating coffee shops and one large floating restaurant, but there are no raft houses in the immediate vicinity of the Ampera Bridge. When we had gone out onto the Musi, on our previous boat trips, we had kept an eye out for them. We saw a preponderance of small, wooden boats and even some flimsy bamboo rafts: some small traders still drift to market on bamboo rafts laden with produce. What we didn’t see were raft houses. By the time we decided on a boat trip to a historic mosque, known as Mesjid Kiai Muara Ogan, we had given up on them.
A Dutch-era postcard of the waterfront and boats
On all our previous boat trips, we had headed down the Musi. Our goal on this trip was to head upstream, to the Musi’s junction with the Ogan: one of its major tributaries. We headed off early in the morning. It was a cloudy, wet-season day. The city has a reputation for fiery weather, but it was nowhere in evidence then. The weather was, in fact, rather mild. We set off from the new promenade, in front of the fort, and quickly crossed to the opposite side of the river. There was that immediate sense of freedom and excitement which comes with leaving behind a big, crowded city and getting out on the water. We were soon racing along the Seberang side, looking at the dilapidated houses, the narrow canals heading inland and the numerous boats moored along the bank.
Before long, Cameron spotted a floating puskemas (local health clinic). It was housed on a sizable craft. Presumably, it travelled along the river, treating people in kampungs without health services. Just a few moments later, we passed a boat repair ‘garage’, perched on the banks of the river. The idea of a sail-in garage appealed to us almost as much as a floating clinic. In going to somewhere like Palembang, what we were always looking for was something special or unique, that we could only find there. Our rising excitement suggested that we had gained our first signs of it. And then our young ‘captain’ turned to us and said, apologetically, that he had to stop for petrol. We smiled at each other knowingly. We guessed correctly that the next request would be for an advance on the boat rental money. In Indonesia, this kind of small business is almost always conducted on a transaction by transaction, hour by hour, basis. Whether it is boat, minibus or car owners, they rarely have enough petrol for a chartered trip.
Delightfully, the petrol station was housed in a wooden pile-house. There was a young man out bathing on the wooden porch, with a sarung tied around his waist, beside him was a bucket on a rope. A morning ‘shower’ in Seberang Ulu often meant hauling a bucketful of water up from the Musi. He was squatting in a puddle of water and soapsuds. As our captain stepped onto the porch to get petrol, he smiled and waved at us and asked where we were from. The Western traveller to Palembang can expect people to constantly call out, “Come here Mister”, “Where you go?”, “Where are you from?”, or the equivalent expressions in Indonesian. “Hello Mister” fatigue is one of the best-known annoyances of regional Indonesia. Yet what would have been an irritant, elsewhere, seemed, in this case, a refreshing example of village curiosity and friendliness. As we pulled off from the petrol station, we agreed what an unspoilt part of Indonesia it was.
From this point on, the trip became even more interesting. Moored along the banks were a number of houses floating on rafts of bamboo poles. Here were the descendants of the raft houses which had housed so many of ancient Sriwijaya’s citizens. Typically, the tightly-bound rafts consisted of eight or more lengths of bamboo, each of considerable breadth. Some of them had simple wooden porches and partitions made of woven rattan. People sat out on the porches, smoking, eating or fishing. The closer we moved towards the junction with the Ogan, the more numerous these rumah rakit became. Some of them were quite large, with wooden roofs and fenced verandas. Overall, they seemed much more substantial than the reed and bamboo constructions described by ancient travellers, but the basic concept was the same. Apart from accommodation, floating buildings were put to a variety of other purposes. There was a floating general store, which boat owners would pull up to, to do their shopping. There were floating boat sheds, and even small workshops on bamboo rafts.
A floating house on the mighty Musi
In Thailand, tour groups are raced off every day to floating markets which exist only for the benefit of tourists. Whereas in overlooked Palembang, whole communities still live and work on floating houses. The exoticness of raft houses is enough to recommend them in their own right, but for the traveller in search of ‘lost’ Srwijaya, these rather makeshift-looking structures are of special interest, for the traveller knows that they have been a surprisingly permanent fixture along the banks of this part of the Musi. We were pleased to have finally seen what had proven the most elusive of Palembang’s sights. As a result of the scant attention paid to Palembang by guidebooks, experiencing the city fully was taking a lot more persistence than normal. Yet it seemed worth the effort; our trip kept yielding fresh and exciting discoveries.
The dwellings onshore were also of historic interest. In Seberang Ulu, many rumah limas houses survived along the river banks. The grandest of these were double-humped. Their prominent roofs consisted of two, large tiled pyramids. The best-preserved of them had ‘goat’s horn’ ornamentation, a local motif that had inspired the designers of the Great Mosque. Many of the smaller houses had beautifully detailed facades. There were balconies closed in latticework, elaborately curling awning supports, gracefully curving staircases and delicate wood-carving. Yet, despite their great age and charm, for grandeur, the houses of Seberang Ulu could not compete with the riverside mansions on the Ilir side of the Musi. Those on the northern bank, featuring large balconies, stained glass and elaborate ironwork, were of a much more aristocratic appearance. It appeared that even in the eighteenth century, Ilir had been the ‘better’ side of Palembang. This revelation gave rise to further speculation. Ancient Sriwijaya had been centred on the northern side and the monuments of royal Palembang were also located there. We suspected that the status and prestige of the Ilir side had continued, unbroken, for fourteen centuries. In modern Palembang, just like in ancient Sriwjaya, the best address was north of the Musi.
As we approached the junction with the Ogan, we passed large coal barges and other commercial boats. Up ahead were some huge, dark silos. We were nearing an industrial zone on the western fringes of the city. This formed quite a contrast with the area we were currently in. The ramshackle mansions and tumble-down traditional homes of old Palembang would soon merge into industrial plants and warehouses. Yet at the edges of the old city, just before the mouth of the Ogan, we spotted the largest concentration yet of rumah rakit. Here, in clear view of industrial Palembang, was a whole cluster of raft houses. They rocked a little on the swell from the passing boats and some of their inhabitants looked out from their porches, waving at us. It is strange that the traditional of raft houses, at least as old as Sriwijaya, survives today in the shadow of industrial Palembang.
Also at the confluence of the Musi and Ogan Rivers was the historic mosque we had set as our destination. But we saw at once that it was less remarkable than the old kampungs we had just passed by. The reason for this, as with many historic mosques in Indonesia, is architecturally insensitive renovations. It was clear from the lines of the roof, that it had begun life as a traditional mosque, in the style of Palembang’s Great Mosque. It was originally built here in the 1870s. But eventually the mosque could no longer house its congregation, and a large veranda was added in the 1950s. A subsequent renovation in the 1980s further ‘modernized’ the appearance of the mosque, and in its present form it looks little different from many Indonesian mosques built last year. Nonetheless it continues to draw pilgrims, as beside the mosque is the tomb of Kiai Merogan, the imam who had founded this and Masjid Lawang Kidul.
Yet if we were rather unimpressed by the modern-looking mosque, our visit there proved interesting in other ways. Just a little downstream, the Ogan River was spanned by the colonial-era Wilhemina Bridge. This had been built to link Palembang with the Kertapati train station, which was located just behind the mosque. Clearly, over the years, this part of Palembang had been a crossroads and intersection in a variety of ways. But most of interesting of all to us was the realisation of exactly why Sriwijaya-Palembang was located where it was. We had known, in a general sense, that Sriwijaya was strategically located to tax products coming downriver from the hinterland. But standing there, at the mouth of the Ogan, we realised that it was set between the mouths of the Ogan and Komering Rivers, the last major tributaries to enter the Musi. Had Sriwijaya been built any further upriver, it would have been possible to bypass the city along at least one of these lesser rivers. There were sound strategic reasons for the city being founded exactly where it was. Sriwijaya had positioned itself for commercial success right from the start. Realising this gave us a deeper respect for the rulers of the ancient kingdom. Despite the minor disappointment of the mosque itself, the trip had been a revelation.
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