We’re sitting in the opulent recesses of Cafe Batavia, deep in Jakarta’s old Dutch colonial quarter. Not much remains of the colonial legacy in this defiantly modern city, but this café-cum-bar-cum-time-warp is a delectable exception.

A and I are discussing how easily linguistic cliches come to mind as soon as you start to describe a place or a mood or a moment in travel. 'Like these fans,' I say, pointing to the high, wooden-beamed ceiling, 'fans always turn "lazily", no matter what you're reading.'

‘What about '"the elegance of a by-gone era"? that always comes up about these places too,' I say, as I mentally trawl through all the tried and trusted descriptors.

'Yeah, but here it's the elegance of a by-gone era crossed with high camp!' says A.
That, I have to pay.

How to describe the Batavia? It’s dark and moodily elegiac inside on the ground floor. High ceilings are sparsely-lit with divine old-style lamps, and the floor is cut from rough-hewn flagstones that are so tactile, you want to reach down and run your hands across their nubbly surfaces. A huge flight of stairs with a mahogany banister leads you to the next level. On the way up, you note that the stairs are covered in worn but plush Oriental carpeting, held in place with thin brass rods that run across each stair. Each footfall registers the springy, velvety pile underfoot.

Upstairs, the first thing you notice is a massive, sensuously curved bar. The second is that it’s upholstered in metres of rich, glossy, black and white cowhide.

Every inch of wall-space on both floors is filled with all manner of posters and prints and black and white photographs. The effect is striking – like seeing inside the house of your mad-but-loaded maiden aunt for the first time. 1930s advertising images sing the praises of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, butting right up against Russian propaganda posters singing the praises of the working life. Stylistically, the two are incredibly alike, each promoting a rosy-cheeked view of wholesomeness and societal progress.

In other gilt frames, bare breasts on pouting 1920s nudes sit peachily next to 1980s androgyny, done Duran Duran style. Men with impossibly plush lips and leonine eyes look achingly at one another, while women with torpedo-shaped bosoms model daring one-piece swimsuits on the front of 1950s magazines.

Upper-middle-class Indonesians are ordering drinks or having a bite to eat. Shutters thrown back, light streams in through huge sets of open windows, bringing with it all the heat and humidity of the Jakarta noon. Maybe the fans in here are ‘lazy’ after all, because they’re basically just swishing hot air from one spot to another, albeit in an artistic fashion.

It’s a crazy little world in the Batavia. Such an unpredictable find in the capital city of the world’s largest Islamic nation. The effect is one of sumptuous, slightly gone-to-seed opulence. It’s like an opium den decorated by the deft hand of someone with a precociously camp sense of aesthetics.

The toilets are more of the same. Katherine Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich loll vampishly on the doors, which swing open to reveal dim little caverns housing yet more pictures. The toilet seats are deepest ebony in colour, and the stalls’ tiling is decidedly 1920s in effect. In true over-the-top art deco style, there’s even a silver ash-tray and cigarette holder installed on the wall opposite the loo, should you feel the need to smoke languidly while you’re in there …

Outside, we loll too, though not particularly vampishly. A and I are sporting more the dishevelled, flushed-cheeked, sticky-shirted look of two people not yet acclimated to the rigours of life in a tropical city. But sunk deep in the contours of a black leather art-deco lounge suite, sipping on an iced Javanese coffee, life seems lavish nonetheless.