TOURISTS visiting Jakarta's slums to see how locals really live have been accused of "poverty tourism".
"I decided to experience the real Jakarta," said a tourist, stepping gingerly between puddles of putrid water and a scurrying rat in a scene that would never make a postcard.
Rohaizad Abu Bakar, 28, a bank employee from Singapore, said he could not believe his eyes as he wandered around a Jakarta slum, a jumble of hundreds of shacks, some less than a metre from a railway line.
Nearby, a small girl picked up a discarded juice bottle in search of a sip while a man wearing tattered shorts lay slumped on a dirty old mattress. Only a blue plastic tarpaulin offered shelter from tropical downpours.
So-called "poverty tourism" is on the rise in Jakarta.