Like other hotels in Jakarta, the Hilton on Wednesday morning was less than half full. "Business had fallen away compared to last year when everything was booming and glamorous," said Mr Dirk De Cuyper, executive assistant manager of the three-tower complex of 1,100 rooms and 250 apartments set in palm-shaded gardens.
Within 24 hours everything changed. Violence convulsed the city of 10 million people after security forces shot dead four university students, and a procession of cars, taxis and jeeps began filing into the Hilton grounds. They carried well-to-do ethnic Chinese families whose businesses and homes were threatened, and American, Australian, British, German, Japanese and other expatriates afraid to stay in their houses.
The huge marble-floored lobby was suddenly filled with frightened people and dozens of excited voices. Men shouted into mobile telephones and Malay nannies soothed Chinese infants as the sound of gunfire rattled from the adjacent expressway where soldiers were chasing away an advancing mob.
Because of the anarchy on the streets, the evening shift at the hotel did not arrive and the day staff could not go home: they stayed and worked double time, never losing their welcoming smiles as their work load doubled. With no taxis available and mayhem in the streets, the Hilton became a luxury prison cum high-class refugee camp. Within a few metres of the streets where armoured cars and troop carriers roared by, and with plumes of black smoke visible through the palm fronds, children cavorted in the swimming pool and sweating ex-pats played tennis or sipped iced pineapple juice in wicker armchairs.
The crisis manifested itself to guests in small ways. The hotel shop ran out of biros. The only foreign newspaper all week was Tuesday's Asian Wall Street Journal. The pizzeria closed. A notice appeared by the lift saying: "Please be informed that we will not be able to change the linen in your room due to the emergency situation." Mr De Cuyper explained that with no new supplies of detergent, the hotel had to conserve its stocks of chemicals for tablecloths and uniforms. (Some guests still demanded full laundry service).
Supplying the daily need for 200 gallons of bottled water also became a problem. Trucks from the Jakarta plant were being looted. The Hilton sent its catering lorry to pick up drinking water at market stalls. To ensure daily deliveries of fuel for its air conditioning unit, a letter of guarantee had to be sent to the suppliers, and an army escort secured (at a price) for the oil truck.
The foreign and local guests who crowded into hotels like the Hilton had a cushy refuge. Others were less fortunate. Thousands stayed locked in their homes from Tuesday afternoon to Friday evening rather than leave them to the mob. The children at the British International School were kept in the assembly hall from Thursday morning until 3.00 am on Friday when staff took them home in a convoy of cars, crashing them through the yellow-striped wooden barriers of the abandoned expressway toll gates. They were then taken to Jakarta's international airport, joining thousands of shaken and exhausted foreigners, their lives disrupted and property and pets left behind.
The first evacuees to arrive at the airport had to run a gauntlet of teenagers who jumped on the cars wielding long sticks demanding money. A different kind of expropriation of funds was going on at the airport. Ex-patriates with resident visas have to pay a departure tax of one million rupiahs (£70) per person. Families on a chartered plane evacuating Mobil and Coca-Cola personnel were held up as the organisers frantically tried to locate cash for the Indonesian officials. Some reports said ethnic Chinese had to pay up to five times as much. The financial institutions which despatched dozens of staff to Indonesia in the good days were quick to pull out their people as Jakarta imploded. By Saturday the World Bank had evacuated 68 non-essential personnel in a chartered Boeing 737 which also took 28 members of the Asian Development Bank and the UN office. Indonesian staff members who stayed behind were offered places on the trouble-free island of Bali or in Jakarta hotels.
The International Monetary Fund evacuated its officials who had helped negotiate the $40 billion package to bail out the Indonesian economy, part of which included the removal of subsidies which pushed fuel prices up and infuriated the people. The Americans were among the first to leave as Washington lost confidence in President Suharto. Hundreds of US citizens assembled at the home of the American ambassador for transport by coach to the airport and departure on two chartered Boeing 747s. Other countries were doing the same: Australia chartered three jumbo jets to evacuate 1,000 of its 20,000 nationals; Malaysia sent two air force planes for 400 people holed up in the Malaysian embassy. British Airways put on an extra jumbo on Saturday to help evacuate 800 people. Ethnic Chinese from Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan people were the most anxious to get away.
"They attacked every ethnic Chinese they saw and hit people with sticks," said Taiwanese factory owner Chen Lao-an. The Japanese, sometimes mistake n for Chinese, also headed in large numbers for the airport: 3,400 departed yesterday on 11 extra All Nippon Airways flights. The governor of Jakarta said on Saturday calm had been restored and appealed for residents and foreigners to return from overseas, but no one was listening.
The Hilton and other hotels around the city centre began to return to normal yesterday - normal now being almost empty - as the international community abandoned Indonesia to its fate.