Michael Vatikiotis – Friday, around 3pm, and a tannoy rudely blares from a wall inside the US embassy in Jakarta. "There is a large demonstration outside the embassy at this time," squawks the speaker. "There will be no entry or exit from the embassy ..." Trapped.

Downstairs, a marine melee is in full swing. Thickset young men from the cornfields of Iowa and sidewalks of Detroit thunder around fully armed in heavy green battledress. A monitor inside the marine bunker displays the scene outside the embassy gate: Something is burning, and an angry-looking crowd of people dressed in flowing white robes is chanting slogans.

"If one of them comes over the gate, we'll have to deal with them," a political officer in the embassy says ominously. She, like the other Americans, doesn't take such demonstrations lightly. "We remember the assault on our Pakistan embassy where we lost people."

For the ordinary people of Jakarta, the endless round of protests, rallies, crackdowns and occasional bombings are less a threat and more a tiresome inconvenience. They have turned this once mildly chaotic city into an urban roller coaster, where the unexpected lurks around each corner.

"I'm fed up with these demos," says the friendly hotel doorman. He's having an easy day because a strike by recently fired hotel workers is blocking access to the lobby. Outside the hotel, the strikers appeal for support: "Please have sympathy with us and don't visit the hotel," calls out one.

To avoid trouble in this city, it's vital to watch the news. The day former President Suharto's corruption case was thrown out of court, the streets were virtually deserted after 3pm. A wise move. Violent clashes between supporters and opponents of Suharto outside his residence in leafy Menteng left one person dead. Many people blamed President Abdurrahman Wahid for telling students to go ahead and stone Suharto's house. Television viewers saw a policeman firing a tear-gas canister at point-blank range at the head of a protester. Soon after, Wahid warned the students to respect the law.

Little wonder that there is trepidation on the part of foreign visitors, as the empty hotel lobbies and coffee shops and the lay-offs attest. Visitors won't be encouraged by the news that one radical Islamic group, the Front to Protect Islam, is targeting US citizens for kidnap off the streets in the wake of Israel's crackdown on Palestinian protesters in the Middle East.

It's not much safer indoors, either. In the early hours of a Saturday morning last month, rowdies showed up outside two of Jakarta's more popular late-night watering holes in the Tanah Abang district. They smashed up one of the bars and threatened some of the foreign guests, saying that the establishment was open after hours. Many revellers were hurt in the scramble to the exits.

But for all the gloom in Jakarta, some people are taking heart from renewed signs of life in the economy, with the potential to ease social tensions. The bars and cafes are filling up in the upmarket Kemang district of south Jakarta, where patrons can afford to watch a salsa band all the way from Colombia. In central Jakarta, the Plaza Indonesia shopping mall is abuzz with shoppers on Saturday afternoons. For central bank Governor Anwar Nasution, though, this frothy consumption only indicates that the rich elite is burning up some of the cash it accumulated during the economic crisis when bank deposit rates soared.

For the less well-off, though, little seems to have changed. "The crisis may be over for the rich, but it is still very much a part of my life," says one struggling Jakartan.

Now that prices of essential goods have gone up, along with the price of fuel, people may begin to lose their sense of humour about the demos. They may even join a few.