Tom Pepinsky

Author: tompepinsky

  • Bandung

    We just returned from our little jaunt to Bandung. It’s about a 3 hour train ride from Jakarta, but it’s like a different world. It’s still smoggy and busy, but not nearly as smoggy and busy as Jakarta. It’s far cooler too. Bogor didn’t seem like much of a difference, but Bandung was a good ten degrees cooler due to its altitude. When we went out for dinner, it was downright cool…probably about 70 degrees, which feels like sweater weather to us now.

    The city itself was nice. There seem to be a lot more ethnic Chinese Indonesians in evidence there, and we had some awesome Chinese food for dinner. To tell the truth, it’s not really that different from American Chinese food: still stir-fried, still lots of rich sauce, baby corns, pea pods, etc. But it was really really good; some sort of spice or other ingredient seems to make the difference.

    We also saw a neat little store that sold handmade wayang golek puppets. These are the ones made out of wood. We didn’t buy any, but this is going to be the place to visit again, for sure.

  • Thee Kian Wie and Mohammad Sadli

    Last night the third and final Ramadhan discussion was led by two Indonesian economists who discussed their recollections of the Indonesian economy under Suharto (they’re both really old). That’s right up my (TP) alley, of course. Thee Kian Wie is a famous economic historian and commentator with a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, and Mohammad Sadli was a member of the famous “Berkeley Mafia” who had Ph.D.s from, yes, Berkeley and tried to advise Suharto from 1966 to 1998.

    Despite the failings of Suharto’s New Order regime, we find it amazing to have the chance to talk to them. What immediately strikes you from the conversation is that, far from the normal view of third-world policy makers as hapless and inefficient, these two know their economics. They knew what they were doing, they knew what the implications of policy choices were, and they knew that Suharto’s corrupt regime was unsustainable. But how do you tell Suharto that? Furthermore, you get a glimpse of the true miracle that Indonesia is. Without forgetting the excesses of the New Order, its contradictions, its human rights abuses, and its total lack of participatory democracy, it is an empirical fact that Indonesia in 1965 was an absolute mess, and out of the whole world only China experienced more economic growth between 1966 and 1998. According to Pak Thee, “you youngsters have every right to criticize the regime, and should, but to forget what Suharto inherited is idiotic.”

    We are going to attempt to go to Bandung this weekend. It’s either the third or fourth largest city in Indonesia, and is the capital of West Java, the province which surrounds Jakarta. It has a reputation as a university town, and also is the home to the textile industry. This might mean good deals on export-quality clothes. Look at the tag on your shirt: it probably says “Made in Indonesia.”