Tom Pepinsky

Category: Indonesia

  • Greetings from Jakarta Again

    We’re back (JMP and TP) in Jakarta and will be updating almost daily for the next five weeks or so.  We are blogging currently from the Sheraton Bandara, the only true airport hotel in Jakarta.  It is stunningly nice for an airport hotel–almost like a resort and way nicer than the place we stayed at JFK which cost quite a bit more money.  TP is here for more research, while JMP (the former JM) is here to teach at the Jakarta International Summer Music Festival.  We will be dropping her off there shortly, after which TP will return to central Jakarta.

    We flew Cathay Pacific.  It is not as nice as Singapore Airlines, but the seats are more roomy (although less comfortable).  The service was not as good either.  The food was about as good, and the entertainment on demand is great.  The music selection was quite expansive, and while it was not as good as Qatar Airways in the rock and pop department, the classical music selection exists (which made JMP quite happy).

    A few quick initial observations:

    1.  We arrived at 8:00 PM and slept from 10:00 PM till about 8:00 AM without much trouble.  For anyone who travels regularly, you know how hard this is.  Arriving at 8:00 PM is infinitely superior than arriving at 10:00 AM.

    2. It is also infinitely better to travel with a companion than to travel alone.

    3.  JMP agrees that Jakarta seems cleaner and more lively than it did when we first started traveling about 4 years ago.

    4.  The exception is the pollution.  It’s really smoggy here today, and we believe this is probably due to forest fires in Sumatra and Borneo.  One thing that keeps us amazed is that while Jakarta is really polluted, our friends who know both Jakarta and Beijing assure us that Beijing is unambiguously far worse in the pollution department than Jakarta.  We just can’t imagine what that must be like.  Jakarta is already dirty enough that you can’t dry your clothes outside without them getting dirty again.

  • Last Day in Jakarta

    This is my last day in Jakarta, and I must admit that I have nothing new to report, as my co-authors and I have been crushed to try to put our survey instrument together before we leave.  I’ll sign off again from Doha.  I’m sure that after 11 hours on a plane, I’ll have thought of something more substantial to say.
    UPDATE:  I had forgotten how silly Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport is. First off, they do not open counters until 2 hours before your flight leaves, so if you mindlessly assume that you need to be there three hours before your flight, you’re in for a long wait in the lobby.  But, the lobby has free wifi.

    It occurs to me that there is a very Indolaysia themed bit of new going around these parts, and that is that the President of Indonesia and the Prime Minister of Malaysia have agreed to form a standing committee to investigate cases of cultural theft.  Some background: Malaysia is more developed than Indonesia, and for that reason is nicer to visit.  However, the creeping Arabization of Malaysian society means that much of the local "Malay" culture has been lost.  So, the Malaysian government has been borrowing aspects of Indonesian culture, like folk songs and old stories and the like, for itself.  Well, the Indonesian people are none too happy about that.  Many of my friends say things along the lines of "they don’t have their own culture so they steal ours" or "it’s not our fault that they all want to be Arabs."

    Now.  At a basic level this is a dumb argument, because the borders between Indonesia and Malaysia are artificial.  It would make more sense probably to group Sumatra with Malaya, and Kalimantan with Sabah and Sarawak, and Java by itself, as this is how the old kingdoms used to be.  So when Malaysia borrows stories and histories, these are all Sumatran stories and histories (until the founding of Malacca by a Sumatran king in the 14th century, all the kingdoms of any note were Sumatra-based).  Nevertheless, people do have nationalist feelings associated with colonial borders.  If you were really forced to choose, just about all of the old stories like the Kisah Kelana Sakti are originally Sumatran, and therefore Indonesian.  Too bad there’s nothing that Indonesia can do about it.  The only thing left for Indonesia, really, is to trade on the fact that most of the really interesting stuff in the two countries that is of any historical significance is in Indonesia (Bali, Borobudur, and so on), most of the beautiful scenery and nature is in Indonesia (Lake Toba, Manado, Papua, etc.), and all Malaysia really excels in is the architecture in Kuala Lumpur and the history in Malacca.