Tim Hannigan - A Geek in Indonesia: Discover the Land of Komodo Dragons, Balinese Healers and Dangdut Music

A GEEK IN INDONESIA

Discover the Land of Komodo Dragons, Balinese Healers and Dangdut Music

TIM HANNIGAN

An Archipelago of Superlatives

So lets start with the superlatives Indonesia is the worlds fourth most populous country, and its biggest Muslim-majority state. It has more than one hundred active volcanoes and something like 17,000 islands, making it the biggest archipelagic nation and the most volcanic place on the planet. It is home to more than a quarter of a billion people, but most of them live on Java which is about the same size as Illinois and is therefore, somewhat predictably, the most densely populated island on earth. The distance between Indonesias westernmost and easternmost extremities is about the same as that between London and Tehran. Indonesia is also Southeast Asias biggest economy, and the worlds third largest democracy.

And thats usually about as far as anyone gets. Its almost as if Indonesia is just too big to make sense of; the safest option has long been to ignore it. For many years, when I mentioned Indonesia to peoplebe they Brits, Americans, or Indiansall too often theyd respond as if I was talking about a miniscule banana republic. Either that, or theyd enthuse about Bali, as if that was all there was to Indonesia. And on the rare occasions when Indonesia made it into the international headlines, the news was almost always bad.

But in the last few years things have started to change. First up, in 2013 the influential economist Jim ONeill decided that Indonesia was a MINT, one of the emerging nations likely to be the economic superpowers of the 21st century (along with Mexico, Nigeria, and Turkey, plus an earlier acronym-making quartet, the BRICs of Brazil, Russia, India, and China). Stock newsreel footage started showing gleaming Jakarta skyscrapers instead of smoking volcanoes, and alongside stories of astronomical economic potential came tales of mind-boggling social media usage. An edgy Indonesian novelist got flavor-of-the-month status with New York literati; a Welsh film director made Indonesian martial arts the coolest thing on the planet for violence-loving movie geeks; and Internet news feeds started pointing out that the countrys president was a hard-rocking Metallica fan. Oh, and Agnes Monica, Indonesias favorite child star turned pop princess, recorded a single with Timbaland. Seriously. There was still plenty of bad news about natural and manmade disasters, but it suddenly seemed that the people affected were as likely to be urban hipsters as rice farmers.

Macetthe Indonesian word for gridlockis an unavoidable fact of life in the nations cities.

The becak is the Indonesian incarnation of the pedicab.

The tourist brochure version of Indonesia does still exist, in the rice terraces of Bali and in plenty of other places besides!

But if its no longer possible to totally ignore Indonesia, it can still be very difficult to make sense of it. Tourist guidebooks still paint it as a place of temples, rice terraces, and timeless tradition, in wild contrast to the journalists poring over the latest growth figures, or bemoaning environmental catastrophes. The countrys status as one of the most successful democracies in Asia doesnt sit easily with bad memories of violence and political turmoil, and the idea that its the worlds biggest Muslim country can be very confusing when you take into account lurid stories of celebrity scandals. And Agnes Monicas Timbaland collaboration is about a million miles away from the plaintive tones of a gamelan orchestra.

In places like Kupang, West Timor, public transport comes with a punky style and a bass-heavy sound system blaring the latest hits.

One of the unifying elements of Indonesia is a passion for flavorful street food, on offer in lively night markets and roadside stalls.

Modern Jakartaknown by many foreigners but few locals as the Big Durianis one of Asias biggest and most frenetic cities, a place with a constant construction boom and similarly constant traffic problems.

Part kitsch, part coola classic Indonesian combinationfinds colorful expression in these vintage bikes for hire in Jakartas Fatahillah Square, complete with pink colonial pith helmet.

This book is an introduction to what Indonesia has on offer for travelersits beaches, its mountains, its traditions. But its also about the space between the hard news stories and the soft guidebook images where millions of Indonesians lead their lives, a paradise for foodies, surfers, and punks, and a country with 700 indigenous languages and 30 million Twitter users. With any luck it might just convince you that Indonesia deserves to add another superlative to its already impressive roster: the coolest country on the planet

Hello Mister! My Personal Journey

Photo! Photo! Village kids in Sumatra jostle for center-stage whenever a foreigner happens to pass by with a camera.

I must have been about seven years old when we did the project about Indonesia at school. Why the teacher thought that a tropical country 7,000 miles (11,300 kilometers) away might be of relevance to a bunch of kids from a little mining village on the brink of the North Atlantic, Ill never know, but I do remember learning about buffaloes pulling ploughs in paddy fields. I went home, dug a trench in the yard, filled it with water, and threw in a handful of my mums pudding rice. It didnt grow. And neither, to be honest, did the idea of Indonesia.

But fast-forward to the middle of my second decade, and Indonesia was looming large in my imagination. Like many teenagers from Cornwall, I was a fanatical surfer, and on chilly onshore days Id lie on my bed poring over the cobalt-blue pages of surf magazines. Id still have struggled to pinpoint Indonesia on the map, but I knew the names of its fabled surf breaks by heartUluwatu, Padang-Padang, G-Land, Desert Point.

A few years later, and my peers who had spent summers saving their pennies working on farms or in restaurant kitchens started disappearing eastwards for months each winter. Indonesia, they said, was the cheapest place on the planet to score good waves in warm water. They generally didnt bring home any souvenirs, but one friend, Stefan, did buy something in Indonesia. It was a cassette tape. We had a shared love of American punk rock, and he handed it to me saying, It sounds a bit like NOFX. It was the second album from the Balinese punk band Superman is Dead, and Stefan was right: they did sound a bit like NOFX.