Ten Things I Hate About Indonesia

New year is approaching. Let us take a quick recap on our environment: what is good and what is bad; and hope that things will change only for the better after the holidays. Therefore I present you with the ten things I hate and love about Indonesia and Hungary. I will start from “Ten Things I Hate About Indonesia” first…

1. Corruption
How can you not hate it when the former president is still holding the world’s record for being the biggest corruptor ever with US$ 35 billion? The worst is that he’s still out there—free to watch his favorite show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” and suddenly has to be treated in hospital everytime he hears attempt of bringing his case to the court. However his half brother will be spending the next four years in jail for another corruption case; while his youngest son, Tommy Suharto, was put behind the bars in 2000 for murdering a judge. What a big happy family!

2. Poverty
What can you expect after your president had stolen US$ 35 billion? What else but poverty:
More than half of Indonesia’s 210 million people are vulnerable to poverty. In 2002, the World Bank estimated 53% of the population – some 111 million – live below the international standard poverty line of US$ 2 a day.

Poverty is not just a matter of inadequate incomes and expenditures on food and daily necessities. Many of the poor and near poor also lack access to basic education, medical services and adequate nutrition. Some 25 million Indonesians are illiterate. Nearly 50 million suffer health problems, a similar number lack access to health facilities. Many communities have inadequate or non-existent basic infrastructure like safe water, adequate sanitation, transport, roads and electricity.

3. Natural disaster
And that was not enough. The country has been plagued with the tsunami last year and the earthquakes which sometimes still happens nowadays. They are so common that media no longer pay any attention to them. Nevertheless the effects are still there. Flood, volcanic eruption, and landslide remain constant threats.

4. Diseases
SARS, malnutrition, bird flu, dengue fever, anthrax, …I have lost counts.

5. Social gap
It happens anywhere else, so why should it be special, I hear you ask. Whenever I watch Travel Channel’s report on Thailand, for example, most likely it would show the beauty of Bangkok city, the clubs, the leisure. Or in India, you would only see the beautiful women, the exotic dancers, or delicious chicken curry. But in Indonesia you would see poor fishermen hunting whale in order to live—not to earn money, mind you, but simply to live. You would see primitive tribes cook their meal in a poor fireplace inside their huts. And I kept asking myself why didn’t they simply show Tamara Blezynski who earns US$ 4,000 for each episode on her soap opera? Because there are more of these people, that is why. Poverty has been a problem since the beginning of civilization. Yet it is sad to see that nowadays some are still living in that age while their countrymen can afford a life that they could never imagine.

6. School
Schools are never for free in Indonesia; especially now with the capitalization era coming. I heard now there is a special regulation which allows state-owned universities to receive students without any tests—the students with high grades in senior high, mind you. However they have to pay between US$ 500 to 7,500; not a small amount in Indonesia. I wonder whose money they would use. Only as a comparison, I learned in a state-owned university in Surabaya, had to compete with thousands of competitors in the entrance test; and paid only around US$ 30 in the end after passing the examinations.

7. Resource monopoly
Although the amount is decreasing, monopoly still exists. There is only a company which can provide you with fixed phone, for an instance. I have no problem with it; had it been able to reach everyone. But it hasn’t. My parents built a house in 2000, in an area where most people have had their telephone. As soon as the house was ready, they registered themselves for a fixed phone. And even now they haven’t gotten it for the same reason: there are not enough people in that area who request it. As the consequence, they have no internet. That sucks! They have the money, and they want to spend it on the damn fixed phone to chat with their daughter who is living abroad—but they can’t.

Electricity is even worse. There is only one company in the whole country; so everyone must buy the electricity from it. Yet it has been operating at a loss.

8. City bus
City bus is definitely a nightmare. In Surabaya, there are 111 buses which have been operating for 11-15 years; 170 buses for 16-20 years; and 112 buses for more than 20 years . To give you more views, it is not forbidden to smoke inside; there is no air conditioner; and there is no clear limit on how many passengers can be. At times you have to stand with somebody else’s arm pit only a few cm away from your precious nose; meanwhile you should give way to the street singers who get on and off the bus to earn a living.

9. Low self esteem
Indonesians are mostly fed up with the frequent stagnation of their life that they think everything comes from abroad must be better: grass is always greener on the other side, true enough. But in Indonesia, it has come to the point where people start to lose their identity. For example, a friend of mine worked as a teacher in an international school among with expatriates from Europe. They all had the same occupation: teacher. While she received US$ 180 despite, her European colleagues got at least US$ 2,000—and nobody would ever say anything about it. Because they are European—expatriates; they deserve more! She did quit after some time; yet many would be more than willing to replace her for that amount.

There are many superficial matters, such as the women who are willing to spend extra cash (and risk some cancer also) to get whiter skin in order to look like the Indonesian beauties; the likes of Tamara Blezynski or Sophia Latjuba. But many more are misleading. People with low education believe that living abroad—no matter how bad—is still better than staying in the country. Thousands of them—mainly women risk to work abroad; as maids. Some receive their money—I read that in Singapore they are paid around US$ 200, that is huge compared to their wage in Indonesia. But it is not rare also that they went home, broke and distressed after having to deal with bureucracy and trafficking and physical harassment and heaven knows what else.

10. Law for mixed marriage
Despite all the grim facts about the fair country, Zsolt and I would still like to move there. Yet an Indonesian wife cannot sponsor her foreign husband to get a resident visa there: only the company which would hire him could. Afterwards, the resident visa is only valid for a year and it must be renewed in the origin country. Each month, a foreigner must pay US$100 tax.

That was not all. Children cannot have Indonesian citizenship until they reach 18, with the father’s permission. Therefore they would be treated as tourist in their mother’s land along with the taxation system which is way too expensive for native Indonesian. A rumor said that there may be new rule that a foreign man must pay US$ 50,000 in order to be able to marry an Indonesian woman. That sucks!

Dec 26, 2004 - Nearly 132,000 Indonesians are killed and more than 37,000 listed as missing after a 9.15 magnitude earthquake off Indonesia and a tsunami triggered by it in the Indian ocean region. The toll in affected Indian Ocean countries reaches 230,000 dead.
Feb 21, 2005 - At least 96 are killed in landslide that sweeps through two West Java villages near a garbage dump.
March 28, 2005 - Nearly 1,000 are believed killed after a quake of magnitude 8.7 hits the coast of Sumatra.
July 20, 2005 - Indonesia confirms first deaths from bird flu. To date the disease has killed 63 people in Indonesia, the world’s highest bird flu death toll.
Sept 1, 2005 - Landslide on island of Sumatra kills 14 and leaves more than a dozen missing.
Sept 5, 2005 - Domestic airliner operated by local carrier Mandala Airlines crashes in residential area of Indonesia’s third biggest city Medan, killing 102 aboard and 47 local residents in an inferno on the ground.
May 15, 2006 - Mount Merapi volcano erupts with clouds of hot gas and rains ash on surrounding areas.
May 27, 2006 - Earthquake rocks area around ancient royal city of Yogyakarta killing at least 5,000 and destroying or damaging 150,000 homes.
July 17, 2006 - A tsunami after a 7.7 magnitude quake in West Java province kills at least 550 people. At least 54,000 people are displaced.
Dec 30, 2006 - A ferry with at least 600 aboard sinks during a stormy night voyage as it traveled between Borneo and Java.
Jan 1, 2007 - An Adam Air passenger plane flying from Surabaya to Manado with 102 people aboard crashes into the sea off the west coast of Sulawesi.
Feb 22, 2007 - At least 42 people are killed when fire breaks out aboard a ferry which was heading from Jakarta to Bangka Island off Sumatra.
March 6, 2007 - Two strong earthquakes kill at least 31 people and injure dozens in the West Sumatra provincial capital of Padang.
March 7, 2007 – Domestic Airliner operated by Garuda Indonesia crashes in Yogyakarta, killing many of its passengers.