Eating in Indonesia

Indonesian food is not well known outside of Southeast Asia. Like most cuisines, it has been influenced deeply by both its environment (the sea) and its neighbors (China especially). There really is no such thing as "Indonesian food" in a nation composed of thousands of islands and hundreds of ethnicities, but some elements seem common across the vast nation. 

The two photos above were taken at the local public market (pasar) in a small town in Bali and show some of the key elements of Indonesian cooking -- various forms of salted and/or dried fish and garlic, shallots, and lemongrass. I think it is safe to say that an Indonesian meal is rarely prepared without some combination of these ingredients. Another essential element is the kaffir lime leaf. These are leaves of a tree that produces a very sour lime that is used only rarely, yet the leaves are widely used as a flavoring. 

The Sundanese are the second largest ethnic group in Indonesia, centered in the western third of the island of Java. Sundanese food is almost always served with a balanced sweet-sour soup. Meals are served with rice steamed wrapped in banana leaf (nasi timbel) and small portions of fried chicken, fried or grilled seafood, and tofu or tempeh (a fermented soy product). A fried peanut cake is often part of Sundanese meals. 

Indonesian meals often include vegetables dressed in a spicy peanut-based sauce. In Javanese areas, this is known as gado-gado and includes a variety of boiled vegetables. In Sundanese areas, this is known as karedok (above), and includes raw vegetables (cabbage, bean sprout, long beans, cucumber). It is served with the ever-present Indonesian prawn cracker. 

Indonesian meals usually revolve around rice, often served in the middle of a plate surrounded by various toppings. In this case, it is served with a rich beef stew (nasi rawon), crunchy crackers, a preserved egg, and sambal, the chili-based sauce that is served with every meal. 

Like many other nations in Southeast Asia, soup is a mainstay of Indonesian food, especially in the morning. Throughout Indonesian cities, soto ayam carts (chicken soup) are seen on the streets. A rich and flavorful chicken stock is ladled into a bowl and dressed with pulled chicken, rice noodles, bean sprouts, sambal, and sweet soy sauce, among many other potential toppings. On the upper photo (on a street in Surabaya), note the ledge along the front, where people will often eat their soto. The lower photo is a hotel breakfast soto ayam station. 

Another variation of rice and toppings (nasi campur). These dishes are eaten with fork and large spoon, with the fork held in the left used to mix the various ingredients, which are taken to the mouth by the spoon in the right hand. 

Breakfast often includes fried rice (nasi goreng), served with fried eggs, sambal, and pickles, among other things. An early morning departure from Surabaya to Malang led to the above nasi goreng "to go." 

In Bali, roasted meats are a specialty, especially roasted suckling pig (which, for religious reasons, is less common in other predominantly Islamic parts of Indonesia). Again, this dish is served with a local Balinese sambal. 

Two faces of Bali

I learned during my brief visit to this Indonesian island that it is a two-faced sort of place. One is the Bali of the beach resorts of Kuta and Sanur on the southern end of the island. This is, perhaps, the stereotypical Bali, swarming with Australian, European, Chinese, and Japanese tourists even in the midst of the "down-season." These strips are lined with t-shirt shops, buffet restaurants, and the usual suspect international chains. The resorts, at least on the Kuta side, do give out on a fabulous beach with sweeping ocean views and mounds of washed-up coral. The sunsets are nothing short of spectacular. And it is cheap. Yet it is not this face of Bali that would bring me back. 

Sunset at Kuta Beach

The other face is a bit of Asia unlike anything I've seen before. Bali, a land of about 4 million people, is an Indonesian island just east of Java that is about the size of Delaware. Although the Balinese share many cultural traits with their island neighbors in Java and Lombok, their history has been distinct. When Islam began to spread in what is now Indonesia in the thirteenth century, it came to a land that had long been influenced by Hindu and Buddhist religion and culture from India. Some of the greatest monuments in Indonesia today are remnants of this Buddhist and Hindu period. Much of Javanese culture today reflects these influences, despite the strong influence of Islam. The spread of Islam in Java led many Hindu and Buddhist priests to flee westward, settling in Bali, which became a bastion of Buddhist-Hindu culture. Today, nearly 90% of the residents of Balinese adhere to Balinese Hinduism. I was told that it is actually more correct to call the religion Hindu-Buddhism, as it incorporates elements of both. In this way, it reminds me of Nepal.

The Elephant Cave Temple near Ubud

Moving north from Kuta and Sanur past the capital city of Denpasar, you enter into another Bali, one deeply influenced by this Hindu-Buddhist religious identity. Balinese homes are multi-generational and are separated from the world by a large gate. Larger homes contain their own temple, with stupas covered in a type of black grass rising above the walled compounds everywhere you go. At nearly every turn, a temple looms upward… some modest, others quite grand. All of this unfolds on the increasingly hilly landscape reaching upward toward the northern mountains. 

The royal palace in Ubud

Like much of Indonesia, space is not wasted in Bali. Every space possible is devoted to the farming of rice. In many places, this is grown on steep terraces that have been sculpted into the sides of steep hills with careful irrigation designed to nurture the three crops grown each year. It is easy to see in Bali how the efficient domestication of rice allowed Asian populations to grow so large. 

The Ceking Rice Terraces

Today, this traditional landscape is slowly being eroded. Although the government has limited tourism development in terms of hotels and resorts to the southern part of the island and other cities, many foreigners are buying up pieces of property in the country. Rice paddies are slowly turning into retirement homes for Europeans, Australians, and Americans. There is considerable fear among the Balinese about what this pervasive economic change and ongoing globalization means for their strong culture. 

The Holy Water Spring Temple

Both faces of Bali are worth a look. But the quiet, beautiful culture of old-world Bali is the one that would bring me back, hoping that it still can be found. 

driving in Indonesia

When it comes to cars and traffic, there are several maxims I have picked up as I have traveled:

1.  The world divides very subjectively into countries I will drive in without a second thought, countries I would consider driving in, and countries where I would not drive a car if someone put a gun to my head. 

2.  I trust the person who is driving the car. I can only think of one situation in all of my travels where this rule failed me. 

3.  Even though the traffic patterns may appear to be without rules or order, driving in such chaotic contexts actually requires a much higher sensitivity to the "rules of the game." While fewer rules are written, it seems to me that there are actually many more "rules" to negotiating the social norms of traffic. 

The sheer density of population on the island of Java, together with strained infrastructure, makes for an especially interesting transportation experience. You notice this first of all before you even leave a parking lot. The shortage of space means that parking lots are almost always overseen by an attendant of some sort who guides and directs drivers into tight parking spaces. Passengers exit before parking, so that cars can be nestled even closer to one another. If the parking lot is filled, cars are sometimes parked in the middle area, with their drivers instructed to leave the car in neutral so that it can be rolled one way or another if someone needs to get out. These same parking attendants will then guide you out of your spot and to the exit of the lot. They do not stop there. They will then step into traffic, hold out their hand to stop oncoming traffic and let you pull into the stream. The attendant, while holding traffic with his right hand, will artfully extend his left behind him, perfectly positioned to accept a small amount of money from the driver. 

A parking attendant in Semarang, Central Java

Such "traffic stopping" is perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of Indonesian driving. Everyone seems to do it -- stepping into multiple lanes of traffic moving at 30-40 miles an hour, extending a hand, and then crossing 3-4 lanes of traffic. It seems to work. Cars and trucks seem to acknowledge this and stop. Motorbikes, on the other hand, see this only as a warning to swerve around the pedestrians at full speed. This is the kind of behavior that, if tried in the US, would result in the said pedestrian being "squashed like a toady," to borrow a phrase from my seven-year-old. 

Getting the most from your motorbike. It seems like a lot of Jakarta driving is underneath freeways

Still other attendants work in the median between the opposing flows, manning little gates where people can make u-turns. These attendants are clearly one step up from their peers, using small stop signs or even small mirrors to catch the attention of drivers before stepping into the flow of traffic. Motorbikes make a nearly continual tight curve around such posts, with cars moving slightly more slowly and carefully. Again, a perfectly choreographed passage of money takes place, with neither concern for the continuous traffic nor the mechanics of a very sharp turn disrupting the artful passage of rupiah bills. 

Jakarta Traffic - from indosight.org - the cars on the right, motorbikes on the left is the norm

I would be very slow to even think about driving in Indonesia. I'm not nearly a good enough driver. Driving here takes some real talent. 

Indonesia

Indonesia remains for me one of the most incomprehensible countries. It is the world's fourth most populous nation, trailing only China, India, and the United States, with 250 million people scattered over 18,000 islands and 3,400 miles/5,400 kilometers. To put that in perspective, the Indonesian archipelago stretches 400 miles further than the distance from Boston to Los Angeles, or more than a thousand miles further than the distance from London to Moscow. More than half of this population, 140 million, lives on the island of Java, which is roughly the size of the state of Pennsylvania. It is home to more than 300 ethnic groups and at least as many languages. 

The island of Java at night -  in the bottom middle

In addition to being home to the world's single largest population of Muslims, Indonesia also has significant Christian communities (more than 10% of the population). Both mosques and churches can be seen rising on the skylines of Indonesian cities. Yet the religious character of Indonesia is even more complex than this, as Indonesian/Javanese culture is woven together from a fabric that includes significant Hindu and Buddhist influence from before the coming of Islam and Christianity to the region. This is visible in the great Buddhist temple complex at Borobudur in Central Java, unearthed from the rainforest by the Dutch and English in the nineteenth century, and the South Asia/Hindu-influenced motifs that appear in both Indonesian art and stories. This is a nation of nuance. 

A Balinese temple in Ubud

It is also a land of considerable tension. The strengthening of Islamic identity in Indonesia in recent decades has led to many more women covering their heads than would have been true in the mid-20th century. By head covering, I do not mean the full facial covering found in some parts of the Arab world, but rather a type of scarf unique to Southeast Asian islam that frames the face, often in brilliant pinks and purple colors. 

The Indonesian flag with pancasila symbol - "out of man, one"

Modern Indonesia, which became independent from the Netherlands after World War II, is built on the philosophy of pancasila, or "five principles:  belief in god (with inherent acknowledgement of religious plurality in the country), belief in just and civilized humanity, belief in the unity of Indonesia, and adherence to democracy and social justice. This idea has played a powerful guiding role in bringing considerable unity to a great and diverse nation. Although pancasila is attacked by a number of Islamic political parties and fundamentalist groups beyond politics, the pancasila center seems to continue to hold. 

View over Bandung, West Java, with mountains in the background

These are hopeful times in Indonesia. The recent election by large margins of Joko Widodo, known as Jokowi, has given hope that some of the entrenched corruption and powerful interests that have dominated Indonesia in the past can be overcome. Jokowi did not arise from the Jakarta elite, but rather from a poor family in Central Java, before beginning a political career that made him governor of the capital city before assuming the presidency. He faces considerable opposition in parliament and outside of government to his reforms, but the Indonesians I interact with seem to be hopeful about the potential of this new administration.