Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Indonesia – General

Indonesia is so close to Malaysia, yet I feel so far away. I have no clue at all about our neighbour other than Bali. The general impression (mostly negative) is mainly picked up from the local media about those crowds filling the hard labour works abandoned by Malaysians. How ignorant I was, the trip changed lots of biased stereotype positively. In fact majority of them are so genuinely friendly. Well, I had only been to Bandung, Yogyakarta and Bali (all in Java Island). My judgment is simply based on the experience on these 3 cities.

The country is wide, scattered in several huge islands. It is less developed economically than Malaysia, but this world’s largest Islamic country has a huge population of 270mil. It has great potential to surpass other Asean countries due to its huge internal market, low labour costs and rich resources.

I bought Lonely Planet edition 2009. Most of the prices and costs were not updated accordingly.