The Symposium is on! The organizing committee is pleased to announce that current plans are for the Second Malay / Indonesian Linguistics Symposium to take place as originally planned, in Ujung Pandang on July 11-12. All indications are that the turmoil in Indonesia is in the process of subsiding, and we have no reason to believe that participants in the symposium will be inconvenienced in any way by events associated with the unrest. Further information will be posted as it becomes available. (May 25, 1998)

INDONESIA TRAVEL UPDATES

by

David Gil

How to Get to Ujung Pandang	May 25 Update	May 16 Update
May 15 Update	April 29 Update	February 3 Update

In this section I'll be posting intermittent updates on conditions in Indonesia which may have a bearing on your travel plans for the upcoming Ujung Pandang conference.

 

But first a couple of generalities. Indonesia is HUGE, comparable to the entirety of Europe, and a TV report from Jakarta may bear no more relationship to what's happening in Ujung Pandang than a report from the war zone in Bosnia would tell you what things are like for a visitor to Scandinavia. And of course, things are now changing with great rapidity, so what's true today may no longer be true tomorrow -- and I have no pretentions of being a prophet.

 

Update 5 25 May 1998

The organizing committee is pleased to announce that current plans are for the SecondMalay / Indonesian Linguistics Symposium to take place as originally planned, in Ujung Pandang on July 11-12.

 

All indications are that the turmoil in Indonesia is in the process of subsiding, and we have no reason to believe that participants in the symposium will be inconvenienced in any way by events associated with the unrest. A further update on conditions in Ujung Pandang and elsewhere in Indonesia will be posted within the next few days.

 

Click here for links to the travel advisories of Australia, the Netherlands, Singapore, the UK and the United States.

UPDATE 4 16 May 1998, Riau Province, Indonesia

As I said in a previous posting, Indonesia is a BIG country. Today, Saturday 16 May, thousands of foreigners are being airlifted from Jakarta, and even more ethnic Chinese are fleeing the city any way they can. Yet, on the ferry this morning from Singapore to Batam island in Indonesia, there were Singaporeans, mostly Chinese, and also a smattering of expatriates, on their way over to Batam for a weekend of recreation, some carrying golf clubs, others with their fishing rods.

 

The point is that pictures from one place in Indonesia don't necessary reflect what's happening elsewhere, in other, less newsworthy places. And what's relevant for us, participants in the Malay / Indonesian symposium, is what things will be like in Ujung Pandang in July. Which is something we'll just have to wait in order to find out.

 

I'm writing this from my usual cybercafe in Batam, in a big shopping center, just like those that were ransacked and burnt in Jakarta the last couple of days, with such a horrific loss of life. But here everything is calm, as ever: shelves are full of goods, and shoppers are buying. Such a stark contrast to those pictures from Jakarta.

 

When I arrived in Batam this morning, I went straight to my Chinese acquaintances to see if they were all right: the moneychanger, the hotel owner, a couple of shopkeepers. Their story was the same: here in Batam, everything is calm, there have been no troubles. Of course, everybody watches TV and knows what is going on in Jakarta and other places. But the sort of scenes that took place there have not spread to this part of Indonesia.

 

So we must wait and see and hope: for a successful symposium, but, so much more importantly, for a successful outcome to the problems that have engulfed Indonesia.

 

UPDATE 3 15 May 1998, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

A couple of weeks ago I wrote that the situation in Indonesia had stabilized. Maybe I should have kept quiet. As you all know, things are now changing rapidly and unpredictably.

 

Last weekend, after the rioting in Medan had broken out but before it had reached Jakarta, I was, once again, in Batam, in Riau province. Everything was as calm as ever. The shops were overflowing with consumer goods, and chock full of customers: hard to believe that the country was supposed to be in the throes of an economic crisis. I also noticed that Chinese and Muslims were mixing freely: here at least the ugly scenes of Medan and Jakarta were not recurring.

 

But that was Batam last week, not Jakarta this week. And of course nobody can tell what Ujung Pandang will be like on the week of the symposium. As one participant put it in an email message today, we are now in a "wait and see" situation.

 

We will do our best to keep you appraised of the developments as rapidly as possible. Tomorrow I'll be heading back to Riau province in Indonesia, and I'll try to post another first-hand report from there later this weekend -- though if you don't here from me, not to worry: that will almost certainly be because email is down, not because anything untoward has happened.

 

In the meantime, Uri Tadmor is in constant contact with our local hosts at Ujung Pandang. Their latest report, dated yesterday (14 April) speaks of noisy motorcades and demonstrations, but none of sort of scenes we're seeing on our TV screens from Jakarta. Let's hope that things will remain that way.

 

UPDATE 2 29 April 1998, Riau, Indonesia

 The political situation in Indonesia has stabilized over the last few months. Following the conclusion of the general assembly of the MPR, Indonesia's electoral college, President Suharto appears to be safely entrenched in power for yet another term, with no serious threat to his rule in sight -- other than his own inevitable mortality. During the last few weeks, some university campuses have been the scene of demonstrations against the ruling regime; however, there appears to be an unwritten understanding between the students and the authorities whereby the students are allowed to demonstrate peacefully, provided they don't overstep certain bounds. For the most part, this understanding has held up well. On the economic front, Indonesia seems to have reluctantly accepted the necessity of going along with the IMF sponsored reforms -- as a result of which the Indonesian currency and stock market have leveled out from what appeared, a few months ago, to be a free-fall situation, and attained a certain measure of stability.

 

Okay, the preceding is what Peter Cole and Uri Tadmor wanted me to write, an official word from the symposium co-organizers, in order to reassure all would-be participants that everything is safe and that no disruptions or problems are anticipated. Now what I really think.

 

Being actually here, in Indonesia, it is rather difficult for me to put myself in the shoes of an American or European, plugged into CNN or the BBC, and continually bombarded with scenes of apparent chaos in far-away and little-known places. Which is why Peter and Uri are of course right in insisting that I write some reassuring words.

 

But what I really want to say (unofficially, representing nobody but myself) is the following: from the point of view of the prospective traveler, Indonesia is -- today as before -- a much safer, less threatening, easier to get around in, and more convenient place than most other western countries (or conference venues).

 

How many other places can you step out of your hotel room at 2 AM for a wide variety of excellent food and drink at a roadside stall? And, while enjoying your 2 AM munchies, take your laptop out of your bag, and start working, without having to worry whether you're likely to be mugged and relieved of your precious computer by a passing thug? And if you suddenly want to go for a middle-of- the-night whirl around town, just stretch out your arm and have a choice of taxis, rickshaws and motorcycles at your disposal?

 

(When I go to conferences in America or Europe, I am always astonished by the inconveniences and lack of creature comforts in many western countries. At the AFLA conference last April in Los Angeles, I was stuck, one night, for a few hours, with no transportation back from the conference venue, UCLA, to the hotel, just a few miles away: quite a scary experience. Less scary, but still not fun: at the LSA Summer Institute in Cornell last year, the cafeteria at the participant housing was open for such limited hours that on many mornings, the nearest cup of coffee was a 20 minute walk away, which, as any morning-hating caffeine junkie will attest, is hell. Things like this are almost inconceivable in Indonesia.)

 

So why are some people concerned about traveling to Indonesia? Well in part it's just the well-known psychological fact: people are afraid of the unknown. However, there's a more sinister aspect to it as well, one that involves the international media and the way in which it shapes people's perceptions. I'm a largely apolitical person, and I don't have any particular axes to grind here, but over the course of the last few years I've seen some pretty horrifying things.

 

In 1994, when I was working at the National University of Singapore, the smoke from the forest fires in Sumatra and Borneo was so bad that on some days you couldn't see the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences from the English Department, less than 100 yards away. But this was back in 1994, when the governments of the region were still keeping quiet about the magnitude of the ecological disaster: people went about their daily business in an eerie silence, as though nothing was amiss, and nobody talked about the fact that they could hardly breathe, that the region's airports were closing down one after the other. I kept on sending email messages to my friends in the west asking them what the hell was going on -- but nobody had heard anything. So where was the international media? One allusion to the smoke did appear, in the International Herald Tribune, but its author, an American lecturer at the National University of Singapore, had to leave Singapore in a hurry within the next few days. Apart from that, it was a deathly silence. Three years later, in 1997, the smoke came back: this time, in stark contrast, it was a hot media story worldwide, even though it wasn't anywhere near as bad as it was in 1994. And this time it was my friends in the west who were sending me emails asking me if I was alright. My response to them was: what's the big deal, it was worse three years ago, but then, for some reason, it didn't make CNN. But the spookiest thing of all was when I would ask local people, in Singapore and Malaysia, how they felt about it. To my utter astonishment, most people didn't even remember the big 'haze' of 1994. I felt like the proverbial child viewing the emperor in his new clothes. Had I dreamt it all? Or do people only remember what they see with their own eyes if it's Politically Correct, and makes it into the evening news?

 

I could go on with stories like this. If you're Politically Correct in the west, you're anti-Indonesian because of the East Timor issue. And if you're really trendy (or perhaps a linguist), you cite Chomsky on what he calls 'Orwell's Problem', and how people's knowledge bears little correspondence to the information that's made available to them, let alone to reality. Yet while complaining about the Indonesian treatment of the East Timorese, you ignore the repeated -- and well-reported -- diminishings in the population of ethnic Chinese Indonesians. And never even get to hear about all sorts of other things that are going on. Thereby providing a living example of 'Orwell's Problem'. One day, several years ago, I arrived here in Batam to stories of how there had been a big fight, with lots of casualties, between two of the migrant populations, from West Sumatra and from the island of Flores. But this never made the news, locally or internationally.

 

The point is: CNN, the BBC and their likes are having their way with us, and we're eager accomplices. So next time you see pictures of empty food shelves or food riots somewhere in Indonesia, just imagine an Indonesian viewer seeing a TV picture of a bear devouring a human being somewhere in the US (northern Alaska?) and deciding because of that to cancel his trip to Dayton, Ohio. Doesn't make much sense, does it?

 

So nobody can guarantee that we won't have an earthquake (the last AFLA conference in Los Angeles was an earth-shaking event!), but barring events of similar, equally minuscule probabilities, I can promise all participants a symposium that will be high on creature comforts and low on hassles. Not to mention the "longest restaurant in the world": the row of foodstalls along the Ujung Pandang waterfront, open as ever for business. See you there.

 

 

UPDATE 1 3 February 1998, Riau, Indonesia

Indonesia has been on the front pages of the newspapers and news magazines for the last month or two, with the economic crisis, and questions of succession to the presidency. As a result, you may perhaps be wondering how this might affect your trip to Ujung Pandang.

 

Well, the Rupiah has plummeted, and prices have, as expected, risen, though nowhere in proportion to the fall of the Rupiah. Which means that for lucky foreigners with foreign currency, Indonesia has become much cheaper. For example, just in the last month, the hotel room I'm writing this in has gone up from 38,000 to 50,000 Rps, while its price in US dollars has gone down, very roughly, from $ 8.00 to $ 5.00. The lunch that I just had cost, as usual, about 5,000, which, a few months ago would have been about $ 2.00, but is now around $ 0.50. Internal fares on Garuda International Airlines have gone up, so I'm told, between 50% and 70% in Rupiah terms since the beginning of the crisis, while the Rupiah has been reduced to a quarter, sixth, or eighth of its original value -- so such tickets are, right now, a great bargain.

 

Apparently Jakarta has witnessed scenes of panic buying and empty shelves: Uri Tadmor, who was there last month, tells me that there were scenes of near pandemonium. Well it all depends on where you are. Here where I visit regularly, in Riau province, Sumatra, there's lots of everything available, and the only chaotic scenes are the hordes of weekend shoppers from Singapore stuffing their shopping bags with bargains. Of course many people across the archipelago are suffering from the economic crisis, but you wouldn't know it here: in this place, people seem happy when they can exchange each tourist dollar that they pocket for more and more Rupiah. As I said, it all depends on where you are.

 

(Curiously, the same seems to be true even for the exchange rate itself. Last week, when the newspapers were reporting that the Rupiah had fallen to under 16,000 to the US dollar, moneychangers in Riau, as well as in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, were offering no more than 8,000 - 10,000.)

 

The big question is now what will happen on the political scene: only time will tell. But given the immense diversity of the archipelago -- geographic, economic, cultural, religious and linguistic, it is really a miracle that is holding together as well as it is. The press may not be free here; however, in contrast with neighboring Malaysia and Singapore, it is striking how much honest discussion can be found in the local media about the factors that brought about the economical crisis.

 

Which is nice not only for Indonesians, but also for foreigner visitors. At least here in Indonesia, most people aren't going on about "rogue foreigners" and "western / Jewish conspiracies": if you're a white-skinned foreigner, nobody's going to blame you for their economic troubles. Indonesians are brought up to value diversity; and a foreigner simply offers one more instantiation of that diversity. Most Indonesians are notoriously friendly towards foreigners; if anything, the problem is that they are sometimes too friendly.

 

Finally, some travel updates. Due to the economic crisis, airlines may be cutting down on the frequency of their flights; for example, word is that Silkair may be reducing the frequency of its Singapore - Ujung Pandang flight to once a week. Some latest fares (as of the end of January):

 

Garuda, Batam - Ujung Pandang, OW 931,000 Rps, RT 1,777,000 Rps (say US $90 and $170 respectively).

 

Malaysian Airlines, Kuala Lumpur - Ujung Pandang, RT 780 RM (say US $200).