Indonesia 101: Culture

Today’s section of the blog will be about the Indonesian culture and it will be written by a Chinese girl and a Moroccan girl named Ann and Zainab respectively.

When you just arrived to a new country where you will be living at for a while and not only as a tourist, the culture shock hits you. The first thing we faced was the fact that Indonesian do not wear slippers at home. Actually, it is a part of their living style. It was a little bit hard to understand and especially to get used to it but we finally get along with this rule. We think that it is a good thing because it is healthy since you avoid taking the shoes you wear outside to the place you are living at . :-O The second thing that shocked us once arrived was the bathroom. We were like : What is that huge vat for? (⊙_⊙)？Should we have our daily shower inside it or is it only for decoration ? Ok, enough talking about the huge vat, let’s talk about the small one. We knew that it was the toilet but the big question that was kept in our minds since the first time we saw it till the day we had to use it in a public school is ‘How can we flush the toilet?’ (>﹏<) . Now, we will share with you the funniest thing we saw in yogjakarta in one of the beaches we visited. We were very excited when we saw that we can do snorkeling for only 35000 rp, so once we arrived there we saw people wearing lifesaving coat while standing. We said maybe they will be picked up by a boat or something … while waiting for it to come we saw people snorkeling in a puddle that might contain some fishes. Actually they were snorkeling while standing in a puddle, that was really hilarious. Don’t worry guys, we know that you have the real snorkeling but this type of snorkeling is nothing but unforgettable.

Let’s talk about the daily life style here in Jakarta. The traffic jam is incredible if you want to be in a place at 9 am you need to be ready to go at 6 am. During the first 2 weeks we were using only taxis and while using it in rush hours it was more expensive. After few weeks we realized that there are other ways of transportation which are much cheaper than the taxi. For instance, using the train is a good way of transportation but never during rush hours. You have also Angkot which is cheap though but not really comfortable especially if you are about to take more than one per day and not really safe at night. But, guys we have to admit that you have the most incredible way of transportation which is the Gooo-Jeeeeek! It is not only cheap but also fast.

To sum up, after one month we think that we are really used to all of this, the reason is because we are living as Indonesian and not as tourist, we use the same transportation as you do we eat your food and we learned some Indonesian words as well. We can say that after spending one month here you can’t call use ‘bule’ anymore