This was the furthest I have ever flown, so the flight itself was very long and first took me to Seoul, Korea for an overnight layover (after a 13 hour flight). Korean Airlines put me up in the nicest hotel ever---my room had a heated toilet, which, in my opinion, is the greatest invention ever. What made the layover more bearable, in addition to the heated toilet:), is the amazing food the hotel had. The leg to Jakarta was only about 6.5 hours, so I was actually feeling okay when I finally got to my collaborator's beautiful house in Bogor (about 1.5 hours from Jakarta). I was there for an inception workshop for a very interesting research project on the impact of biofuel cultivation on people's land rights.
Indonesia is a country full of contradictions. On the one hand, it has a lot of natural resources (including oil and gas), and everything imaginable grows there (the Indonesians joke that you can drop anything into the ground, and it will grow). Drought is not an issue because of the tropical climate---in fact, I have never seen a stronger tropical downpour than I witnessed one night during my stay. On the other hand, it is the 4th most populated country in the worlds. Most of the people live on the island of Java, while the rest are spread around on some 17,000 islands that constitute Indonesia. So, while the resource abundance is there, so is widespread poverty, due to the geographical spread, high population density in some places, and pervasive corruption. Many Indonesians speak English and their native languages, while Bahasa, a made-up official language, is quite simple to learn.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment