lounge on the floor at low tables—and where you can order a steaming cup of local coffee sweetened with a great dollop of condensed milk. It might not have the finesse of a barista-crafted flat white, but it tastes just as good.
“The Small Change of Friendship”
The author Nigel Barley brilliantly describes cigarettes as “the small change of friendship” in Indonesia—offered endlessly between old buddies and new acquaintances. And as a non-smoker I’m always at a distinct social disadvantage, for this is a country where something like 70 percent of adult men smoke. The major domestic tobacco manufacturers—companies like Djarum, Dji Sam Soe, Gudang Garam, and the Philip Morris-owned Sampoerna—are amongst the biggest businesses in the country. They spend millions of dollars on highly sophisticated advertising campaigns, each company with multiple cigarette brands delicately targeted at different demographics, from aspirational urban creatives to good ol’ boys back in the kampung. And while there are some official restrictions, tobacco money plays a huge role in the entertainment industries in Indonesia. The classic style of Indonesian cigarette is the kretek—clove-flavored, accounting for well over 80 percent of all domestic tobacco sales, and adding an unmistakably evocative fragrance to the atmosphere of Indonesian public spaces.
HITTING THE TOWN ON MALAM MINGGU
It’s malam minggu—literally “Sunday eve”, i.e., Saturday night—and it’s time to hit the town. A low-key malam minggu with friends typically features a bout of general jalan-jalan, wandering around. Ideally someone has a car. There might be some mall time early on; there will definitely be food at some point; and things might end up with a long stretch of general ngobrol over coffee—in either a hipster café, or an old-school street-side hang-out, depending on how trendy, or how moneyed, your crew is. And that might well be it—unless, of course, you’re hanging out with some proper party animals, in which case you’ll need to be prepared to venture into the gloom of the Indonesian nightlife scene.
Bars and clubs in Indonesia do have a tendency to be divided between outrageously pricey and pretentious lounges where the indolently rich sip extravagantly priced cocktails, and a gritty netherworld of sticky dancefloors and vice. A happy medium does exist in most bigger cities, but if you’re looking for afterhours drinking in small-town Indonesia you will be heading for some decidedly rough and ready places.
But then, of course, there’s Jakarta, which has long had a reputation as one of the best places in Asia for nightlife. The central and southern part of the city, stretching southwards from the traffic and commerce hub of Plaza Indonesia, is home to an ever shifting array of seriously sophisticated clubs and bars where you might not want to order a drink unless you’ve got very deep pockets. Head the other direction, meanwhile, northwards towards the sea, and you’ll descend into a world of mind-boggling sleaze, even though the original linchpin of the North Jakarta scene, the monumental den of iniquity known as Stadium, has now closed its dark doors.
Beer, handphone and cigarette—classic malam minggu ingredients!
“DO YOU LIVE IN A MUD HUT?”
No one in Indonesia lives in a mud hut; they’d get washed away by the monsoon. “Do you live in a bamboo hut, then?” That’s an actual conversation I had more than once while living in Indonesia with folks back home in the UK, where some people genuinely struggled to come to terms with the fact that I lived in an actual house, with walls, windows, doors and everything!
Modern minimalism and traditional touches mix in an upscale villa in Bali.
It’s true that there are a few people, out in the deep countryside, who really do live in bamboo huts. And there are also a good few people who live in ramshackle shanties. But generally speaking home for Indonesians—rural and urban, from Sabang to Merauke, and across a wide social spectrum—is a modern house, almost always single-story, with concrete walls and a tiled roof. But while the typical Indonesian home might not tally up with some people’s exotic imaginings, it does have some distinctly Indonesian characteristics.
A HOME AWAY FROM HOME
The first house I lived in in Indonesia stood at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in the vast suburban acreage of eastern Surabaya. It was the archetypal middle class dwelling, with a heavy green gate in front, a garage to the left, and a narrow porch opening to a cool space beyond. Immediately inside the front door was a long room, stretching right to the back of the house, with a sofa, TV, and dining table in the middle. Three bedrooms and a bathroom opened directly into this communal space. At the very back, tucked discreetly to the side, was the kitchen, and beyond that was a tiny yard, and opening onto that tiny yard was an even tinier bedroom where Sutinah, the maid, lived. That’s right: the maid; we had a maid; I’ll talk about that later.
I’ve lived in various other Indonesian houses in the years since, and they are almost always a variation on this simple theme. The emphasis is always on being in the company of others, and that’s what that space at the heart of the house is for—hanging out with your family.
An old-school middle-class home in Jakarta of the kind rapidly giving way to modern villas and apartments.
A typical Indonesian living room.
BEING AN ANAK KOS
When a young Indonesian leaves the warm cocoon of the family home to head for college or work in some far-off city, they don’t end up living on their own in a studio apartment. They move into something called a rumah kos. This is usually translated as “boarding house”—which conjures up grim Dickensian visions of gruesome landladies and drafty corridors. But the classic rumah kos is usually just a family home with space for a lodger or two. And the classic ibu kos (“landlady”) is less a gimlet-eyed Victorian tyrant than a surrogate mother—though she’ll certainly keep a close check on her lodgers, particularly if they happen to be girls (most respectable rumah kos only take lodgers of a single sex). There are also purpose-built rumah kos, which are more like budget hotels with a dozen or more identical rooms, but they’re not such nice places to live, and they don’t always have such wholesome reputations.
Oh Mandi! The Indonesian Bathroom
Traditional Indonesian kamar mandi, “bathrooms”, aren’t quite the same as what you might find back home. For a start, they don’t usually have a bath. What they do have, though, is a big tiled tank called a bak mandi, full of unheated water, with a little plastic scoop for sloshing it over yourself—which is how you take a shower, Indonesian style. It’s actually both quicker and more refreshing on hot days than standing under the meager trickle of an underpowered showerhead (though these days, modern middle class homes usually
