By The Way... : You get more than you bargain for

Sun, 04/06/2008 10:44 AM  |  Headlines

Sitting at a warung the other afternoon, I overheard the predictable litany of complaints against Indonesia's taxi drivers. Smugly the overseas guests said they had managed to get a good price to the airport from Kuta. "I told him I would pay 20,000 rupiah and that was it. You've got to be tough," said this foreign visitor, who interspersed his conversation with what low prices he had managed to get for his shipment of crafts, which he was set to make a packet on back home.

Within me was a boiling urge to pop this self satisfied character on the nose. At no point had this chap, or his business colleagues, considered the life of a taxi driver in Indonesia. Perhaps they were looking only through the eyes of their home countries where taxi divers usually pull 12 hour days for fairly miserable wages. But they do get to go home and sleep, they have their taxis supplied and normally earn an hourly rate.

Things here are a bit different. I recently took a taxi from Jakarta's airport into the city. Chatting with the taxi driver I discovered he works 24 hours a day, he lives in his taxi. His family is way up in Bandung, a couple of hours up the freeway. He has not been home in four months. He has been living this way for 20 years. He is a friendly chap who complains not at all; happy to have a job and the meager earnings that help to keep his kids in school.

At the same warung a woman is whining about the difficulty of getting a visa into Indonesia. "I have to fly to Malaysia and then come back. It's expensive. I am on a pension," she blisters as she tucks into a meal that costs around 10,000 rupiah or a dollar in U.S. terms. So often I hear people complain about the difficulties they face getting an Indonesian visa. There is a choice of visas available from the 30 day tourist visa on arrival, the Social Budaya that extends up to six months and for the business mob it's an easy two months that lets them traipse around the country and fill containers with profit.

Good for them, good for Indonesia, so why the whining. All visas take is a trip to Singapore, or if you prefer some real color, Dili, and a couple of days wait and you are right for another couple of months in paradise. Try getting the same visa into Australia, the U.S. or Europe, particularly if you are an Indonesian citizen. The fact is Indonesia has some of the most generous and welcoming visa requirements in the world, we should be very, very grateful.

Just outside the entrance to the warung is a young Indonesian girl, perhaps 9 years old. She will never have the opportunity to travel to distant lands. Dusty faced, hair unwashed, dressed in hand me downs that have been handed down too often, she begs for Rp 1,000, 500 if you could spare that. The bitter pensioner complaining of visa costs refuses this beggar child the 10 cents she asks for. "They are all rich you know, these beggars," she says. I am not so sure. Begging is hardly a career of choice.

Giving to these poor buggers is a win win situation. The beggar gets a bowl of rice; the giver gets far more, a reminder "that there but for the grace of God go I", that dash of humility that wipes smugness from the soul. Yet the complaints from guests go on.

Next up is the price of accommodation. A swimming pool, hot water, breakfast and rooms with verandas cleaned daily for Rp 100,000. And that's for two people. Try that in a youth hostel in Singapore, the U.S., Australia or just about anywhere else in the world and you will be laughed out of the building.

Are the complaints and demands of people based on the old adage, give them an inch and they'll' take a mile. Does Indonesia, in this visit Indonesia year, need to triple its prices to reflect the true value of its products and services, address head-on that old human habit of not trusting anything freely given? Or do visitors to the country need to learn some manners, drop their presumptions and prejudices that lead them by the nose into nasty little statements that question the integrity of the local people.

Certainly most visitors to Indonesia come with eyes and hearts open, and leave with these filled with new friendships, knowledge and respect. But for those little groups who sit self-satisfied with superiority in warungs comparing deals and rip-offs, think twice before you speak, your hosts, Indonesians, are listening.

-- Trisha Sertori

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