When I asked the local dive shop owner about it he said that he was unable to find any local Acehnese dive instructors who speak the same language as his clients from abroad. As far as I know I have only met one local dive instructor who speaks English and he left a long time ago to work in Phuket, Thailand.

Indonesians dive instructors from outside Aceh in general don't want to work in Pulau Weh for many reasons. It's very difficult for immigration officials to catch these illegal dive instructors without solid evidence. Another issue is that if the local dive shops bother to train local Pulau Weh residents to become dive instructors, sooner or later most of them seek employment elsewhere in Indonesia or abroad where the standard of living is much better.

Your comments:
Pak Teuku Agam (the writer of the letter), I agree that Aceh has improved so much compared to the last few years.

Maybe Aceh is one of the safest places in Indonesia now. I did not mind seeing police with heavy weapons in Aceh. I think the provincial government has done a lot to improve the security in Aceh.

As for tourism, I think you have to target Indonesian and ASEAN tourists (particularly Malaysians). Even though, there are already some Western tourists in Aceh, for the marketing campaigns, it is better to focus on the Indonesian and ASEAN market at this stage.

Another thing that I think important is that, the Acehnese people have to start thinking about moving its capital city from Banda Aceh to somewhere inland. I sincerely hope the best for the people of Aceh. I believe that in the next five years, there will be more improvements in Aceh.

Helena van der Winden
Jakarta

If you go to another country for a holiday, then you respect their laws, whether it is a dress code or any other. Western morality is not universal.

Geoffrey Moulds
Melbourne

Comments: Perform prayer quietly--Aug. 12, p. 20

A friend who works for a multinational company told me how a Canadian colleague of hers, disturbed by the early morning noise, complained to the local mosque about it. "Oow, you shouldn't have done that!" she had told him, "They will think you are against our religion and culture, even that you are making war on Allah."

Your comments:
If religious practices and cultures of any particular country are offensive, and especially against human rights, then it is fit and proper to not tolerate these practices; regardless of where a person may be from. As a parallel of sorts, some countries give the excuse that it is interference in their internal affairs. These are always authoritarian regimes. The Communist Party of China is a perfect example of a refusal to conform to modern civilized and global standards.

Brien D.
Brisbane

If it were only the call to prayer, the hundreds, if not thousands, of mosques across Jakarta would be a symbol of culture. But instead, they're more symbols of arrogance, as each mosque tries to out-do its neighbors by having the loudest broadcast system, and then broadcasting the entire service or reading of the holy Koran by pre-adolescent squeaky-voiced boys, or women who are equally hopeless.

The result is a general cacophony that irritates most of the city's inhabitants, according to my informal polling. This simply doesn't happen anywhere else, not in the Arab world, not in Afghanistan. Perhaps regulation is past due, and would certainly be broadly welcomed.

Leo M
Jakarta

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