TheJakartaPost
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Your letters: Tips for boosting tourism in Indonesia
Beautifully scary: A car passes through a sea of sand near Mount Bromo in East Java while the mountain spews out volcanic ash as high as 1,500 meters
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Beautifully scary: A car passes through a sea of sand near Mount Bromo in East Java while the mountain spews out volcanic ash as high as 1,500 meters. The mountain, which erupted recently, has developed into a tourist destination that attracts local and foreign visitors to the province.(JP/Aman Rochman) (JP/Aman Rochman)
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span class="inline inline-center">Beautifully scary: A car passes through a sea of sand near Mount Bromo in East Java while the mountain spews out volcanic ash as high as 1,500 meters. The mountain, which erupted recently, has developed into a tourist destination that attracts local and foreign visitors to the province.(JP/Aman Rochman)
This letter concerns tourism in Indonesia. I am a US citizen who has been here for almost two years. My very first weekend in Jakarta, I was at a downtown plaza with museums and a canal.
I was asked by some high-school students if I would recommend Indonesia for tourism and what I liked and disliked. I also taught a class with research projects and had students develop three prospective trips around Indonesia.
I have spoken with many of my fellow expats regarding the matter:
Clean up this place! I have never seen such deplorable filth in the streets and everywhere. Not only should trash collection be improved like the US did 40 years ago, but children should be taught to clean up trash and recycle.
Indonesians throw trash into the streets. The pictures of beautiful places in Indonesia are misleading; where people live it is filthy, with a few notable exceptions.
The point of development is to improve lives and Indonesia could do that by teaching people to care. Public service
messages, lessons in school about cleaning up, nature and taking pride in Indonesia!
People live in misery and poverty in kampung, but rather than have a vegetable garden, they throw garbage wherever they feel.
A recent issue of The Jakarta Post had articles about malnutrition and destruction of coral reefs in Indonesia. Why should divers and tourists come if the food they have to eat is terrible, with little nutritious variety, and the oceans are filthy with plastic debris and the coral reefs destroyed?
Improve Indonesia for tourists by improving Indonesia for Indonesians including Indonesians helping themselves a lot more than they do. None of my Indonesian students, when asked, 'What is special about Indonesia? Why should I as a tourist come here and spend my money?' mentioned tigers, elephants, rhinos or orangutans. Indonesians don't even know what is special about their own country.
How can a tourist get from place to place in Indonesia? I went from Medan to Gunung Leuser to see orangutans. There is no direct way to get from there to see elephants. Backpacker types might have the time to spend two or three weeks on crowded buses and bad roads, but not people with jobs and money for whom schedules must be kept.
Promote tourism to existing wonders, like Pulau Weh, where the beaches are pristine, the people nice, the coral reefs well protected. It can be done in Indonesia.
Stephen Gruman
United States
