Being Foreigners in Our Own Country

There is a travel website that I usually follow on a daily basis: notventures.notcot.org. It gives pretty visuals from the pictures that would actually get you to the original web source when you click it. And once in a while something on Indonesia would come up and it gives me the deepest pleasure to see my beloved country being featured. Today, however, is an exception as I saw “Pulau Joyo” in one of the pictures.

For those of you who just never heard of Pulau Joyo, no worries, I had not too, and this time we are not being ignorant Indonesians who are not aware of our islands. Pulau Joyo, apparently as I found out, is a very tiny island off Riau province that had been transformed into a private island getaway serving only high income tourists who prefer some seclusion from the world without having to go to the rural areas. The island houses 4 bungalows that they called “palaces” and from the picture on their website they occupies the majority of the island area. So, from the looks of it, this island has been bought off completely and what was a private island has been developed a little more to luxury boutique hotel to be rented. Although the people who are willing to stay there have to go out of their way to actually reach the island (by a series of plane and boat rides), the place is nothing but rural.

The island was opened for tourists by the couple who owns it on mid of June 2011, so they just getting the buzz very recently. In their facebook page, I saw some people complaining about the change of the island’s name. It was Pulau Suka before it got changed to Pulau Joyo for some reason. I don’t have anything against rich people who goes on buying islands and making business. They probably are great people with excellent business instinct who loves exploring Indonesia and sees the potential in the beautiful petite island that others don’t see. But, I have to say, some things in the website just got my nerves. For one thing, they mention about the Balinese beds and Java houses in the description about the palaces, when they are located in the Riau Archipelago that has a Malay culture mixed with North and West Sumatrans lifestyle, far from resembling that of the Javanese. Another thing is that we can see that it is so much geared towards attracting foreign tourists that the website is either only in English or in Russian and they keep on emphasizing that it’s easy to reach it from Singapore, the current hub of Southeast Asi

a. And I guess while I keep reminding myself that I know nothing about the owner and like I said they are probably great people, it’s hard to not notice the ignorance that the business has towards the country it’s located at. It is somehow very disturbing to think that this “classic Robinson Crusoe island” is nothing like the rest of Riau province, where people can’t even enjoy the beach because they are busy thinking about what the sea might provide for their families today.

While I would to see increase tourism and better management of Indonesia’s wonderful spots, it is disheartening if the Indonesians cannot enjoy them ourselves. We become the foreigners, getting the second class citizen treatment in our own land, looking from afar, wondering why something that is so near can be so very different and unattainable. My hope is for investors and anybody who have fallen in love with the beauty of Indonesia and the business opportunity to also fall in love with the people and understand how it felt like when your home does not feel like home anymore.