Social life in Indonesia is a simple matter of grabbing any passing excuse to be social, to hang out. Foreigners coming to Indonesia for work sometimes complain that what is supposed to be a business meeting often turns into little more than a group hang-out, with absolutely no discussion of the matter in hand. That’s partly down to a key element of business etiquette in Indonesia: an importance placed on developing personal relationships ahead of the nitty-gritty. But it’s also about the irresistible social inclination.
Hanging out at shopping malls is a full-time occupation for some.
MALLRATS
When I first worked as a teacher in Indonesia I used to ask my Monday classes what they’d been up to over the weekend. But I soon gave up, because the answer was almost always the same: “Went to the mall…”
For many urban Indonesians of the aspiring or actual middle classes, hanging out at the mall is the major weekend activity. I used to think it was an expression of mindless consumerism, until a colleague pointed out that most people don’t actually buy anything at the mall. All those glitzy boutiques and brand outlets are really just a backdrop for the important business of being in the company of your buddies—and in a pleasantly air-conditioned setting.
Clubbing Together
Indonesia’s inclination towards social interaction is behind the country’s great galaxy of clubs and “communities”. There are communities for everything from fishing to heavy metal, and from mountaineering to vintage vehicles, in just about every city in the country. Some amount to little more than a Facebook page and a few bumper stickers, but many are major social organizations—albeit usually organized organically without much of a formal structure—with regular meet-ups and road-trips. On a Saturday night the streets of downtown Surabaya are often clogged with the city’s myriad motorbike “communities”, groups bonded only by ownership of a single type of bike, be that Vespa or Vario, Harley or Honda, but using that connection as an excuse to hang out together.
CAFÉ CULTURE, INDO STYLE
I have a suspicion that Indonesia invented café culture, long before the people of the Mediterranean took to sipping espressos on shady terraces. After all, Java is a place quite literally synonymous with coffee, and a cup of the black stuff is a staple from one end of Indonesia to the other. And the cornerstone of Indonesian social life, ngobrol (“chatting”) is always best when you combine it with ngopi—a lovely bit of Indonesian slang which simply means “to coffee”.
Starbucks opened its first outlet in Jakarta in 2002, but local caffeine-heads quickly realized that they could do better themselves, and in the last decade independent coffee shops with serious hipster cred have become a boom industry. The best ones in Jakarta, Surabaya, and Yogyakarta could easily give their New York rivals a run for their money.
But still, my own preferred places for ngopi and ngobrol would have to be the ones that were already a part of life in Indonesia long before anyone knew what a barista was. On the most scenic bends of mountain roads you’ll find bamboo shacks where the seating arrangements are lesehan-style—you 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,