Archive for October, 2007
Imagine the irony! Ideally speaking, of all countries in Southeast Asia, Indonesia is supposed to be a perfect haven for tourists.
It is the world’s largest archipelagic country in the world. We have countless beautiful scenery to show off. Our natural assets such as valleys, hills, beaches etc. are too numerous to mention. This is not yet including the exotic world beneath our vast waters.
We have cultures so diverse that each offers completely different windows to another world unknown to foreigners. Our variety of food is also simply too good to miss. Furthermore, compared to other destinations, the cost of vacations here is inexpensive.
So why are we lagging behind? Instead of seeing Indonesia as an endless experience for both natural and cultural discoveries, the world only knows Bali and almost nothing beyond. Indonesia is not even in the top 10 of favorite tourist destinations in the region. Something is not right. We are certainly not selling our tourism aggressive enough.
The best and fastest way to sell Indonesia is through mass media advertisements and such efforts must be government-sponsored, considering that improved tourism will also benefit the public as a whole. The Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia tourism boards have been flooding the world with their enticing advertisements through TV, magazines and billboards. I don’t see why we cannot duplicate their tactics.
But again there is nothing like personal advertising. The surest way to get tourists is by personal invitations. Friends always visit one another. Each of us is a tourist ambassador for our country. The point is, please abolish that narrow-minded worse-than-colonial rent-seeking fiscal policy for outbound travelers. Let us be free and make connections with the outside world. If each of us can introduce ourselves to five people in foreign lands, imagine the potential impact!
There is no tourism without first generating the world’s interest and awareness. What better way to do just that than through personal relationships?
And also do not forget to upgrade our dire transportation infrastructure. Tourism is a business of selling dreams. Make sure that those dreams are easily accessible.
S. WIRAWAN
Tangerang, Banten
Source: The Jakarta Post
October 19th, 2007
By Heri Retnowati
NGANCAR, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesia remained on high alert on Thursday for a possible eruption of a rumbling volcano in eastern Java, but many residents near Mount Kelud refused to leave their homes despite an order to evacuate.
The alert on the volcano, one of Indonesia’s deadliest and located 90 km (55 miles) southwest of its second-largest city, Surabaya, was raised to maximum late on Tuesday, meaning it could erupt within 24 hours.
Authorities had ordered the evacuation of more than 100,000 people from a 10-km (6-mile) zone near the 1,731-metre (5,712-foot) volcano.
But many locals have refused to go, reluctant to leave possessions untended and complaining about inadequate food and shelter provided in safer zones.
“Why should I evacuate? We were not tended to yesterday, why would it be any different today?,” said Mariyatun, a resident from the village of Sugihwaras.
Sugihwaras, located 7 km from the crater, suffered major losses during an eruption in 1990. More than a hundred of its residents died and lava destroyed much of the village.
“The volcano is not going to erupt. I haven’t seen the signs”, added Mariyatun, who like many Indonesians uses one name.
Rescue officials knocked on every door on Wednesday night, urging villagers to go to the shelters, but the trucks brought to take people to shelters left empty.
Experts said the danger was certainly not over, despite a fall in the number of volcanic earthquakes since Tuesday.
“Magma is already very close to the surface and the temperature in the crater lake is rising. It is now over 37 degrees Celsius (98.6F), which is a sharp rise from the previous week,” Saut Simatupang, an official at Indonesia’s Centre for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation, told Reuters.
The official said the number of volcanic quakes had fallen from 532 on Tuesday to 151 on Wednesday. On Thursday morning, there had only been 16 quakes, he said.
A Reuters witness saw fine ash raining down for about an hour on Wednesday night in the village of Ngancar and health officials said that masks had been handed out in some areas.
Simatupang said the ash did not appear to have come from the latest seismic activity.
“We have not observed any clouds of ash coming down the slopes. That must have been strong wind coming from the east, carrying old ash lying on the edges of the crater,” he said.
The official said a full eruption could mean that Surabaya was hit by ash clouds, depending on winds, although he said the impact on the industrial city should not be significant.
“But three districts within a radius of 10 kilometres will be severely affected,” he said.
An estimated 350,000 people live within 10 km of the volcano and when it last erupted in 1990 at least 30 people were killed.
In 1919, about 5,000 died when Kelud ejected scalding water from its crater lake.
Indonesia, which sits on a belt of intense seismic activity known as the Pacific Ring of Fire, has had a series of major volcanic eruptions over the centuries.
(Additional reporting by Adhityani Arga in Jakarta)
Source: http://in.reuters.com/article/
October 19th, 2007
Andrea Lopez - Mumbai
After concluding the first Indonesian Specialist programme for the Indian travel trade in Medan, Indonesia in August this year, Clavin Marketing India is all set to flag off its second edition from November 25-28, 2007, in association with Malaysian Airlines.
Speaking to Express TravelWorld, Clarence Fernandes, managing director of Clavin Marketing, said, “The response generated from the first specialist programme was positive. The state-wise presentations by the various tourism boards and the buyer-seller mart gave the Indian travel trade a better perspective of what Indonesia had to offer. The programme was an overall win-win situation for everyone - the airlines, the Indian travel trade and the representative state tourism boards.” Travel agents were awarded Indonesia Specialist Programme certificates at the end of it.
While the first edition’s focus was on the travel trade of Maharashtra and Gujarat, the forthcoming programme promises to draw in participants from the rest of the country. Says Fernanades, “We are looking at a more enhanced programme with an additional 50 agents from north and south India.” The three-day programme will commence at Lake Toba and end in Medan and will coincide with the IMT-GT forum scheduled to take place at the same venue.
Source: http://www.expresstravelworld.com/
October 18th, 2007
Experts say the initiative, which was first mooted more than a decade ago, is technically possible.
von John Aglionby (Jakarta)
Indonesia recently gave the initial go-ahead for the world’s longest road and railway suspension bridge across the 30km Sunda Strait between the islands of Java and Sumatra. The $10bn project is for a series of bridges carrying a six lane highway and double track railway traversing three small islands in the strait. The longest span would be about 3km, more than 50 per cent longer than the longest existing structure, the Akashi-Kaikyo bridge in Japan.
Heka Hartono, an official of the Artha Graha Network, the lead member of the consortium that will build the bridge, said construction would begin in 2012 if feasibility studies confirmed it was viable, with the first travellers crossing in 2025. Artha Graha is controlled by Tommy Winata, one of Indonesia’s most colourful tycoons, who has close links to the security forces.
Experts say the initiative, which was first mooted more than a decade ago, is technically possible, even though the strait lies in one of the world’s most dangerous earthquake zones.
Sumatra has been rocked by several significant tremors in the past few months and more than 230,000 people were killed when a 9.0-magnitude quake in December 2004 triggered a tsunami. There are also active volcanoes in the area, including Krakatau 40km away, which killed tens of thousands of people when it erupted in 1883.
Last year Italy cancelled the construction of a 3.3km suspension bridge across the Strait of Messina to Sicily, citing costs and fears that it would not be earthquake proof.
Mr Heka said the next two years would be spent doing studies into the economic, social, cultural, political and security aspects of the project. “If they are favourable, we would then look at the technical aspects, which will also probably take two years,” he said. “But I am confident this will be built.”
The bridge would relieve mounting pressure on Java, an island the size of England that is home to 130m people. The population of the whole of Sumatra, which is three times larger, is 47m.
The bridge would significantly cut the journey time between the islands, which takes several hours by ferry. Some 20m people crossed the strait in 2006 and the figure is forecast to double by 2020.
Paskah Suzetta, the national planning minister, said the government fully supported the project. “It will increase economic growth and so people in the two areas and beyond will enjoy significant benefits,” he said after the signing.
Scott Younger, a British civil engineer and infrastructure expert based in Indonesia, said the deciding factor would be cost “With today’s technology this sort of project is perfectly possible,” he said. “It’s just what price are you willing to pay to compensate for the earthquakes. This will have to be able to take a magnitude nine quake.”
Source: ttp://www.ftd.de/karriere_management/
October 18th, 2007
Agnes Winarti , The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Mekarsari fruit park in Bogor is striving to restore its image as a recreational site, not just a place where visitors can pick and feast on fruits of their choice.
“Most people seem to think they can get fruit out of season anytime they come here. It’s not exactly right. We are a fruit conservatory, not a fruit farm,” park public relations officer Catherina W. Day told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
The 264-hectare park, operated by PT Mekar Unggul Sari, includes an 80-hectare fruit conservatory with 1,400 varieties of fruit plants, a 27.5-hectare pond and a 150-hectare recreational area.
The park has mini go-karts for children, a family garden for gatherings, a deer park and a plantation laboratory.
Thirty-something couple Didi and Elsie from Bekasi, who visited Mekarsari twice this year, said the garden ambiance suited families.
“We always bring our parents and our 16-month-old son here,” Elsie said.
“The entrance fee is also affordable,” Didi said, referring to the Rp 10,000 ticket for both adults and children above two years. After the Idul Fitri holiday week, tickets for children between 2 and 6 years old will return to the normal price of Rp 9,000.
Catherina said the park, located in Bogor, has begun to attract more visitors from further away.
“Previously we only had regular visitors from nearby areas like Bogor or Cibubur, but in the last two years more visitors have come from other areas of Greater Jakarta.”
In the low season Mekarsari welcomes between 10,000 and 12,000 visitors per month, while in high season, including Idul Fitri, up to 16,000 visitors crowd the garden.
To get around Mekarsari Park, visitors can choose from several options including trams costing from Rp 10,000 to Rp 40,000 for a round trip, tuk tuk (a kind of golf buggy) and tandem bicycles costing Rp 20,000 for a 15-minute trip.
Catherina said starting this month the garden operator also offered rental bicycles for individuals. “We realized that traveling by foot around the 264-hectare parkland can be really painful.”
Mekarsari plans to build three more villas (currently there is one), to cater for visitors who wish to stay overnight at the gardens. The villas can accommodate up to five people.
Catherina said Mekarsari also offered activities including fishing, team building, biking and barbecuing.
“We aren’t just a venue, we are an events organizer.”
Despite efforts to transform its image into a recreational garden, Mekarsari still welcomes visitors to pick fruits like melons and salak (thorny palm), provided they come during the right season.
A grandmother of three, Ros, 67, on visiting Mekarsari for the first time, said, “I thought I could pick all kinds of fruit here, but I could only get melons today. I’m still happy to be here because it’s so refreshing.”
When asked whether she hoped to see the same fruits available in other stores, she said, “Definitely not. These fruits better stay here because they are Mekarsari’s speciality.”
Mekarsari opens from Tuesday to Sunday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Source: The Jakarta Post
October 18th, 2007
DOHA • The Republic of Indonesia has drawn up a road map to woo visitors from Qatar to its tourist destinations.
The idea is to organise a Travel Mart for Middle East with an extra focus on Qatar. The discussion on the proposal is progressing with Qatar Airways, revealed Andang Pramana Sosodro , Charge d’ Affaires of Indonesian Embassy.
Talking to The Peninsula, Sosodro said Indonesia is already working on a mega tourism package to coincide with the 100th anniversary of their country’s Independence movement early next year. The campaign will be launched on January 1, 2008 with a grand opening gala night and a tourism exhibition at Jakarta. More than 100 further events and festivals on numerous islands of the archipelago, including sports, cultural, lifestyle are in the pipeline, he said.
“Indonesia has been registering a growing rate of tourist inflow from the Middle East over the last few years. However, the flow is not matching to that of some of our neighbouring countries. It is against this backdrop we decided to go in for an aggressive marketing. “Visit Indonesia Year 2008″ will be a good start in selling Indonesia’s niche tourism brands”, he said.
Sosodro said that nearly 5 m foreign tourist had visited Indonesia during the year 2006. Of this, an estimated 56,000 tourists were from the Middle East. This is against 38,337 visitors during 2004. Indonesia targets a minimum of 6m visitors from across the globe in 2007.
“In the first seven months of 2007, Indonesia attracted a little more than 2.5m guests from the world over, which marked a distinct increase of around 13 per cent. The year 2008 is to add another 20 per cent. And the booming Qatar is certainly our target”, he said.
Comprising more than 17, 500 islands, Indonesia is among the most beautiful multi-faceted and fascinating holiday destinations in the world. It offers beautiful beaches for swimming, trekking tours through spectacular volcanic landscapes, one of the most beautiful golf courts and diving in unique underwater worlds. Now, we have decided to aggressively market this.
Sosodro added: “Qatar’s booming economy is already having it bearing on Indonesia when our exports touched $69.8m in 2006. This was against the $35.49m registered in 2004. Indonesia’s workforce has registered a 20 per cent increase in Qatar in 2006, compared to previous year.
Source: http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com
October 10th, 2007
The lead up to the Idul Fitri holiday has already seen Jakartans on their bikes, heading home — and this year the holiday season has also seen many hotels in West Java’s capital Bandung and Yogyakarta completely booked out.
In Bandung, most hotels have been booked by guests coming from Jakarta and several hotels in Yogyakarta have started to turn people away.
Sheraton Hotel & Towers’ communication director Eddy SS said the hotel’s 153 rooms were almost 100 percent booked with Jakartans from Oct. 13 to 15.
He contributed the hotel’s high occupancy to its lebaran package promotion, which runs from Oct. 12 to 16.
“The package is on offer at Rp 2.7 million for two nights stay including breakfast and lunch or special dinner,” he said.
At Arion Swiss-Bel hotel in the heart of Bandung, rooms were fully booked from Oct. 12 to 15 but outside those dates, 20 percent were still available, hotel general manager Andhy Irawan said.
The increased demand for rooms came as a surprise for Panghegar hotel’s corporate officer Restina Setiawan, she said.
The hotel’s 189 rooms were fully booked from October 13 to 14 and the four-star hotel had no special promotion.
Source: www.thejakartapost.com
October 10th, 2007
By Samantha Stayner
Tim Palmer had only been in Indonesia five days. Fresh from his previous posting in Jerusalem, he was just settling in as the ABC’s new correspondent in the region when the bombs struck.
“And that was it,” he says. “Indonesia changed for good for us, as reporters, and for most Australians generally.”
In his time as the ABC’s Middle East correspondent, Tim had covered more than 50 bombings in Jerusalem, reported from Lebanon and Syria to the Gulf States and Iran. In 2001 he was one of few reporters to report on war in Afghanistan from that country’s far west. But the scene in Bali shocked him on a far more personal level.
“I was staggered by the extent of the damage, the physical damage to the buildings,” Tim says. “Most of the bodies had been removed, at least of the survivors and intact bodies that could be found. The really horrible scenes were out at the hospital.”
“Here were people who’d spoken the same vernacular as me, who’d been on holidays just like I’d been on holidays there,” he says. “It was the Australianness of them that really was quite shattering for me”.
Arriving in Bali the morning after the attacks, Tim found a scene of confusion and chaos. Family members wandered the morgues and hospitals, searching for loved ones. Tim offered his laptop so that one family could arrange for dental records to be sent to Bali, a simple act, but one that lead to the first Australian victim being identified.
In the next months, Tim reported on the police investigation, the hunt for the bombers and their eventual trials in the Indonesian courts. His reporting took him to Java, where he visited the family of terrorist, Amrosi.
“We were struck by the pretty brutal poverty of where he lived,” Tim says. “One of the first things we realised… is that we had to speak Javanese to communicate with Amrosi’s mother.”
“I guess what we felt from that was just how provincial, and how remote from what the Indonesia that we looked at… we’d completely missed these sort of backwaters, pockets of an Indonesia that we just didn’t know, and a kind of extremism at the schools that we just didn’t know.”
Since 2002, news from Indonesia has continued to dominate our headlines. A car bomb exploded outside the lobby of Jakarta’s Marriot Hotel in 2003, killing 12 people.
Ten people died when the Australian embassy in Jakarta was bombed in September 2004. The next month, Schapelle Corby was arrested when four kilograms of marijuana was found in her luggage in Denpasar. Hundreds of thousands of people died in the Boxing Day tsunami at the end of that year.
In April 2005, the so-called ‘Bali 9′ were arrested at Denpasar after attempting to smuggle heroin. In May, Schapelle Corby was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years jail. Then in October, bombings at Jimbaran and Kuta claimed 20 lives including four Australians.
Now back in Australia, and executive producer of Media Watch, Tim reflects on how the 2002 bombings changed the region.
“Some people will scrub Bali, and more broadly Indonesia, off their agenda forever,” Tim says. “But other Australians will still go there and see the place has not changed, and see the Balinese haven’t changed, and that they shouldn’t be penalised any further for what happened.”
But, Tim says, good things are happening and that Bali particularly will rebuild again.
“Things are happening there that can only be good for our relationship within Indonesia, and which we can hope will be good for balancing the real needs for Indonesia to develop against these extremist voices that could otherwise emerge in the country.”
“Bali will go on being Bali.”
Source: http://www.abc.net.au
October 9th, 2007
A study predicts that global warming will further decimate the orangutan population in Sebangau National Park in Central Kalimantan, home to Indonesia’s largest orangutan habitat.
About 6,900 orangutans out of the estimated 14,000 on Kalimantan Island currently occupy the 567,700-hectare park.
“The rising temperature and rainfall will have adverse consequences on plant species in the park,” Chairul Saleh, the biodiversity conservation coordinator at WWF Indonesia, told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.
“The plants are sensitive to climate changes. This will threaten food supplies for the orangutans.”
Orangutans are reliant on the trees and fruit for their existence.
Chairul said that coupled with the long-standing problem of forest fires, global warming would affect the reproductive cycle of the orangutans.
“It will also trigger the migration of orangutan to other forests and affect genetics, the reproduction rate and health of orangutans,” he said.
Female orangutans in Kalimantan currently have an interbirth interval of between six and nine years.
Experts warn that orangutans are vulnerable to malaria, tuberculosis, hepatitis and cholera.
The rising temperatures is expected to cause a big increase in the number of malaria cases.
The study on the impact of global warming on orangutan habitat in the Sebangau National Park was conducted jointly by the Jakarta-based, privately-run National University and WWF Indonesia in September.
The study says that temperatures in the Sebangau Park would rise by one degree Celsius by 2050 and three degrees by 2100 due to global warming.
Between 2000 and 2003, temperatures in the park were between 21 to 23 degrees Celsius.
The WWF will present the findings of the study at the international climate-change conference in Bali in December, which will be attended by representatives of the 191 signatories to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
Sri Suci Utami, an orangutan researcher from the National University, said that extensive land clearance and illegal logging had significantly reduced the orangutan population.
“Without global warming, orangutans are already very vulnerable to extinction thanks to rampant forest fires and illegal logging,” she said.
“Thus, global warming could further expedite the loss of orangutan habitat unless the government takes immediate protective measures,” she said.
The Sebangau Park is a combination of mixed swampy forest, transitional forest, lowland canopy forest and granite forest, where 106 species of birds, 35 mammals and several groups of primates can be found.
The government designated the Sebangau National Park as a conservation forest in 2004.
Sri, however, warned that those who cleared land by fire would use the global warming issue to expand their businesses as they could blame global warming for the loss of orangutan habitat.
The use of fire to clear land both for commercial and agricultural purposes is widely practiced in Indonesia.
The severe El Nino-induced drought in 1997-1998 led to a massive fire disaster that killed many orangutans.
“We estimate that about 2.5 percent of the 14,000 orangutans in Kalimantan were lost during the forest fires in the 1990s,” Sri said.
In addition, major forest fires in 2006 also killed about 1,000 orangutans. To make it worse, most of the dead orangutans were mothers and their offspring.
“Female and young orangutans will be the most vulnerable as they have the greatest difficulty in escaping,” said Sri.
The study recommends the establishment of monitoring stations to oversee orangutan populations, including their daily activities and food supply.
It is also recommended that local people be involved in the protection efforts being carried out in the Sebangau National Park.
Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Source: The Jakarta Post
October 9th, 2007
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia, which is losing its forests faster than any other country, hopes to plant 79 million trees in a single day ahead of a major U.N. climate change meeting this year, a forestry ministry spokesman said Friday.
The trees, mostly eucalyptus and teak, will be planted across the world’s fourth-largest nation on Nov. 28, said the spokesman Masyhud, who uses one name.
“We aim to get Indonesia greener as soon as we can and reduce forest degradation as much as possible,” he said.
A Greenpeace forest activist, Hapsoro, said the planting of trees was admirable, but was almost pointless in the face of Indonesia’s rapid deforestation.
“Planting new trees is good, but Greenpeace stays firm in calling on the government to temporarily stop all logging to allow forest re-growth,” he said.
The environmental group said in May that Indonesia was losing its forests faster than any other country, with the equivalent of about 300 soccer fields destroyed every hour. The forestry ministry did not contest the statement.
Around 4.5 million acres of forest were destroyed each year between 2000 and 2005, a rate of 2 percent annually or 20 square miles a day, the group said.
In addition to massive commercial logging for timber, Indonesian forests are also being decimated by fires and land clearing for palm oil plantations.
Masyhud said that since 2003 the government has launched several conservation initiatives, including signing agreements with Japan and the European Union banning the import of illegally logged products.
The government planted 2.5 million acres in 2006 and aims to double that amount this year, he said.
Indonesia will host a major U.N. climate change meeting in December on the resort island of Bali. Environment ministers from 80 countries will meet there to begin talks on what actions the world must take after the first commitment period of the Kyoto protocol expires in 2012.
Source: http://ap.google.com/article
October 8th, 2007
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