I heart Indonesia very much!

I have been in Asia for the past few weeks – and time has gone by so quickly and fulfilling-ly! Most of it was spent in Jakarta – effectively my first time there, and I found the people to be lovely, very hospitable, polite, friendly, welcoming, and the food wonderful – every dish was great. Their chicken satay is very juicy and also has the chicken skin skewered in between as well – and chicken skin is my favourite part of the chicken! It is also the land of my favourite type of cigarettes – kretek. Sampoerna has always been my brand of choice, but this time I thought to try Dji Sam Soe. Apparently these cigarettes mature and taste better with age 🙂

I was very privileged that we could stay at my sister’s friend’s mother’s wonderful house that looked and felt like a resort, with a very newly opened food cafe right on the front porch. For the first week we observed and took notes on what’s cooking, so I can make some home-cooked Indonesian food back in London!

I was also very happy to meet for an interview with the team at IndieXYZ, an indie music website based in Jakarta. I spoke about artists and musicians working together to build a resilient music industry for the future, instead of competing with each other. IndieXYZ are doing a great job promoting indie artists in the region. Their values are professionalism, friendship, and fairness. Very honourable. They very quickly created this composite of our meeting, I was very impressed!

I also dropped by Bandung for the day and visited the volcano with bubbling sulphur in the middle. Tangkuban Parahu.

There I bought an angklung as a souvenir – it’s a fantastic bamboo instrument which needs practice to play properly… and visited this incredible floating restaurant with koi and golden fish swimming everywhere around us. We chilled out in the rain under the bale bengong, feeding fish, watching frogs and mini waterfalls…

They have great sense of humour too.

What I have learnt from my trip, is to learn some Indonesian and come by more often! Indonesia is incredibly vast and rich in culture, and seems exciting with new opportunities; hope to explore the music scene longer next time. I am also very pleased to finally get my hands on some incredible Sundanese music, ‘Kacapi Suling’.

PS: In-joke… here is me posing by the ‘sawah’, angklung in hand, hahaha!