Indonesia 2009 & Africa 2010: Out with a Kupang

The “backdoor” exit from Flores by air is Kupang, the largest city in the province of East Nusa Tenggara, on the island of Timor. This island is typically in the news for all the wrong reasons, and is partly responsible for Indonesia's poor image overseas. So it's best to begin with the express version of 20^th century Indonesian history.

Indonesia is, of course, the famed spice islands that motivated Columbus and other European explorers to find the most efficient trading route between Eurpoe and Indonesia. The Dutch East Indies company is credited with stiching together such a diverse group of islands into one country, but the Portugese and British also set up colonial posts. It wasn't until the Japanese invaded during WWII that these colonial powers began to head for the exits; in 1948 the Dutch left and the Republic of Indonesia was born (the date later amended to August 17, 1945 by the Dutch upon the 50^th anniversary). Portugal gave control over most of its territories to the new country, but held on to the Portuguese speaking Kabupaten (counties) on the eastern side of Timor.

In 1975, Portugal decided that it didn't want to keep supporting the colony of East Timor, and offered the people the chance to either join Indonesia or become its own country. Popular support was evenly split, and Suharto, the president of Indonesia, decided that he'd speed things along and annex the territory as part of Indonesia. To quell any dissent, he sent the army in. Suddenly, there was a full-scale guerilla war, won by the Indonesians, and East Timor became an Indonesian province (A recent Australian film, “Balibo”, depicts these events).

The strong top-down control that Suharto exerted over Indonesia until 1997 quelled any dissent, and East Timor remained “peaceful” under the eye of the Indonesian army. Oddly enough, it was a run on the Thai currency that triggered Act II. The Asian financial crisis that resulted from the run hammered Jakarta and Suharto's core support (upper/middle class) urged him to head for the exit. With the loss of top-down control (and the granting of more freedom to speak against the government), grievances that had been bottled up began to simmer. East Timor decided to have a democratic vote on whether to remain as part of Indonesia or to go it alone. The vote in 1999 was something like 80% in favour of going it alone, and almost immediately the streets of East Timor were full of private militias running amok – torching villages, pillaging and bringing the world's attention to this desert island once again. Act II was much worse since the internet and live news channels made it more accessible to the world.

Eventually, it surfaced that the Indonesian army was supporting these militias – perhaps they didn't want to see the blood spent 25 years before to have been a waste. More importantly, however, was the need to send a strong message to two other areas of Indonesia where secessionary violence was brewing post-Suharto – Irian Jaya (renamed Papua) in the far east and Aceh in the far west. Timor holds little of economic value to the country, but it was setting a dangerous precedent for the other two, which are resource-rich (Aceh has oil and Papua has gold and other natural resources). The UN (mainly Australian troops) came in to clean up the mess and allow the country of East Timor (officially Timor Leste) to be born.

Some West Timorese Indonesians resented the UN involvement and killed three troops based in West Timor in 1999. Our guidebooks told us to expect some resentment from the locals and a city that had seen better days (Kupang used to be the first stop for Aussies travelling to surf in Indonesia).

To our pleasurable surprise, Kupang was exactly the opposite – a reasonably clean city with extraordinarily friendly people. Great beaches are nearby and easy to get to by bemo (public transport is alive and well here). Rather than hawking goods or directing us to high-priced tourist shops, everyone smiled at us saying “hello mister!” and wanted to help us (one even got off a bemo to help us find the one headed in our direction). We couldn't even walk the 1km between the airport bemo stop and the airport – everyone would stop and block traffic to offer us a free ride to the terminal.

Foreign tourists are an extreme rarity here – we only met two French travellers during our entire 2-day stay. As a result, the night market on Jalan Garuda felt a bit more authentic and around 7pm was buzzing with smiling locals eating some of the best food we've had in Indonesia. In addition, the inflation that has hammered the tourist haunts of Java, Bali, and Lombok hasn't found its way to Kupang – making it so extraordinarily cheap that we didn't even bother to bargain. The lack of travellers also meant that all eyes were on us, especially local school children who wanted to take their picture with us and practice their English.

West Timor is definitely on our list of places to revisit – 2 half-days just wasn't enough. For the time being, the Indonesians are managing their separatist issues by extending greater autonomy to the provinces. They've learned their lesson from the 1999 disaster so all is peaceful in West Timor – the tourists will be back soon.