Indonesia

As some of you may be aware, about a month ago, I was contacted by the American Council of Young Political Leader’s (ACYPL) (http://www.acypl.org/) about taking on the role of escort for their delegation headed to Indonesia in August. I checked my schedule and checked in with the boss and when everything turned out to fall in my favor, I accepted to take over for another escort that had to drop out. Last summer I was lucky enough to get to travel to South Africa with an ACYPL delegation and so I was very excited to get another chance to work with that organization. As it happens, my brother had just come back from a great trip to Indonesia, so my curiosity about country and the serendipity getting a call to go to Indonesia was too much to resist.

Instead of starting a whole new blog, I decided I would just add on to my South Africa blog and not create a new web address.

I took off from Billings yesterday and had a very close connection in Denver, as we were late flying out of Billings. Everything made it OK, but I did end up reading most of the book I brought along for the trip. I started Blind Your Ponies by Stanley Gordon West (http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Your-Ponies-Stanley-West/dp/0965624781) and have most of the book read at this point. It is a page turner, but I may have all the pages turned before I get on my long flight to Indonesia. I brought along a couple other books, but may look for some additional reading material at the airport.

Today was an orientation for our trip to Indonesia. We spent most of the day in briefings trying to get us orientated to get the most out of our trip to Indonesia. The first meeting of the day was at the ACYPL office. They are sponsoring the trip and that meeting consisted mostly of what to expect on the trip and what was expected of us. The second meeting was at the US Dept of State to discuss the exchange program and to get an overview of Indonesia.

We moved onto the US-Indonesia Society (http://www.usindo.org/index.php) where he had lunch and a good discussion about many topics in Indonesia. US relations with that country have been good, but low profile, with not many Americans much aware of Indonesia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia and https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/id.html). As you can read in that information, Indonesia had a strong dictator for many years, but has recently become a very open democracy. It is the third largest democracy in the world, after India and the United States. It has almost as many people as the US and the geography is bigger if you include the entire ocean between the islands of Indonesia.

Every one we talked to today was very upbeat about where US-Indonesia relations are going, especially because President Obama used to live in Indonesia. There are plenty of opportunities to grow that relationship, which has stayed relatively dormant considering the size of the two countries. Part of that is due to the US’s reluctance to meddle in Southeast Asia after our withdrawal from Vietnam. Throughout the day we were able to ask questions about the security in the country (pretty good), the politics of the place (fairly complex, but what politics aren’t), the diversity of the islands, the sensitive subjects, how the history has shaped the place, the natural resources, the environment, the education system, and how long it takes to get to Indonesia.

The final meeting of the day was at the Indonesian Embassy. We met with the ambassador and got a tour of their very cool embassy. They bought the place in 1951 from the people that owned the Hope Diamond. They paid around $370,000 and spent $30,000 on renovations. I’m sure that the return on that investment would be well into the millions at this point.

The final part of our day is a dinner at the Old Ebbit Grille in DC. Should be a good chance to get to know everyone better. Our group has a state legislator from Wyoming and Minnesota, a city council member from New York, an aide to the minority leader in Puerto Rico, and a lobbyist from Tennessee.

Tomorrow we leave from Reagan airport and fly to Minneapolis (2 hours). Minneapolis to Tokyo (14 hours), Tokyo to Bangkok (6 hours), spend a few short hours in Bangkok and arrive in Jakarta on Sunday. Not really looking forward to the flight, but I can’t wait to get to Jakarta.