Posted by JohnEach time I opened our Lonely Planet Indonesia Guide to the Jakarta section, my eyes darted to “Taman Mini Indonesia Indah.” Roughly translated as “Little Indonesia the Beautiful,” this 250-acre theme park promises a little something from each of Indonesia’s 33 provinces. In many cases, quite literally “a little something.” The park includes, among other things, miniaturized versions of the epic Borobudur Buddhist temple and Pramaban Hindu temples scaled down to 1/30 their original sizes. It all sounded very camp and kitsch, but something about it spoke to my inner 8-year-old who envisioned some sort of Indonesian Epcot Center.
Danielle had already visited Taman Mini during her trip to Jakarta in 2007 and, for reasons I still can’t quite fathom, came away distinctively under-whelmed. Whenever I brought up my desire to visit the park, she did every thing she could to dissuade me. “How’s that blister on your toe doing? Are you sure you want to walk around all day in the heat? There’s still some more museums in the north of town...”
Of course, I understood her reluctance. Pint-sized recreations of United Nations World Heritage sites like Borobudur and Prambanan might fail to inspire connection with the transcendent and feel more like something a model hobbyist might have stashed away among the cobwebs in his garage. Nor does Taman Mini have an entirely uncomplicated history. The driving force behind the park was Madame Suharto, wife of Indonesia’s dictator from 1965 to 1998. She spent millions of dollars creating the park in 1975, while anti-regime opponents complained the money would be better spent on hospitals or schools.
But after several days of pleading, Danielle finally relented and took me to Taman Mini. Even while mindful of concerns about trivializing the intricacies of Indonesian culture, I must confess that I fell in love with the place. I became a shameless shutterbug, taking photos of exhibits (life-sized replicas as well as miniatures) that provinces designed to highlight distinctive aspects of their individual cultures. West Sumatra showcases its wedding dresses (owing to the importance of the buffalo in Minang culture there, the bride wears a veil with horn-like extensions). Kalimantan features a scaled-down 747 to highlight its role in launching Indonesia’s national airline. And in perhaps the most curious exhibit, Jakarta’s display includes a stuffed-animal tableaux devoted to a boy’s circumcision ritual. What made this exhibit more peculiar was that the stuffed animals in question looked, to my eye, a little something like characters from South Park. The boy in question, riding on horseback, is visibly frowning (see picture).
As with any good theme park, there’s even a monorail—offering a bird’s eye view of this “Indonesia’s Greatest Hits” collection. Sadly, the monorail was broken that day, so we settled on a gondola ride over the park instead. Back on the ground, I toured my first mosque. (Danielle begged off, since she did not have proper head covering.) This being Taman Mini, the mosque was a replica of the Diponegoro Mosque in another part of the country. But it’s still in active use, with a dome, a minaret, separate men’s and women’s washing and prayer areas, and dignified green prayer rugs with pictures of Mecca at the center. In the interest of honoring Indonesia’s religious pluralism—both the 10 percent of Indonesians who practice other faiths and the prominent role those religious traditions have played in the region’s history—Taman Mini also features Catholic and Protestant churches as well as Hindu and Buddhist temples.
At the center of the park, a lagoon surrounds a miniature Indonesian archipelago. Each island includes accurate geographical features, such as perfectly rendered coastlines (the Rorschach-like South Sulaweisi alone must have taken weeks) and mini-volcanoes. The archipelago recreation begs the question: When East Timor won its struggle for independence from Indonesia in 1997, did Taman Mini have to sink that island? We couldn’t tell from our gondola ride over the archipelago, and I figured this was a question better left unasked of the park’s staff.
Regarding foreign affairs, the park also makes an effort to place Indonesia in an international context. What other theme park offers monuments to bureaucratic-sounding international relations entities like the Nonaligned Movement and the Asian Pacific Economic Conference?
At a few moments, Indonesian-English translation broke down. At the West Sumatra exhibit, a sign translated into English asking visitors to remove and carry their shoes inadvertently channels a Kirsten Dunst cheerleading movie by advising visitors to “Take Off Their Shoes and Bring It.” Danielle’s Indonesian proved flawless, however, when a group of schoolchildren picnicking in the East Java section noticed us and started shouting “Bule! Bule!” (“White people! White people!”) To a 7-year-old Indonesian, we were at least as much a subject of curiosity as a replica archipelago.
We keep promising some information about the Indonesian parliamentary and presidential elections, so hopefully we’ll get to that soon. We’ve just moved our base of operation to Yogyakarta, the center of Javanese culture where we’ll be doing three weeks of intensive language training. This is a source of excitement for Danielle, multilingual resident of the world who has already impressed countless taxi drivers and waiters with her command of Indonesian. For those of us whose cosmopolitan credentials include struggling through a few semesters of high school Spanish, it’s a bit more daunting.
Danielle had already visited Taman Mini during her trip to Jakarta in 2007 and, for reasons I still can’t quite fathom, came away distinctively under-whelmed. Whenever I brought up my desire to visit the park, she did every thing she could to dissuade me. “How’s that blister on your toe doing? Are you sure you want to walk around all day in the heat? There’s still some more museums in the north of town...”
Of course, I understood her reluctance. Pint-sized recreations of United Nations World Heritage sites like Borobudur and Prambanan might fail to inspire connection with the transcendent and feel more like something a model hobbyist might have stashed away among the cobwebs in his garage. Nor does Taman Mini have an entirely uncomplicated history. The driving force behind the park was Madame Suharto, wife of Indonesia’s dictator from 1965 to 1998. She spent millions of dollars creating the park in 1975, while anti-regime opponents complained the money would be better spent on hospitals or schools.
But after several days of pleading, Danielle finally relented and took me to Taman Mini. Even while mindful of concerns about trivializing the intricacies of Indonesian culture, I must confess that I fell in love with the place. I became a shameless shutterbug, taking photos of exhibits (life-sized replicas as well as miniatures) that provinces designed to highlight distinctive aspects of their individual cultures. West Sumatra showcases its wedding dresses (owing to the importance of the buffalo in Minang culture there, the bride wears a veil with horn-like extensions). Kalimantan features a scaled-down 747 to highlight its role in launching Indonesia’s national airline. And in perhaps the most curious exhibit, Jakarta’s display includes a stuffed-animal tableaux devoted to a boy’s circumcision ritual. What made this exhibit more peculiar was that the stuffed animals in question looked, to my eye, a little something like characters from South Park. The boy in question, riding on horseback, is visibly frowning (see picture).As with any good theme park, there’s even a monorail—offering a bird’s eye view of this “Indonesia’s Greatest Hits” collection. Sadly, the monorail was broken that day, so we settled on a gondola ride over the park instead. Back on the ground, I toured my first mosque. (Danielle begged off, since she did not have proper head covering.) This being Taman Mini, the mosque was a replica of the Diponegoro Mosque in another part of the country. But it’s still in active use, with a dome, a minaret, separate men’s and women’s washing and prayer areas, and dignified green prayer rugs with pictures of Mecca at the center. In the interest of honoring Indonesia’s religious pluralism—both the 10 percent of Indonesians who practice other faiths and the prominent role those religious traditions have played in the region’s history—Taman Mini also features Catholic and Protestant churches as well as Hindu and Buddhist temples.
At the center of the park, a lagoon surrounds a miniature Indonesian archipelago. Each island includes accurate geographical features, such as perfectly rendered coastlines (the Rorschach-like South Sulaweisi alone must have taken weeks) and mini-volcanoes. The archipelago recreation begs the question: When East Timor won its struggle for independence from Indonesia in 1997, did Taman Mini have to sink that island? We couldn’t tell from our gondola ride over the archipelago, and I figured this was a question better left unasked of the park’s staff.Regarding foreign affairs, the park also makes an effort to place Indonesia in an international context. What other theme park offers monuments to bureaucratic-sounding international relations entities like the Nonaligned Movement and the Asian Pacific Economic Conference?
At a few moments, Indonesian-English translation broke down. At the West Sumatra exhibit, a sign translated into English asking visitors to remove and carry their shoes inadvertently channels a Kirsten Dunst cheerleading movie by advising visitors to “Take Off Their Shoes and Bring It.” Danielle’s Indonesian proved flawless, however, when a group of schoolchildren picnicking in the East Java section noticed us and started shouting “Bule! Bule!” (“White people! White people!”) To a 7-year-old Indonesian, we were at least as much a subject of curiosity as a replica archipelago.
We keep promising some information about the Indonesian parliamentary and presidential elections, so hopefully we’ll get to that soon. We’ve just moved our base of operation to Yogyakarta, the center of Javanese culture where we’ll be doing three weeks of intensive language training. This is a source of excitement for Danielle, multilingual resident of the world who has already impressed countless taxi drivers and waiters with her command of Indonesian. For those of us whose cosmopolitan credentials include struggling through a few semesters of high school Spanish, it’s a bit more daunting.
No comments:
Post a Comment