2026-07 - Jakarta, Indonesia

Ritz-Carlton Pacific Place, Jakarta

I was hoping to understand Indonesia better on this visit, but I don’t feel I got a sense of it.

Contrast with Malaysia where I got a strong sense of the place, the people and the identity.

Indonesia is so vast, with so many different cultures on different islands. Even though most people I met were from Jakarta and West Java, they were so chill with no strongly-projected identity.

The two subjects that came up the most were (1) the currency devaluation / inflation, and (2) the new government.

I enjoyed my conversations, so I learned more about these 17 people, but not more about the place.

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