Google maps told us how to get to the Rainbow Village in Malang but not how to cross the road.
TRAFFIC
Malang a city in eastern Java in Indonesia has a lot of traffic and almost no traffic lights. A river of cars and motorbikes flowed by us from both directions, while we looked around helplessly. We could see the rainbow village, the houses painted brightly, red, yellow, blue green, even the river bank painted in a collage of bright colours but we had no idea how to get to it.
Until the traffic volunteer, a young man in shorts standing in the middle of the road spotted us. Do you want to cross he mimed. We nodded. He blew his whistle, held up his hand, somehow bringing a stream of traffic to pause, if not halt and shepherded us across the street safely.
His hands, waving in the air, were like a conductor at an orchestra. Just in the blazing sun.
WHISTLE
This is Sandip Roy in Malang, Indonesia.
Malang isn’t a town with much to do. There’s little by way of museums and galleries or historical sights. Most treat it as a stopover on the way to Mount Bromo, one of the several active volcanos in Java.
We had gone there as well. On a chilly morning with a biting wind in pitch darkness in a 4x4 that zigzagged through the sea of sand at the base of the volcano. Vendors crowded around us on the mountain offering to rent parkas and jackets.
BROMO
Malang though has no volcanos. Its a neat city which was once the summer escape of the Dutch who ruled Indonesia. Their large white houses with sloping red tiled roofs stand next to a boulevard. Young Indonesians, many of the women in hijab and leggings jog past them. This is a Muslim country and one can hear the call to prayer everywhere
MUSLIM PRAYER
But the old mixed history survives. In Malang’s Chinatown the red and yellow temple, dating back to the 19th century, is filled with worshippers, lighting long incense sticks and praying. A church is so packed, an overflow audience stands outside following the service via a television monitor.
CHURCH
In Surabaya a couple of hours away the Merdeka museum commemorates the battles of independence. There the history feels up close. School children listen to recordings of the declaration of independence on tape.
SPEECH1
Even our grand old colonial hotel in Surabaya has had its brush with history. After Word War II as the Japanese surrendered to the Allies, the British tried to hand Indonesia back to the Dutch. Someone raised the Dutch flag on the hotel. Angry nationalists stormed the hotel and tore the blue stripe off the Dutch flag, transforming it into the Indonesian flag with its red and white bands. Those black and white pictures are in the hotel lobby.
But Malang feels different. Here the Dutch colonial history is just part of the hotel menu with its wiener schnitzel and beef tongue. And a sprawling old ice cream shop from the 1930s, its welcoming banner still written in Dutch.
Homemade ice creams. A peach melba or Calypso Fantasy while listening to music that seems to take us back to the fifties.
ICE CREAM SHOP
Our hotel, the Tugu Malang is like a museum, filled with art and crystal collected by a sugar baron, the owner’s forefather. A peranakan born of mixed Chinese and Indonesian ancestry, who collected art from China, Indonesia and the Netherlands says our guide Prasatyo.
PRASATYO1: especially it has items from Chinese culture and also Dutch culture
Like a sculpture of a mythical animal from the Shan dynasty from 1200 BC. And epergne art glass pieces from Europe.
But just outside its again wholly Asian.
BIRDS
At an eatery next to the rail tracks the main draw is bowls of bakso meat balls in soup. Its so busy the woman at the counter announces the orders over a mike
BAKSO
All these currents of history.can seem confusing to a tourist like me but the Indonesians are unfazed just like they are when the cross the five lanes of traffic without the help of any traffic lights.
Every now and then a warning blares to warn the traffic that pedestrians might be crossing.
PED CROSSING
After a while we too learn to trust the flow. Whether of traffic or of history. And the current delivers us to the other side.
This is Sandip Roy in Malang for KALW.