images from indonesia

7/31/2019 Images From Indonesia

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Images from IndonesiaBy Thai Nguyen

While staying in Letung, a mid-size island and one of some 17,000+ islands that make up Indonesia, I was

fascinated by this little, humble fishermans hut over the water in front of our inn. Here are two versions of it,

both at sunrise with the sun shining from the right of the photos. The right photo was taken with my iPhone, the

one on the left by a compact Panasonic.

Boats are everywhere in this nation of islands, the only means connecting islands, and they are one of the most

photographic subjects, whether big or small, well-kept of weather-beaten.

Or even when theyre just skeletons from a long-gonebut memorable past


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Above left is the remains of a boat, registered as TV4050TS in Tra Vinh, South Vietnam, that carried 21 boat

people fleeing the communist country in 1982 to Indonesia, with only five survived the ordeal now resettled

elsewhere in one of the free countries in the West. The boat is parked near Camp Vietnam in Galang in the

southern part of Indonesia, now a memorial park with a cemetery where some 500 refugees were buried and a

museum established to mark the history of an exodus of those seeking freedom at all costs. The camp was set up

by the Indonesian government and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in 1979 to shelter more

than 120,000 boat people (about 1/8 of the total exodus) from Vietnam, and shut down in 1996 ending a 20-year

boat people saga (for more information about the exodus, please visit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat_people#Vietnamese_boat_people ). The local authority once wanted to get the

boat off the water for restoration and display at the museum, but twice the rope used to haul it snapped, so theplan was aborted. At right, another refugee boat skeleton rests in the backyard water of a neighborhood in

Letung, according to locals who have no other information about the boats origin.

Left, a dock at the island of Air Raya where our tour group, organized by the Australian-based Archives of

Vietnamese Boat People with the main purpose to visit the former refugee camps in Indonesia, went to visit the

nearly 100 graves of former refugees amidst tropical jungles. After the rather arduous, sweaty trip despite the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat_people#Vietnamese_boat_peoplehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat_people#Vietnamese_boat_peoplehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat_people#Vietnamese_boat_people


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rain, the three of us, right, of a dozen group members received huge coconuts freshly picked by our local

guides. The juice is so refreshingly sweet and I could only finish one fifth of it, feeling sorry I didnt have a

water bottle to save the rest before boarding the small boat (seen at the end of the dock) and had to give up the

nutwhat a big nut!

From left, the beaches of Letung, Water of God known for crystal-clear, turquoise-colored water, and

Tamawan. Tamawan is very tiny, which one can i dm pht vchn c, meaning within a 5-minute walkone returns to the departing point. The island, unlike many others, does not have any coconut tree although

there are all sorts of trees. I found one coconut seedling, shown in the left corner in the right photo, and we

planted it before we left the island as a commemoration for the Vietnamese boat people buried on surrounding

islands in the late 1970s through the late 1980s.

The inn we stayed in Letung usually shuts down its generator during the day to conserve the scarce gasoline. So

my group companions had no way to cool off but sitting on one of the many boardwalks over the water.

Indonesians on the island and a few others nearby seem to enjoy eugenia aromaticum cloves, a spice that is

among those forph. They dry them in the sun everywhere along the streets or on any available surfaces, centerand right. They even use it (or its leaves?) to make cigarettes called Gudang Garam, which leaves a sweet taste

on the tip of your tongue. [TD, 5/2012]

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