Turn off the cigarettes on the dashboard

Indonesians are – on the whole – some of the nicest people in the world, but good English is not always their specialty. I played golf on Saturday in Jakarta with our local salesperson and local partner and this was the sign that greeted us in our golf cart.

This is another sign you never see on any other golf course, something around no mulligan …

 

I’m not sure what it means but OK there must be a history behind the signs.

Another feature of golf in Indonesia are the caddies. Typically they are always young and female and forced to wear the local colors of the course. They work very hard for the 5 hour round and the high-end tip we gave them of of 100,000rp (around $10) seems hardly worth it for the time they are forced to endure with us – but it’s above the $5 that they normally get. And still better than the 75% of Indonesians that live on less than $2 a day – which is unbelievably sad to think of.

The course we played, called Rainbow Hills in English is located in Bogor, a pretty, hilly area outside of the main city of Jakarta. One of the hard things of Indonesia are all the people selling things like fruit. This young boy was selling bananas and all kinds of fruit and even though I did not want any of them, I gave him the asking price of 20,000 Rp (around $2) but told him to keep the fruit.

 

Drinks usually include the delightfully named “Pocari Sweat” a Japanese isotonic drink like Gatorade with a disgusting name!

 

Seeing my own form on the golf course is always sad, but at least the colors matched