Tim,

And his Stories about Surabaya

On the northern littoral of East Java, between the towering volcanoes of the interior and the long, low islandMadura offshore, Surabaya is Indonesia’s second city.

Surabaya – the name rarely raises a flicker of recognition overseas these days, but a hundred years ago it was one of the principal trading ports of Asia, ranking alongside Singapore, Shanghai and Calcutta.

Today it is an emerging metropolis, shaking off its provincial nature after decades of playing second fiddle to Jakarta, while clinging to the remnants of its venerable past. of Surabaya is the quintessential Asian city: a place of contrasts, contradictions and clichés. Traffic, inevitably, is chaotic, but less so than Jakarta; there is poverty, though not of the grinding Indian kind. And there is phenomenal, spectacular wealth too, with upper-class shopping malls and housing estates that leave those of Europe in the shade.

Surabaya has a population of around three million, but it manages to be both bigger and smaller than that at the same time. The greater conurbation of surrounding towns reaches a total of some seven million, but much of Surabaya hardly feels urban at all, with residential areas – from the poorest to the richest – still clinging to the immemorial village outlook of Indonesia.

A favourite slogan of the municipal government is “My Surabaya – clean and green!” The cleanliness might be wishful thinking, but thanks to its seaboard location and low-rise profile Surabaya is largely free from the choking air pollution of other Third World metropolises. And it is green: most streets are lined with trees.

Surabaya’s downtown has all that you would expect of a modern city, with banks, offices, international hotels, and shopping malls (a Surabaya speciality). Further north along the winding strip of the Kalimas River is another world altogether – the Old City. This is where Surabaya’s past as a maritime entrepot still lingers. The alleyways of Chinatown hide centuries-old Buddhist temples full of flickering red candles and smoke-blackened statues. There are crumbling shop-houses from the Dutch colonial era, and huge traditional markets where the ground is thick underfoot with onion skins and the light falls in dusty sheets. The ultra-modern shopping malls a kilometre to the south belong to another age. Here the traffic is mostly becaks – three-wheeled peddle-powered passenger tricycles – rather than glittering SUVs. Also in the Old City is the Arab Quarter, a little slice of the Middle East transported to the tropics. Here an atmospheric covered bazaar – straight out of Cairo or Marrakech – leads to the courtyard of Surabaya’s oldest mosque. The Old City is a fascinating area to wander and take photographs. People are remarkably friendly, and always eager to engage with a foreigner, for they see few tourists. It is also a good place to absorb the contrasts of Surabaya – it’s a world away from the modern middle-class housing estates where most teachers live.

Indonesia is a spectacularly diverse country where almost every faith and lifestyle is represented. Most of the people in Surabaya are Javanese, and most Javanese are Muslims. But Indonesian Islam is a far cry from the austerity of Saudi Arabia, and visitors who have spent time in the Middle East or North Africa will see little that they recognise as obviously “Islamic” beyond the daily call to prayer. There are no real restrictions on lifestyle and it’s very easy to forget that you are in the world’s most populous Muslim nation. Surabaya also has a huge Christian population, and there are churches scattered through the city. Many of the Christians are ethnic Chinese, who form a major group in Surabaya, and add to the diversity of the place. There are also a handful of Buddhists and Hindus, and immigrants from across the archipelago – as well as a few foreign residents. Surabaya is famous for its food – reflecting its ethnic mix and immigrant traditions. All of the diverse cuisines of Indonesia are available here, from mobile food carts, simple cafes, mid-range eateries, right up to top-end restaurants in the big hotels and malls.

One of the biggest advantages of Surabaya is its location. From the rooftops of the tall buildings in the city centre on a clear day conical volcano peaks loom to the south while to the north across a narrow channel crowded with freighters the long, low island of Madura shows. It takes only a couple of hours to be among the high green hills, or the rice fields. Bali too is close enough to visit for a weekend and for longer trips the city’s airport has regular connections to towns throughout the archipelago.

Surabaya is a down-to-earth place with few pretensions. It is a far cry from Jakarta in terms of size, status and worldliness (and it suffers less from congestion and pollution); but it is somehow a more “Indonesian” city too. It is remarkably safe by western standards with petty theft a very minor issue and violent crime almost unknown (and it lies outside the tectonically active zone of Indonesia’s earthquake-prone southern and western coastlines). There are enough resident foreigners to form a small community (EF alone employs several dozen foreign staff and there are other schools and companies employing foreigners) and newly arrived teachers have no cause to feel lonely or isolated. But at the same time there is no sanitised, insulated ex-pat cocoon here. It’s a comfortable place to live – no hardship posting in the jungle this – but there’s a lot of local colour too if you want it.

Surabaya is often bad-mouthed by travel guidebooks, and fair enough: for a tourist on a two week package, or a budget backpacker on a round-the-world trip it has significantly less to offer than Bali to the east, or Yogyakarta to the west (both within easy reach of Surabaya for a weekend trip incidentally). But the cursory opinion of some foreign writer who passed briefly through town in a bad mood several years ago is hardly the most authoritative guideline for someone thinking of coming to a place to live and work. And as a place to live and work as a foreigner in Indonesia, Surabaya is one of the better choices.

ends