Travel Log – Study Trip Indonesia 2015

Thursday, 14 May

stucsadmin — Thu, 14 May 2015 18:35:20 +0000

Our last real day in Indonesia for this study trip before departure. A full programme once again. Notice how the travel log entries are getting shorter as we experience more and more impressive things. The sultans palace is our first visit. The most impressive was a traditional dancing performance.

Act like the guard

After this, we made a tour to some traditional handicraft companies: a place where they made batik, the traditional Indonesian print, a place where they made silver and a pottery. At the latter we even got the chance to learn a little bit of pottery by trial-and-error, guided by people with around 20 years of experience!

Desa Wisata Kasongan

At night we visited a ballet. In contradiction to western ballet, this was an impressive war dance telling the story of Ramayana, including some awesome special effects keeping the men amongst us also interested. The strangest thing happend after the performance was finished: everyone was allowed to come onstage to take pictures with the performers. Imagine this in Amsterdam!

Sendratari Ramayana with Prambanan Temple as the Background

Wednesday, 13 May

stucsadmin — Wed, 13 May 2015 12:11:13 +0000

Today was something quite different. We visited the amazing Borobudur Temple. With the mandatory funny guide. Did you know that the Dutch build a cafe on top of this impressive structure? The visit included a ride on elephants (refering to the animal, not to Simons suitcase).

Group Photo at Borobudur Temple

The day became even more awesome due to the second activity: rafting! In danger of our lives (not really), we went on a trip for 12,5 kilometers on the Elo river. Halfway we were surprised with some coconut refreshment.

Rest Area

Tuesday, 12 May

stucsadmin — Tue, 12 May 2015 09:03:27 +0000

Today we visit The Crib. This is our last company visit. The Crib is described as a co-working space for IT startup in Yogyakarta. Using clear presentations, we learned about the reasons companies start in Yogyakarta and learnt about their visions.

Photo session with The Crib

In the afternoon we visited “Kampung Cyber”. This is a village in Yogyakarta that adapts the use of ICT to support the society. We expected to see a village connected and many applications of the Internet of Things, but it turned out to be a village in which people shared their internet connection to get connected to the internet.

Kampung Cyber Sharing Session

Monday, 11 May

stucsadmin — Mon, 11 May 2015 14:28:49 +0000

Universitas Islam Indonesia (UII) was welcoming us today. This biggest private university of Indonesia. Theo gave a lecture on Where Science meets Development. After that we’ve got a discussion forum and a campus tour.

Temple in UII

Jogja Digital Valley was next. This was a similar incubator to the one in Bandung, except it was a bit smaller. The atmosphere was due to this different, but also very appealing.

Sunday, 10 May

stucsadmin — Mon, 11 May 2015 13:54:37 +0000

Sunday, rest day. We went to the Beach (Beach, lets go to the Beach) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_NEb7R7ZP0). It looked like a beach that’s something from a picture, but then real. Highlights: baby monkey being trained to pick coconut, the sea and the jungle.

Sunday in Ngobaran Beach

Saturday, 9 May

stucsadmin — Mon, 11 May 2015 13:53:21 +0000

It’s time to leave Jakarta, we are heading towards Yogyakarta for some other companies and a great cultural exploration. During this 18 hour travel with our Big Bird, the bus, we enjoy the most amazing sceneries.

Enjoy the Trip to Jogja

Famous Facebook quote of the day, during an early stop: “When you don’t feel like Mie Goreng at 8:21 AM, just go to trusty old CFC.”

Friday, 8 May

stucsadmin — Mon, 11 May 2015 13:51:17 +0000

The morning programme was a visit to Ruma. This social-economic company has agents all over Java that sell services, for instance topping up of prepaid phones. Most of their agents are located in rural area’s, where they also act as a point of internet access. Next to making profit, Ruma helps out the people in this regions this way. Challenges are for example using e-learning over low brandwitch to train their agents.

In the afternoon Badr Interactive (http://badr.co.id/) welcomed us at their company. Their business consists of multiple parts, including software development and incubating startups. Take a look at their site for examples.

Badr sharing

We concluded our presence with an cultural night at the Universitas Indonesia, with several local performances. Everyone liked the atmosphere! The Saman dance performance was awesome!

Cultural Night

Thursday, 7 May

stucsadmin — Thu, 07 May 2015 23:33:57 +0000

Another telecom company during today’s visit XL Axiata, or simply XL. XL arranged for us three of their security experts. It is like a knowledge jackpot for the security reseach group and quite interesting for the others as well. We learned that many Indonesians do not own a bank account. XL provides a service to pay using their phones, making products more accessible.

The afternoon was filled by a visit to Bukalapak (www.bukalapak.com). This company creates an amazing site with the same name which is similar to Aliexpress, but targeted at the Indonesian market. We’ve got to see most of the 110 employees work. This company is growing extremely fast. After taking a quick look at the site, I’m also buying! It looks great, has a large sellers community and provides affordable products.

At night we had the honour to be invited to a traditional Indonesian household. The family arranged an extensive dinner and everybody seemed to enjoy! It was a wonderful evening.

Dinner at Didi’s Home

Wednesday, 6 May

stucsadmin — Thu, 07 May 2015 23:23:10 +0000

On Wednesday, we have got the opportunity to get out of the busy streets of Jakarta, by visiting Bandung. Bandung is the third largest city of Indonesia and well known for it’s fashion. During the three hour travel we did see countless hard working Indonesians in the beautiful nature (hills, mountains, rice fields, fresh fruit) we passed by.

Our company visit this day was to Bandung Digital Valley. Actually, it’s a incubator from Telekom Indonesia which is the largest telecommunications services company in Indonesia (huge!). BDV provides start-ups the opportunity to launch a product. If the company can provide prove that it works hard to try to make the product work (according to the guidelines from BDV), then BDV takes care of the risks when something goes wrong. Also, they provides large amounts of money (~20.000 euro’s). Amazing was that we’ve got an insight in one of the projects by Telekom Indonesia. Again, smart city is an hot topic here. For example, the governor is able to see the happiness in any part of town, based on social media!

Photo session in BDV

During the afternoon we visited some outer part of town. People did not see many “bule” (foreigners) there, some there were many spontaneous photo moments!

Tuesday, 5 May

stucsadmin — Tue, 05 May 2015 16:41:56 +0000

Time to visit the business city centre. Time to visit Deloitte. After the visit to Deloitte Amsterdam, we’ve now got the honour of being welcomed by Deloitte in Indonesia. It gave really valuable insights in the (cultural) differences between the two countries, for example: there is no real privacy legislation in Indonesia. Companies are allowed to sell your information freely.

After leaving the 32th floor, handing in our badges and a short bus trip, we’ve reached the second company of today: PersonaEDU. With 100 fulltime and 200 parttime employees, this international company creates e-learning-material, with the main focus on interactive book for elementary, middle and highschool in the topics Mathematics and Science. It’s amazing to see with such passion the books are created. We’ve got to see the work of the managers, illustrators, programmers and animators. The software is by the way largely used in the Netherlands!

PesonaEdu Office