Indonesia & Bali Tourism New

Even after moving to land, the Suku Laut sea tribe of Air Mas Island in Batam, Riau Island province, has not escaped a life of poverty.

Dozens of the tribe’s families remain poor and uneducated, and officials and other residents consider them a backward people.

Some tribe members say the government has failed to make efforts to educate them, and help them live independently and according to social norms on land.

There are a large number of children in each Suku Laut family; one family in the tribe has 14 children.

A Suku Laut tribal chief at the Air Mas settlement, Muhammad Din, 62, said the families started moving to the island in 2002, with assistance from various agencies and non-governmental organizations that provided them with permanent wooden homes.

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The Riau Islands provincial administration has offered the Haj Fund Board of Malaysia the opportunity to lease one of its islands for development.

Riau Islands Governor Ismeth Abdullah made the offer Monday to Minister in the Department of the Prime Minister Abdullah Mohammad Zein, during a ceremony to mark the opening of the fund board’s first palm oil refinery in Batam.

The new refinery will allow the fund board to enter the Chinese market, Malaysia’s top palm oil buyer for the past several years at more than two million tons annually.

The Haj Fund Board of Malaysia, or Lembaga Tabung Haji, owns oil palm estates in Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as teak plantations in Sabah and Sarawak, totaling about 129,663 hectares, according to Business Times.

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Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The government`s culture and tourism department is currently making preparations for the launching of a “Visit Indonesia Year” in the middle of 2007, a spokesman said.

“A `Visit Indonesai Year` (VIY) is now in the final phase of preparation. We will launch it in July or August,” Culture and Tourism Minister Jero Wacik said here Tuesday.

Speaking after witnessing the signing of a cooperation agreement between the department and PT Garuda Indonesia, the minister said the preparations included the production of brochures, composition and arrangement of programs of events.

Meanwhile, Thamrin B Bachri, the culture and tourism department`s director general of marketing, said VIY 2008 would be declared as soon as its logo was completed.

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While cetaceans such as whales and dolphins are widely hunted in some parts of the world, they could soon find the deep Sawu Sea in East Nusa Tenggara province a safe haven.

Representatives from the provincial administration, three surrounding regencies, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Indonesia, and the Nature Conservancy (TNC) recently signed an agreement to protect sea biodiversity, especially marine mammals.

“The province and regencies are committed to protecting the sea and its biodiversity and will develop sustainable marine tourism,” East Nusa Tenggara Deputy Governor Frans Lebu Raya said during the signing ceremony.

Frans believes that the establishment of the Sawu Sea as a marine conservation area will increase the welfare of local fishermen.

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A lack of funding to promote tourism in Indonesia internationally is largely responsible for a steady decline in the number of foreign tourists visiting the country, an official from the Culture and Tourism Ministry said Saturday.

After more than 5.3 million foreign tourists visited the country in 2004, the ministry recorded a drop to approximately five million visitors in 2005 and 4.7 million visitors in 2006.

Deputy of Resources at the Culture and Tourism Ministry Putu Laksaguna said the government allocates insufficient funding to develop Indonesia’s tourism potential, resulting in many regions not being promoted internationally.

“This year, the Culture and Tourism Ministry was allocated a budget of Rp 900 billion, of which Rp 100 billion will be used to develop tourism.

“It is impossible for us to promote the country’s tourism potential with that much money,” Putu told journalists after the opening of the 2007 Sumatra International Travel Fair in Medan, North Sumatra.

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This week, the city administration invited non-governmental organization Pacific Rim Council on Urban Development (PRCUD) to discuss the issue of reviving Jakarta’s Old Town. With experience in heritage revitalization in 15 cities — in South Korea, China (Nanjing), Singapore and Malaysia (Malacca) — and counting, PRCUD will engage in round table discussions to devise a strategic plan for Jakarta’s Old Town. The Jakarta Post’s Anissa S. Febrina spoke with PRCUD president Cor Dijkgraaf on the possibilities for the plan.

Question: People have repeatedly pointed to the Old Town’s decline. What can actually be done with it?

Answer: I will begin by saying that the Old Town is unique. It has, for an Asian town, a large area of heritage. If you do not like the architectural heritage from a cultural aspect, at least see the economic aspect it offers. And if I look at other Asian and European towns, heritage is important as a source of income and employment. The renovation of buildings is creating more employment than constructing new ones would, as it creates more jobs from people visiting it later on.

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While cetaceans such as whales and dolphins are widely hunted in some parts of the world, they could soon find the deep Sawu Sea in East Nusa Tenggara province a safe haven.

Representatives from the provincial administration, three surrounding regencies, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Indonesia, and the Nature Conservancy (TNC) recently signed an agreement to protect sea biodiversity, especially marine mammals.

“The province and regencies are committed to protecting the sea and its biodiversity and will develop sustainable marine tourism,” East Nusa Tenggara Deputy Governor Frans Lebu Raya said during the signing ceremony.

Frans believes that the establishment of the Sawu Sea as a marine conservation area will increase the welfare of local fishermen.

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Jakarta/Rome - After being hit by a string of terrorist attacks, earthquakes, tsunamis, transport accidents and outbreaks of bird flu, Indonesia’s tourism sector is to get a boost as the government plans to intensify its efforts to promote the Southeast Asian country abroad. “The way to convince them [the tourists] is to give them more information and be more transparent about what happened,” Thamrin B. Bachri, Indonesia’s Culture and Tourism ministry’s marketing director told Adnkronos International (AKI).

“By giving them more information, I think they will understand that we have done something to protect them,” Bachri told AKI.

Ever since the 2002 Bali bombings, Indonesia’s five billion dollar tourism industry has been hit hard. Visitor numbers plunged even further after natural disasters like the 2004 tsunami and various earthquakes, incidents of avian flu and accidents in the country’s air and sea transportation, made headlines around the world.

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She’ll visit Indonesia, Japan and Okinawa to promote fruit sales, tourism and security
Gov. Linda Lingle leaves tomorrow for a 10-day trip to Indonesia, Japan and Okinawa.

Lingle will head a 24-person delegation to Jakarta, Indonesia, to sign a partnership agreement between the Hawaii National Guard and the Indonesian military. The partnership will cover areas of mutual security cooperation and disaster preparedness.

“It is an important opportunity for us to establish a relationship with their military and our Guard,” Lingle said yesterday in an interview.

“It isn’t in a military sense, but in a civil preparedness and civil defense arrangement,” Lingle said, adding that Indonesia and Hawaii share the same legacy of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis.

Traveling with Lingle will be state Adjutant General Robert Lee, Maj. Gen. Vern Miyagi, assistant to the commander, U.S. Pacific Command; and Charles McCreery, director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

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A new exhibition is bringing Buddhist spirituality to that shrine of consumerism, the shopping mall.

Late Saturday night, at Mangga Dua Square in North Jakarta, a group of youngsters whipped out their cell phones cameras and took turns posing in front of a model of Borobudur temple and an unfinished Buddha statue.

“Swell. We don’t have to travel all the way to Yogyakarta,” said 22-year-old Syukri Diwangkara after posing in front of the statue on the mall’s upper ground level.

Several meters away a boy could not take his eyes off a stack of stones that dated back to the 8th century.

Banners hung from the ceiling offered a concise explanation of what was going on: archaeology goes to mall.

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