Indonesian houses vary like houses in the west. Some are large and luxurious. Others are not so well appointed. Cities and towns are different from the average village. Quite often stylised traditional buildings are used as government offices, while many people live in simple brick or timber homes.
The front room, the kamar duduk, is the place to meet guests and friends. Note how both houses follow the same basic format: nice chairs around a table. Fairly standard Indonesian etiquette is to serve tea and a snack to visitors. The tea is usually sweet and black, which is much nicer to drink than our black tea as it is of higher quality. Coffee is usually thick and black, served piping hot with three or four desert spoons of sugar in it. Remember to wait for the Silakan minum before helping yourself. Try a little of everything offered as this is courteous.
The bathroom usually consists of a squat toilet and a tub (bak mandi) or jar of water to flush the toilet and to wash oneself from. A plastic dipper called a gayung is used to take the water from the bak. The water is cold. Often there is no toilet paper and the left hand and water is used instead. Hands are washed afterwards. When bathing one wets oneself with the water, uses the soap, then the soap is washed off. The whole floor is made to get wet. They are called wet bathrooms because of this. One will not usually find a shower in an Indonesian bathroom. Clothes and towels hang over the door or on a nail.
Laundry. Clothes are washed by hand, unless the family is well off and owns a washing machine. Washing is done in plastic buckets beside the well, in the bathroom, or in the nearby lake, spring, or stream. If people can afford it they buy packets of washing detergent to use. Clothes are draped over bushes or a line to dry. Clothes pegs are rarely seen.
The bedroom could be a section in a traditional house, or a number of separate rooms for different members of the family, just as in Australia. Usually beds in the towns consist of a mattress on a wooden frame, with bottom sheet and small hard pillows. There is usually a guling as well. It is common for siblings to share the same bed. A bed in a village may be a rolled out woven mat and blankets to keep out the cold.
In the villages of NTT, as in other parts of Indonesia, often the kitchen or cooking area is separate from the rest of the house. This has been for practical reasons, keeping the living area cool, clean and safe. Wood fires, kerosene burners or gas burners are used for cooking the food. Food is usually bought daily at the markets in big towns, or weekly in smaller areas. NTT is a poorer region of Indonesia and only town people would own a fridge.
Questions / Activities
1. Draw a plan of your house and identify goods made in Asia that are found in each room. 2. Draw a plan of your house and label the rooms and furniture in Indonesian. 3. Wash your school clothes, including socks and underwear by hand tonight. How long did it take you? 4. List the similarities and differences between inside your house and the Indonesian houses in the pictures. 5. Explain the use of tiles in Indonesian kitchens and bathrooms. 6. Contrast the appliances found in your kitchen to the ones in the Indonesian kitchens. 7. Compare and contrast a traditional Indonesian kitchen and a middle class Indonesian kitchen. 8. Draw a plan of an Indonesian bathroom and kitchen and label in Indonesian. 9. Write an explanation on how to use an Australian bathroom for an Indonesian visitor.
10. Describe how to use an Indonesian toilet. Discuss the lack of toilet paper with your teacher first. 11. Obtain a recipe for Indonesian food from a library book. Write it out and cook it at home. You can usually get all your ingredients from an Asian food shop. Phone them first to see if they have all you need.
