Surabaya, Indonesia: Day 2

Go back to Day 1

Rather than give you a full blow-by-blow of every day of this trip, in each post I’ll try to handle a different aspect of the culture here as I am observing it. A disclaimer: I don’t speak any Indonesian, I’m pretty shy in general, and especially shy when I’m in a situation where I don’t speak the language and am clearly not from there. So, a lot of this is going to be pieced together based on my first-hand observations as well as some internet sleuthing and whatever information I can clean from some very awkward conversations with the folks I encounter while I’m here. I’m afraid I don’t have the social skills to be an effective journalist in a foreign country, so I apologize in advance for what I’m going to get wrong. I’m going to try to give you the newcomer’s perspective on Indonesia, for better or worse.

Today: Alcohol

At the risk of telling you something you already know, Indonesia has the largest population (~270 million) of any majority-Muslim country in the world. According to Wikipedia, about 88% of the population identifies as Muslim. Sometime in the early middle ages, Islam replaced Buddhism and Hinduism as the major religion in this part of the world, and it’s been that way since (once again paraphrasing Wikipedia).

As I would assume as a fairly direct result, booze is not a big part of daily life here. I have not seen any advertising for alcohol anywhere, it’s not available in any of the convenience stores or grocery stores that I’ve visited, and as far as I can tell, there is no such thing as a liquor store in Surabaya. I know there was a duty-free store in the Surabaya airport, and I’ll need to check and see if there was any alcohol for sale there. There were a few street vendors selling glass liter-sized bottles of some sort of undetermined liquid the first day I was walking around in the city, but I’m assuming that’s fuel – I will try to get to the bottom of that one. Wherever there’s prohibition, formal or informal, there’s certainly some sort of black or grey market that exists, right?

At any rate, it’s not completely unavailable. The hotel that I’m staying in has a few beers available for purchase in the Café, the restaurant that I’ve eaten at so far, and the Thai restaurant that I ate at in the mall also had beer available for purchase. Alcohol is highly taxed, so the beer is quite expensive compared to food or other drinks - 68,100 Rupiah (about $5) for a Bintang, San Miguel or Heineken.

Bintang is basically Heineken – the brewery was built by Heineken in the ‘50s, it was nationalized by the Indonesian government in the ‘60s, and now it’s owned by Heineken again. The label design even looks like Heineken. 

I took this at a grocery store last night. It's a metaphor, maaaannn.

As far as I can tell in my internet research, it’s the only brewery in Indonesia that actually sells beer in Indonesia (Bali Hai appears to brew only for export, and Djakarta - maker of Anker - seems to not actually brew in the country?). You can get a Guinness or Corona as well, but those are even more expensive. I haven’t seen any mention of wine or cocktails anywhere, but I’ll let you know if that changes.

Since I’m staying on the “Executive Floor” of the hotel, I have access to a free happy hour in the lounge on the floor above my room. I went up there after work tonight, and they have some appetizers and a refrigerator with soda water and soft drinks, but no alcohol. The attendant asked if I wanted a beer, and seemed extremely relieved when I said no. I haven’t had anything to drink since the night before I left home, which is the longest dry stretch in quite some time. It’s probably good to abstain once in a while, just to mix it up.

There are karaoke clubs, which I’d assume serve alcohol. Maybe I’ll check one of those out later in the trip. If they’re like the ones in Malaysia, you’ll have a scantily-clad young lady who will rub your shoulders while you drink, which sounds ok in theory but is at least as awkward as a strip club in practice. I’m thinking that I’m just not very good at interpersonal interaction, especially when there’s an implied financial component.

Go To Day 3