Stalking Indonesia

Title: Stalking Indonesia

Author: Margareta Astaman

Publisher: Kompas

Publication date: January 2014

200 pages 

I always enjoy Margareta Astaman a.k.a Margie's writing. She has her unique yet witty way to deliver everything even the most serious issue. I knew her work when I happened to read her first book After Orchard, a very informative story about being a college student in Singapore and all other interesting stuff that I never heard before that finally changed my mind towards Singapore.

In her latest book, Margie told us about her travelling experiences. Don't worry, this is not the kind of guidance book about where to go or which places to visit. This is a personal journal of a travelling junkie who loved to visit lots of different places in Indonesia from the most common one like Bali until Lajukang Island, a small island in Makassar. At every place she visited, it's always something to ponder. 

As a real stalker (that's how Margie labels herself), she observed everything thoroughly. Some of her writings make me dying to visit the places while others force me to directly delete them from my traveling destination list..haha..Margie could be a bit extreme sometime in describing how awful a place is.

At the end, this book puts me into a mixed of feeling: proud to be Indonesian with its amazingly beautiful places and at the same time also so very sad to notice that government seem not really care about those tourist spots. Actually it's still same old boring issue such as the transportation, accommodation, maintenance of the places, lack of promotion and also the problem from local tourist attitude who usually cause many destruction to some tourist spot. 

An alternative traveling book. Fun and inspiring.