Madura
Madura ranks as EitM’s most favourite, best of, top great place in the whole of Indonesia. It is resolutely unBali, and unLombok and then probably, in a few decades, as the tide of overdevelopment swings back from Sri Lanka, unLabuan Bajo. Madura is not cool, it is not sexy, and it has very little in the way of clout.
Instead, the island tends to give off a complex feeling, both friendly and withered. The Madurese have a reputation for bluntness. For instance, EitM once received very stern service from a Madurese satay seller in Tegal, Central Java. She got annoyed that our food order didn’t follow her exact script and refused to explain what the problem was. Each of our guesses was wrong, and nothing we said or did could calm her down. The lady just huffed a lot. She kept on raising her voice and throwing her arms in the air in apparent disgust and frustration at our idiocy, and we applaud such passive-aggression. The satay meal was fine, but not necessarily worth the awkward encounter.
In terms of friendliness, though, few places in Indonesia can offer a more genuine welcome. It once took us two hours to walk a 100-metre stretch of road in Sampang because no house nor its inhabitants would let us pass without first giving us food, coffee and company.
The thrill of Madura comes from the not-knowing. The island receives few visitors and little fanfare. Any trip there feels like a venture into the unknown. In this day and age of finger-tip-ready info, such intrigue and the need for patience make any place that elicits these things a very special place indeed.
