In Reply to: but its crap. posted by Fiona on Saturday, 24. April 2010 at 05:32 Bali Time:
Yes, exactly. From my observations over more than 20 years, freely admitting that I fell for the myth of "all Balinese good all Javanese bad", my first couple of times to Bali too, this is how it goes.
1) The Balinese may say all Javanese are thieves and miscreants in general.
2) The Javanese may say that the Balinese are sly. Those from Lombok
often concur with this opinion.
3) Everyone agrees that the Sumatrans are so direct in their
speech as to be rude and arrogant.
4) Whilst preferring the mainly Christian people from the East of
Indonesia over those from the mainly Muslim West, many Balinese
will tell you disparagingly that they "look like Papuans" and
in many cases this is true. Why this is a bad thing escapes
me and I don't really want to go there because I fear it is
based on that whole "black skin is bad" thing........
and so on and so on. If I am in Melbourne I don't really care if my taxi driver comes from Tasmania, the Tiwi (sp?) Islands, Christmas island or even, hang on to your hats Victorians, WA. Actually in my case I don't care if the driver is from Somalia, Vietnam, Iraq or outer bloody Mongolia but that is a whole other can of worms.