Dating Indonesian Girls
Apr 4th, 2006, in Society, by PatungDating Indonesian women may not be for everyone.
Indonesian women, particularly on the island of Java, are exceptionally beautiful. They tend towards the very feminine side, with lovely skin, are not too tall, and have knock-out smiles. There’s plenty of plus on that side of things.
If wer’e to be honest we have to recognise that many men are interested in a woman who will take care of him, do the housework without complaint, and take care of other matters similarly without much bother. Your average Indonesian girl often fits the bill in this respect, certainly more than your average western woman, the less said about them the better.
On the other hand going out with Indonesian women in a romantic way can have many mysterious pitfalls.
Some women here are clearly only interested in money. Some men are unbothered by this. Others of the female variety, can, once we get to know them very well, come across as practically insane, hysterically emotional, scheming, over-possessive, inclined to, usually fake, attempts at self-harm in order to get their way. As I said, not for the faint-hearted.
There are a few Indonesia dating websites although the area is not nearly as developed as that in nearby Phillipines or Thailand. To begin your online journey on the Indonesian dating scene our very own “Meet” section has many a lady eager for company.
4,898 Comments on “Dating Indonesian Girls”
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Odinius says:
Hi Timdog,
On the mixed marriages though, is it not the case that they’re reluctant to allow the child to be Catholic if the marriage wasn’t? Entirely out of idle interest, but I seem to remember someone saying something of the kind…
No, quite the contrary. The Catholic Church is quite explicit on the fact that Catholics must raise their children Catholic, or they may be excommunicated. However, since Vatican II there is no prohibition on mixed marriages, provided that the children are raised as Catholics. In countries that have genuine freedom of religion, as opposed to Indonesia’s religious pluralism, priests can and do perform mixed marriages with regularity, but typically extract a promise about the children first. Some probably don’t actually go through with this, but they are supposed to.
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deta says:
About the debate “why is it the bule man who alway has to convert”
Another explanation for this is because for most Indonesian girls, religion is not only a personal matter. It involves their existence in the family, that is usually reluctant to have a member with different religion and worried about the way society will treat them. Since the dependency of a girl to their family and society in Indonesia is very strong, when they have to choose between love and religion, it is more likely they have to choose between their spouse and family.
And I come to think that if someone doesn’t agree or is not ready for the cross-religion marriage why would she/he have to put herself/himself on that difficult position in the first place, marriage is a matter of choice……. I kinda agree (to some extent) with this:
Once the poor sucker is c*struck he’ll do anything to get there, even convert to the religion of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Yeah, that’s why converting your religion or asking your spouse to convert only to legalize your marriage and be accepted by the society is wrong. When the love subsides or the marriage ends, all that’s left is your hypocrisy and fake religion you embrace. Particularly if that religion is FSM. Horrible.
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Patung, I’m not trying to trick you into outing yourself (especially now that I know you’re everyone anyway),but which church would that happen to have been? I know there are more than a few Floresian priests in town, but there’s one church I’ve had occasion to go to from time to time where the Floresian priest has always struck me as a very nice guy, and whose sermons are actually good (well, as good as sermons can be – I don’t usually fall asleep anyway). Now wouldn’t it be a coincidence if it was the same one?
I don’t think he’s ever had a parish in sby, I think always just a kind of desk job in the office behind the cathedral, he did our marriage as his English is very good, he went to univ. in UK although I forget which one. I’m not sure if he’s ever preached at the cathedral, if that’s the church you mean though.
Now, how would Patung Père have taken it if you had gone in that other direction?
Dad’s over 80, so there’s a generational issue there and he comes from a historically very non-conformist welsh-english not well off farming family and area generally, his mother’s practically dying words were never marry a Catholic, so….but he loves Mrs Patung, drives me up the wall every time I talk to him saying how lucky I am…
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timdog says:
Ah, not the same guy; this one is – or was, actually – the parish priest at a place in Rungkut. I went to a wedding at the cathedral once, but that priest was not entertaining at all…
But I have something MUCH more exciting to tell you all from Beijing – in the biting cold outside the Forbidden City I just met – and talked to! – a very beautiful young lady from Bali who is in town for the “Miss International Beauty Contest” (it was the sash with the word “Indonesia” that made me notice her, you see)…
She was from Denpasar, I kind of forgot her name – Dewi or something like that; I’m sure if Patung’s bored he’ll employ his magnificent internet research powers and find out – I suppose she must already have won something to be here.
I’ve never met a beauty contestant before. She was very lovely indeed, despite being wrapped up against the Beijing cold like a polar explorer. Her Indonesian was kind of funny though. I don’t mean Cinta Laura-funny, but it did still sound kind of like she’d learnt it, but then maybe all beauty contest girls talk like that – like I said, I’ve never met one before.
Shit, should I have asked for her number? -
@Timdog
It’s supposed to be Ayu Diandra Sari or Dea. Lucky you! -
Dea! That was it!
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Oigal says:
When the love subsides or the marriage ends, all that’s left is your hypocrisy and fake religion you embrace.
Ugh..is that the religious line of we are only staying together for kids…yea horrible..
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Ayu Diandra Sari
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Facebook support page if you want to get behind her!!!!!
This is not her but it was on the page where I found those photos
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ET says:
@ timdog
I happen to know an Australian woman married to a Balinese man. She “converted” to Hinduism and they live in Bali. Do you also have a problem with that?
No. As long as the Hindu family didn’t object to the marriage if she didn’t convert. And I also heard of mixed Hindu – Christian marriages in which 2 different ceremonies were performed, each with its own religious rites. Try to do this in Java.
that as a globalised “westerner” who has come to Indonesia, the onus for “adaptation” is on them,
Sorry but does this also mean that if I want to live in Indonesia – or whereever – I have to ‘adapt’ my personal believes? And why is it always the ‘globalized westerners’ who are put up with this guilt complex. Do ‘globalized westerners’ demand immigrants to change their believes?
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Yep, that’s definitely her – though she wasn’t dressed like that, she’d have been dead if she was; it’s riculously cold here. What was I thinking? Why didn’t I ask for her number???
ET – I’m still too excited at having met Dea to engage seriously, but:
And I also heard of mixed Hindu – Christian marriages in which 2 different ceremonies were performed, each with its own religious rites. Try to do this in Java.
Within the bounds of one extended Javanese Catholic family that I know well there is one marriage where the man was a Balinese Hindu who did have to convert to Catholicism (a long time ago – he has kids in their late 20s), while on the other hand, there is a new marriage (two years ago) where one of the women married a Javanese Muslim – they did exactly what you sneeringly rhetorically suggest “trying”; the big formal wedding was in the church; they did the Muslim one later in the house (of the woman’s older Catholic brother). Elsewhere in the same family there’s one marriage where the woman’s Muslim and the man’s Catholic and the daughter is Catholic, and another marriage where the man’s Muslim and the woman’s Catholic and the son has been raised a Muslim and the daughter a Catholic (don’ know what the ceremonial arrangements were in those cases – they were both a long time ago). This stuff is not exactly the norm, but it’s not as unheard of as you presumably believe it is in Taliban Java… and probably no more unusual than it would be amongst Balinese Hindus…
Sorry but does this also mean that if I want to live in Indonesia – or whereever – I have to ‘adapt’ my personal believes?
No, obviously it doesn’t – I live in Indonesia (kind of) – no one has demanded I change my beliefs. But maybe if I happened to be in love with a local girl for whom – and for whose family – relgious identity was far more important than it is to me (whether she was Muslim, Catholic or Hindu), and if I realised that what in essence amounted to nothing more than getting a piece of paper would make everything a bit easier for a girl I loved and for a family I rather liked and hoped to get on well with, then it wouldn’t really be a big deal for me (actually, it probably would be a big deal for me – as a foot-stomping person of principle, who is, by inclination, fairly intense about my own personal religious beliefs, namely atheism – but I mean a hypothetical “me”, who essentially had no more religion than the real me, but who generally just didn’t care about such stuff))
Do ‘globalized westerners’ demand immigrants to change their believes?
like I said, I’m still spinning from my brush with supermodeldom, but, um, yes…
Now, everyone – pleeeease! I met that girl in Patung’s picture! I spoke to her!
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jen says:
@timdog:
Ahhh… that girl. She was a lot prettier in person!
I met her in a charity event. I like her confident… she said she would go to wherever the event would be held, is it Beijing? – to win. An attitude I never saw from other beauty contestant before (but there weren’t so many I’d met anyway).
She did talk funny… I couldn’t decide whether it was because of her Indonesian ethnic accent (what do you call it?) or foreign accent.
Did you say she won a title or something? -
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I met that girl in Patung’s picture! I spoke to her!
@timdog:
Ahhh… that girl. She was a lot prettier in person!Yeah I’m pretty non-plussed based on the pictures, she must be better in person. She was runner up in Putri Indonesia, or the other one, and as consolation prize got to go freeze her ass in Beijing at “Miss International”. But she got to meet timdog, and she’s probably cursing herself now, ‘should I have asked for his number, damn‘. Anyway I’m checking out for a few days while I fly off to the big smoke of jkt to (ugh) deal with the australian embassy (ugh). I hope I have a brush with a supermodel too….
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I personally think she’s not that special in the pic posted above. But what do I know about women.
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@ Oigal
is that the religious line of we are only staying together for kids…yea horrible..
Mmm…that makes me raise another issue: When love ends and we’re unhappy with our marriage, do we have to stay together only for kids? We do have to sacrifice for the sake of our children’s happiness, but to what extent?
I remember the quote from my favorite writer that we have to get filled up so we can fill others, which means we have to be happy so we can make others (in this case our children) happy. And that’s why in an emergency situation parents are asked to use the oxygen mask first before their children.
@ Timdog
I can see that for a guy, memorizing a girl’s name is harder than memorizing her face. Very typical.
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So let me see if I have this correct…you are suggesting its the right thing to stay together for religion sake when the love is gone but perhaps not for childrens sake?
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No, what I said was: It’s wrong to convert your religion or ask your spouse to convert his/her religion only for the marriage sake.
And it’s (probably) wrong to push yourself to stay in a marriage for the children sake, while actually the children are as miserable as you are.
Those actually two different issues I talked about. -
deta said
Another explanation for this is because for most Indonesian girls, religion is not only a personal matter. It involves their existence in the family, that is usually reluctant to have a member with different religion and worried about the way society will treat them. Since the dependency of a girl to their family and society in Indonesia is very strong, when they have to choose between love and religion, it is more likely they have to choose between their spouse and family.
And what a horrible choice it is! That’s why I can understand why some bule say “F*ck” and then try to pronounce the tongtwister because they only see it as a formality. On the other hand it is also giving in to and cooperate with a fundamental injustice and a violation of human rights.
See Declaration of Human Rights:
Article 16
1. Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
Article 18
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
As far as I understand Article 18 ‘freedom to change his religion’ means not being coerced by whatever means or methods to do so. But I guess HAM (Hak Asasi Manusia) is just a supplemental embellishment in the name of one of Indonesia’s most corrupt ministerial departments.
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Yes, I see your point, Mr. human right defender….^_^
But don’t worry (as if you should be worried), there are more and more Indonesian families who raise their kids in a moderate way. They do teach about religion to their kids, so when these kids grow up, they devote to the religion because they understand, not because their parents tell them to do so. It makes the religion more personal and more in line with the human rights articles you quoted.
But I can’t see why converting the religion deliberately (which is done by caucasian men who marry indonesian women) would violate any of these articles? They are not coerced by anything but lust (ups, love), aren’t they?
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Patung:
she got to meet timdog, and she’s probably cursing herself now, ’should I have asked for his number, damn‘.
You know she is…
She did look much better in the flesh too, even in a massive coat and a wooly hat – and much less air-brushed white too. I’m backing her, that’s for sure…
@deta, dita, data or whatever your name is 😉 – it was cold; that’s why I forgot her name! Do you think she remembers mine?
ET:
A scenario in which exactly what you are complaining about happens – only with the religion being Hinduism. In response you execute a fleet-footed piece of intellectual acrobatics and decide that that is no problem whatsoever because the family would obviously have had no problem if there had been no conversion (which may well not be the case at all).You then present a hearsay example of tolerance re. marriage in Hindu Bali. I raise you – not hearsay but actual truth (I went to both ceremonies) – an example of exactly what you have just declared basically inconceivable in Muslim Java.
You swerve it altogether and start going on about human rights – thereby taking a sad, podgy sexual refugee from Bule-land who heads to Indonesia with a fantasy about “orential women” in his baggage, and with absolutely no religious sentiment of any sort, positive or negative (this is me being nasty btw; this thread always brings out my unpleasant side), and who, having his application for sexual refugee status approved by the Indonesian nation via a rigorous appeals process in internet chatrooms and girly bars, decides that “f*ck it! It’s gonna make the whole thing a bit easier for the in-laws if I do this conversion thing”, and equating him with a low caste Indian Muslim forced at the tip of a machete through a “reconversion” ceremony by a mob of violent Hindu fanatics, with an Amadiyah Muslim in Pakistan or Indonesia fearing the mob, with Muslims and Buddhists in cultural revolution China being forced to desecrate themselves and their faith, with the darker deeds of missionaryism of all religions, with the godamn Spanish Inquisition… Don’t be so daft!Let’s be entirely honest here, shall we. This horror you have of bules converting for the purpose of marriage and generally getting on with the in-laws doesn’t really have anything to do with a point of pure principle does it? You wouldn’t be getting quite so het up if most of these “conversions” were to Catholicism, would you? Honestly?
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Farah says:
@ andy
farah, are you suggesting Indonesian women are ony after the dollar bills of bules? Hopefuly for the sake of me and other guys you are wrong.
noooo….. not all of them. Hey i love my ex for who he is not his money!!! Its disguise me to even think about it !
i get upset as much as you are when i see those indonesian woman with baby carried by a young nanny, walking few step away from her. And when baby crying nanny who’s comfort the baby… (can’t disturb mommy while shopping with daddy.. yeah yeah..sure). Its a very sad view !!! wish could say loud, if you can’t take care any of it DON’T MADE IT !!!!
@ Brian
@Farah..
that is very beutifull, and as pure as it gets ! do you and your bf read verses like this to each other….wow very2 romantis farahYes we read each other verses that we like. Discuss it, why me/he like it. There are many similarity in both religion, so yes its romantic and intimate for me. Until now i still feel warm when i read those bible verse about love (still could remember how he read it to me over the phone…aaawwwww! luka lama kembali terbuka !)
how can somebody at such a young age committ themselves to a life of no sex, and loneliness….dont other people find that hard to comprehend and understand????? hence i also wouldnt leave my children with them!
Its just something that i wish to do with person that very very very very special for me i guess. At least someone who brave enough to promise me “forever” and declare it to world (still have romantic silly thing on my head i guess).
You’re an awesome dad!! prefer his daughter do sex before 16 (maybe younger), and maybe on living room, hehehehe.
Can remember how my dad face when i was holding my boyfriend hand in front of house when i was 14 (“Young girl get inside the house now!!”).
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This topic reminds me of something…
My ex once told me he was ready to be given a marga. Marga is a word for “family name” in Batak tribe- thinking by doing so my parents would accept him.
[Batak is well-known for the strictness to avoid getting married with people outside the tribe, tho now it’s more common to do that, but still the person who will get married with the Batak man/woman will be given a Batak marga. It’s like an adoption process (done in a ceremony)… the person will get new parents, and the entire family/relatives.
Once a person did the ceremony, he/she will be acknowledge as a Batak, and will be recognized with the new family name (within the tribe, there’s some certain rules that once a man get married, he’d be called by his family name in the family… men tend not to use their first names).
I couldn’t imagine his western family name turned into Sinaga (the dragon? lol) or Hutabarat (West Kampung? rofl) or something even funnier than those (it was just my free translation btw). If I want a Batak husband, I’d rather pick the ‘original’ one instead of the fake one. hehe.
But I met a ‘bule’ who ‘converted’ into a Batak in a party in Kampong back in South Sumatra. And next year (after struggling for years to get a ‘permit’ from her parents to marry her Irish bf) my cousin will finally get married with her ‘fake’ Batak man. Anyway… I’m so happy for them, I wish them all the best. It’s funny that I have double standard on thing… it’s ok for people to do that, but I don’t think I want my man to do stuff like that.
It’s a good thing tho, now in my generation, we have more ‘mud-blood’ (in Harry Potter’s term) Batak in the family. The Javanese-Batak, the Menado one, the one from North Celebes etc. At least now family gathering is not so boring. -
I mean in Kampung back in North Sumatra, not South Sumatra.
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ET said:
On the other hand it is also giving in to and cooperate with a fundamental injustice and a violation of human rights.
Yes and no, ET. It’s certainly a violation of the UDHR for Indonesia to require conversion for marriage. But if the choice is made by an individual or his or her free will, then it’s a different story.
Once again, it depends on the individuals.
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@ Timdog
@deta, dita, data or whatever your name is 😉 – it was cold; that’s why I forgot her name! Do you think she remembers mine?
No, I think she’s muttering to herself now, “What was the guy’s name I talked to? Something with cat or dog?” 😉
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@ timdog
ET – I’m still too excited at having met Dea to engage seriously
Not much to be excited about if you ask me. But then again ‘de gustibus et coloribus mulieribusque non est disputandum’.
I guess in your case I could also add religionibusque.
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de gustibus et religionibus non est disputandum…… Then the world will be a quite place. No more news.
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Sorry, I meant “a quiet place” (my english is as bad as my Latin 😉 )
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brian astaga says:
can I ask an indonesian woman on here why some indonesian women always wear the white make up on the face….? :-s
I prefer them without it, any other bule on here agree with me?
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converting to a different religion to get married… its not a big deal !!! im a catholic and go to church once a year, for the other 364 days of the year my religion doesnt affect me a great deal! shore all the messeges of religion have affect eg trying to be a good person etc.
I cant see how converting to a different religion would stop someone from marriage…thats just very sad!
I cant understand priests ithor patong, how can somebody at such a young age committ themselves to a life of no sex, and loneliness….dont other people find that hard to comprehend and understand????? hence i also wouldnt leave my children with them!
@Farah..
that is very beutifull, and as pure as it gets ! do you and your bf read verses like this to each other….wow very2 romantis farah