"A Japanese TV show found an international survey that ranked countries where people were least likely to become angry. Indonesia was ranked #1. To test this claim, they sent comedian Udo Suzuki to Bali, where he acted like a jerk and tried to provoke the anger of Indonesian people.
Just to test his anger-inducing abilities, he first tried sneaking up behind a white woman and popping a balloon next to her head. Sure enough, she got visibly angry and left the area.
He then targeted Indonesians. First, he did a couple surprise balloon pops. Next, he randomly poured water on somebody. He cut in line at a grocery store. Then he put super spicy hot sauce into an ice desert.
One guy seemed very uncomfortable after eating the hot sauce, but nobody became visibly pissed off. Nobody yelled at him. Nobody stormed away in anger. Suzuki’s antics provoked no rage.
According to post-prank interviews, Indonesian parents teach their children not to get angry over small matters and not to fight with other people. A lot of Indonesian people don’t think it would be worth getting worked up over a little prank."
try to make them angry by cicacocadou3
Now obviously that show is pretty staged and proves little or nothing. And obviously I'm biased being part-Indonesian myself, but as far as I'm concerned, the study is pretty accurate. It may be a huge and culturally diverse country, but as a general rule, Indonesians are a very easy-going people. Of all the countries I've been to around Asia, only the Thai people seem to match Indonesians in the polite and friendly stakes.
Or alternatively, you could take a completely different view.
This is of course the same country which has suffered several internal terrorist attacks in the last decade. It's the same country in which up to 1 million people were murdered in anti-communist pogroms during the civil unrest of 1965-66, with the killing often carried out by civilians. It's the same country guilty of bloody repressions in West Papua, Aceh and its former province East Timor. It's the same country that in the last 15 years has witnessed sectarian conflicts between Christians and Muslims in Sulawesi and Ambon, mass beheadings of Madurese transmigrants by Dayak tribesmen in Kalimantan, and mass gang-rapes of ethnic Chinese women and looting of Chinese shops in the 1998 unrest. Indonesia is frequently lauded for practising a moderate, secular and tolerant form of Islam; yet Muslim militancy has been on the rise in various forms with groups like the Islamic Defenders Front, Hizb ut-Tahrir and the terrorist Jemaah Islamiyah. It is notable that one of the few words to have entered the English language from Indonesian/Malay is amok, meaning to suddenly snap and start attacking people indiscriminantly. It's a very Indonesian phenomenon.
In other words, it looks like an extremely violent and aggressive place. So which is the real Indonesia?
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