Day 5- Batam, Indonesia

We've had some spotty internet service so I'm quite behind on the blog!  On Thursday, we took a ferry to Batam, Indonesia.

It was a cool way to leave Singapore, watching the hustle and bustle of the busy country slowly fade into the distance.

The ferry ride was just about an hour, and the deck on the boat was a nice change from the packed interior.

The ferry started out with just the one flag, but then as we got further towards Indonesia the rest of the flags were raised.

Arriving in Batam

Batam was much different from Singapore; driving through the slums and shanty towns was a shocking change from the clean and modern streets that we just left.  Motorcycles flew by the bus, and I wish I got photographs of some of them.  Women with no helmets or shoes were carrying babies while driving motorcycles; a horizontal board was strapped to the side of one motorcycle and a child was laying on it totally unrestrained.

Our hotel resort seemed very out of place:

We had a meeting with Mr. Ignatious Khomasurya on what it is like to do business in Indonesia. 

Following this meeting, we had a fantastic lunch buffet at the hotel.  Again, there were a lot of foods that we hadn't seen before, including this passion fruit that Haidee clearly enjoyed:

After lunch, we drove to Jabil Industrial Estate.  This isn't the best picture, but people in Indonesia do NOT use lanes on roads like we're used to back home.

Within Jabil Industrial Estate, we took a more focused tour of PT. Citra Tubindo Heavy Industries (http://www.cte.co.id/).  At this facility, they receive unfinished pipes as raw materials and take the pipes through a finishing process involving heat treatment and threading.  The finished products are used on oil rigs world wide, and have to withstand pressure both from the oil inside the pipes and the pressure from the depths of the earth.  We sat through a great presentation as well, where we learned the value of having this operation in Indonesia (cheap/trainable labor force, easy access to oil companies, great location near Singapore and Australia) as well as the negatives (difficult unions and labor laws, unrest of labor force, poor infrastructure).  Jabil is attempting to increase satisfaction of workers by building shopping centers, restaurants, sports fields, and workers dorms (interesting- the rent is cheaper on the higher floors because they don't have elevators) within the estate.

After the tour at Jabil Industrial Estates, we drove to Infinite Studios (PT. Kinema Systrans Multimedia Studios).  Though not within Jabil Estates, the multimedia studios are related because the owner of the studios is the son of the owner of Jabil Industrial Estates, and JIE is the primary investor in the Infinite. (http://infinitestudios.com.sg/)

First, we got a tour of the studios and got to watch animators at work which was very cool.  The animators described the whole process, and just how long it takes to create a character and story.  It seemed a strange location for an animation studio at first: Indonesia is known for cheap labor and manufacturing so to visit a creative company was very interesting.  The owner had considered Singapore, but the land and labor is much too expensive.  To acquire talent, they do events in Jakarta and at local universities. 

We got to watch some of the animation, including popular TV show Peter Rabbit.  We also saw some clips of their live action movies that are produced in partnership with HBO.  One was about Singapore in the 1960s, the other was very scary about zombies in a cave (or something, my eyes were closed).  We were very fortunate to also be given a tour of some of the live actions sets for both of those movies; Infinite is home to the first two sound stages in Indonesia and it was awesome to see first hand how the movies that we saw clips of were created:

It was a very long and busy day, and we were very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to visit the different industries.  In Singapore, we focused more on tech companies and it was very interesting to see a hard manufacturing plant and a creative studio.  The hospitality at all of the places that we visited was so great.

We took the bus back to the hotel, exhausted and tired from a long day of traveling and business meetings.  Some students were fortunate enough to go out to dinner and shopping with some local people that volunteered their time, the rest relaxed back at the hotel.  We all got a lot out of our day in Batam, but some more than others.  A few students had terrible reactions to mosquito bites in Batam (that we're still suffering with a week later!) and I highly recommend that anyone travelling to Indonesia put on multiple layers of bug spray.