Come and visit us, if you really want to

Traveling exposes you to the good and the bad not only of the place you travel to, but also helps you to see your town, city, country, etc. in a different light.

Local schoolbooks always point out how beautiful Indonesia is, with its lush rain forests (with the illegal logging and forest fires, this just goes to show how outdated the books are, not to mention the whole education system), bountiful natural resources and smiling people.

Then how come tourism is not a major moneymaker? Sure, we have Bali. But how about the rest of the 13,677 islands? Surely there are other places in this vast country that merit our wanderlust? I, for one, am easy to impress. Anywhere green or with ancient buildings, a white beach with blue or, even better, turquoise waters would be sufficient for me.

A lot of foreign destinations are overrated, but people still go anyway. Why? Aside from the bourgeoisie notion of jetsetting around the world, these places have a head-turning marketing plan, with nifty brochures and glossy advertising campaigns fully supported by their government.

Pretty pictures and eloquent text, all there to seduce you to go to yet another beach, shopping center, zoo or what have you. I once went to a must-see island that turned out to offer a view of ... rocks.

And come on, no offense to Malaysians the world over, but what does our neighbor have that we don't?

What has our government done to support and promote Indonesian tourism? The occasional culture and dance missions abroad? If you go to a so-called "Indonesian Night" held by a well-intended Indonesian embassy, most likely you'll meet fellow Indonesians and just a handful of the much needed foreigners.

Browse through leading international travel magazines and nowhere in sight is a slight mention of Indonesia, aside from Bali.

Go to a foreign travel agent and it's likely there will be no packages for Indonesia. Backpackers around the world often skip our country on their trips to Southeast Asia, but happily tread along to Singapore and Malaysia.

I once did a little research on Indonesian tourism and called the Indonesian Embassy in London. The operator made me an appointment with a staff member from the embassy's information section. During the interview, he admitted that the embassy no longer had a special section dedicated to tourism since the monetary crisis hit (the only one in Europe was in the Netherlands).

He proceeded to hand me some uninspiring, poorly executed and outdated booklets on travel in Indonesia. One booklet stood out, however; it was very comprehensive, written in a clear manner and separated by interests (adventure travel, family, etc.). It actually gave the impression that there are millions of things to do in Indonesia. Beaches, mountains, historic buildings, shopping complexes; we have them all.

Well, about time. Flick on your satellite TV and you'll see aggressive campaigns telling you to go to amazing Thailand, to see and love Hong Kong, to experience Malaysia, the real Asia.

The Amazing Thailand tourism advertising campaign debuted in 1998, at the height of the Asian economic crisis. It helped Thailand pull in 8.65 million tourists in 1999, some 370,000 more than the target.

"The campaign was enormously successful," said Tourism Authority of Thailand spokesman Kaneungnit Chotikakul.

Meanwhile, our country was quite content to rely on the excuse of the crisis and make do with the sprinkling of Australian surfers who travel to Bali a few times a year. And then the Bali bombings happened.

The Bali bombings of 2002 have been said to devastate our tourism industry. Why, because the whole country depended on Bali and Bali alone when it comes to tourism? Nobody among the tourism officials saw the irony in this?

If the travel warnings have led to a decrease in international tourists, then we should be encouraging people to travel domestically. After 9/11 hit the United States, the government quickly launched a campaign to encourage people to travel. They even said it's more patriotic to travel! And the sea of U.S. travel magazines kept writing about great areas at home to travel to.

Sure, some holidays have been moved to give us longer weekends to encourage us to travel, but did the government do anything else aside from that? Did any of the local governments try to entice us to go visit them with special promotions, glossy articles and ad campaigns?

There is a lot of homework to be done here, including coming up with more organized and aggressive promotions, locally and internationally. Better infrastructure (better roads, better transport options, etc.) are needed along the way. And perhaps a special force is required to crack down on dubious travel agents, hotels, airlines and individuals who take advantage of tourists.

So instead of squeezing money out of people who travel abroad (the fiscal fee, perhaps, thankfully, to be gone soon), just imagine how much money the country can make out of a thriving travel industry?

-- Krabbe K. Piting