Theoros
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2017
- Messages
- 25
Greetings all, I'm new to the forum. I found it by Googling for "Indonesia expat".
I'm pleased to find this place. Aside from my family I haven't talked to fellow expats to Indonesia since the 1980s. One of my current projects is scanning/digitizing my parents' old photos and negatives including two thick albums from when our family lived in Balikpapan and from our contemporaneous trips to Bali and Singapore, and this rekindled my memories and interest in Indonesia, although I've always remained fond of Indonesia and I've always missed it. So I'm here to share my experiences and photos, get a few details cleared up on culture, geography, and history, and because I'd love to travel to Indonesia again in the near future, pick your brains for travel advice. And who knows, maybe someone I knew in Balikpapan will find my posts through a search engine and get in touch.
To introduce myself I'll share a few highlights of my time as an expat. I was only 8 and 9 years old when we lived in Balikpapan but fortunately my childhood memory recall is excellent and I remember the people, places, and experiences very well and sometimes in vivid detail. Hopefully my childhood perspective of Indonesia will provide interesting and occasionally insightful contrast to the experiences many of you have had as adult expats. Wherever possible I'd like to connect the Indonesia of my past to present-day Indonesia. Things over there seem to change more slowly and more superficially than they do in the West.
My father, mother, brother, and I moved from our native United States to Balikpapan in April or May 1981 and returned stateside a little over a year later in June 1982. My father worked for Huffco, a major oil and natural gas exploration company in Indonesia at the time. Huffco was sold in 1990 to Taiwanese state-owned Chinese Petroleum Corporation and its operations in Indonesia continue today under the name of VICO. (Trivia: Huffco was founded by the late U.S. Ambassador to Austria Roy M. Huffington, father of former U.S. Congressman and presidential candidate Michael Huffington — who also worked for Huffco — and former father-in-law of Arianna of Huffington Post.)
We lived in the gated Huffco camp at Gunung Bakaran, located a couple of minutes west on Jalan Marsma R. Iswahyudi from the airport, bordering the northeastern quarter of the Pertamina golf course. Using Google Maps I've learned the camp is now a resort named Patraland Residence (previously Vilabeta Resort) and that Gunung Bakaran seems to have been renamed to Gunung Bahagia. Can anyone confirm the latter?
I attended Pasir Ridge School which is still operated by International Schools Services as Pasir Ridge Intercultural School. It sits atop Pasir Ridge in the former Union 76 camp now managed by Chevron. My classmates were representative of foreign companies like Huffco, Union 76, Total, Schlumberger, Bechtel, and Halliburton, and they came from all over the world, including some part-Indonesian kids with a Western expat parent. I still have my school yearbooks from 1980-81 and 1981-82 and I plan to scan them soon.
My favorite local dish was nasi goreng, particularly when prepared at home by our Indonesian maid. To this day nothing I've eaten in America that passed itself off as "nasi goreng" has compared. Even chefs who studied their craft in Southeast Asia haven't approximated the mix of flavors my young taste buds were imprinted with.
Unless you were very adventurous or willing to slum it, options for dining out in Balikpapan were limited when my family lived there. We tended to go to the club restaurant in the Huffco camp or its counterpart in the Union 76 camp (the Pasir Ridge Community Center), which incidentally was where we Pasir Ridge School students ate lunch every day while seated outdoors on the top-floor deck overlooking a panoramic ocean view in the direction of Pasar Baru. Outside the camps we frequented Restoran Atomik and the Benakutai Hotel restaurant, both of which remain in business after all these years. Correct me if I'm mistaken but I believe the Benakutai was actually new then, having opened circa 1980. I mention this because I see that the formerly nicest hotel in the city was recently renovated and rebranded "The New Benakutai Hotel," a name that stokes amusement after you've read the many online reviews detailing the place's abysmal state of disrepair before the renovation.
There's much more to tell but I've rambled on enough for this introduction. I'm looking forward to meeting everyone.
I'm pleased to find this place. Aside from my family I haven't talked to fellow expats to Indonesia since the 1980s. One of my current projects is scanning/digitizing my parents' old photos and negatives including two thick albums from when our family lived in Balikpapan and from our contemporaneous trips to Bali and Singapore, and this rekindled my memories and interest in Indonesia, although I've always remained fond of Indonesia and I've always missed it. So I'm here to share my experiences and photos, get a few details cleared up on culture, geography, and history, and because I'd love to travel to Indonesia again in the near future, pick your brains for travel advice. And who knows, maybe someone I knew in Balikpapan will find my posts through a search engine and get in touch.
To introduce myself I'll share a few highlights of my time as an expat. I was only 8 and 9 years old when we lived in Balikpapan but fortunately my childhood memory recall is excellent and I remember the people, places, and experiences very well and sometimes in vivid detail. Hopefully my childhood perspective of Indonesia will provide interesting and occasionally insightful contrast to the experiences many of you have had as adult expats. Wherever possible I'd like to connect the Indonesia of my past to present-day Indonesia. Things over there seem to change more slowly and more superficially than they do in the West.
My father, mother, brother, and I moved from our native United States to Balikpapan in April or May 1981 and returned stateside a little over a year later in June 1982. My father worked for Huffco, a major oil and natural gas exploration company in Indonesia at the time. Huffco was sold in 1990 to Taiwanese state-owned Chinese Petroleum Corporation and its operations in Indonesia continue today under the name of VICO. (Trivia: Huffco was founded by the late U.S. Ambassador to Austria Roy M. Huffington, father of former U.S. Congressman and presidential candidate Michael Huffington — who also worked for Huffco — and former father-in-law of Arianna of Huffington Post.)
We lived in the gated Huffco camp at Gunung Bakaran, located a couple of minutes west on Jalan Marsma R. Iswahyudi from the airport, bordering the northeastern quarter of the Pertamina golf course. Using Google Maps I've learned the camp is now a resort named Patraland Residence (previously Vilabeta Resort) and that Gunung Bakaran seems to have been renamed to Gunung Bahagia. Can anyone confirm the latter?
I attended Pasir Ridge School which is still operated by International Schools Services as Pasir Ridge Intercultural School. It sits atop Pasir Ridge in the former Union 76 camp now managed by Chevron. My classmates were representative of foreign companies like Huffco, Union 76, Total, Schlumberger, Bechtel, and Halliburton, and they came from all over the world, including some part-Indonesian kids with a Western expat parent. I still have my school yearbooks from 1980-81 and 1981-82 and I plan to scan them soon.
My favorite local dish was nasi goreng, particularly when prepared at home by our Indonesian maid. To this day nothing I've eaten in America that passed itself off as "nasi goreng" has compared. Even chefs who studied their craft in Southeast Asia haven't approximated the mix of flavors my young taste buds were imprinted with.
Unless you were very adventurous or willing to slum it, options for dining out in Balikpapan were limited when my family lived there. We tended to go to the club restaurant in the Huffco camp or its counterpart in the Union 76 camp (the Pasir Ridge Community Center), which incidentally was where we Pasir Ridge School students ate lunch every day while seated outdoors on the top-floor deck overlooking a panoramic ocean view in the direction of Pasar Baru. Outside the camps we frequented Restoran Atomik and the Benakutai Hotel restaurant, both of which remain in business after all these years. Correct me if I'm mistaken but I believe the Benakutai was actually new then, having opened circa 1980. I mention this because I see that the formerly nicest hotel in the city was recently renovated and rebranded "The New Benakutai Hotel," a name that stokes amusement after you've read the many online reviews detailing the place's abysmal state of disrepair before the renovation.
There's much more to tell but I've rambled on enough for this introduction. I'm looking forward to meeting everyone.