I recently spent 1.5 weeks in Indonesia. I traveled all over the country (Jakarta, Semarang, Surabaya, Batam, though not Bali) and met some 2,500 students, businesspeople, journalists, and academics. In addition to sharing some of my own views and experiences with local audiences, I learned quite a bit about the country and its people. Below are my key lessons and impressions.

1. Size and scale. Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in world (220 million), an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands. It is the third largest democracy in the world behind India and the United States.

2. A moderate Muslim country. It is home to the largest Muslim population in the world (88% of 220 million). The government is secular and the Islam that is practiced is moderate. State law rules, not Islamic law. As just one small but telling example, there are many Muslim women who do not wear headscarves (though the majority do) and I did not see many men wearing a peci.  Religious freedom flourishes: look at Hindu-dominated Bali, the Christian population, and the various interfaith dialogues and groups. I remember noticing two women sitting next to each other in the audience once: one wore a headscarf, the other had a Christian cross draped around her neck. Contrast this to Saudi Arabia. There, women must always wear full body hijabs (covering head to toe with small slits for the eyes); if you’re seen with a person of the opposite sex in public you can be arrested; if you are caught carrying a Bible (or any other non-Muslim religious item) it’s grounds for punishment. So it’s easy to see why the United States, among other nations, holds up Indonesia as a shining beacon of tolerance and diversity in the Muslim world.

3. Optimism of the People. I surveyed many folks and the vast majority ID’d as optimistic. They think Indonesia will be a center of gravity in the future. They believe tomorrow will be better than today. The 21st century is the century of Asia.

4. Heat and Humidity. It’s impossible to walk outside for more than a few minutes without sweating your balls off. I love air conditioning, but I would not want my existence to be defined by it. Plus, humidity is the worst. In Arizona, when I walk outside it takes some time for the oven to heat my body to the point of sweating. In humid climates, when I walk outside I begin sweating almost instantly. While I’m undoubtedly more sensitive to it than locals who grew up there, I’m not that much different: Indonesian social life, I was told, is concentrated in fancy malls, which are safe, full-service, and most of all, air conditioned!

5. Hospitality, Formality, Status. Per my post on being introduced three times, there is a broader culture of hospitality that’s impressive and at times annoying.

6. Big Cities in Developing Countries. A general rule of thumb for poor countries is that the big capital cities are sprawling chaotic messes with traffic, pollution, and overpopulation, while the countryside tends to be calm and more interesting culturally. In Indonesia this is totally true. Jakarta is not very livable. I asked probably 10 people who live(d) in Jakarta whether they liked it, and none said yes. The unpredictable traffic. The humidity. The relative danger. Surabaya, the second largest city in the country, seemed far more livable — still a big city with all the amenities (4 million people) but no traffic and plenty of open space.

7. Politics and Economy. The current president was elected with overwhelming support, despite the huge amounts of corruption that plagues the government. Democracy’s recent introduction to the country seems to have more or less taken hold, though there are still aspects of democracy beyond voting that seem fragile. Discussion of internet censorship by the government is, for example, a topic of discussion, and I encountered some odd web site failures during my time there. The Indonesian economy is the big gorilla of the region. It runs mostly on light manufacturing. Rice is big here, and mostly sold within the country. Apparently this large internal market insulated the country a bit from the global financial crisis. Several American friends do furniture manufacturing in Surabaya; the chairs and TV stands you buy at Crate & Barrel or Cost Plus were probably made in Indonesia. Side point of interest: Chile had the “Chicago Boys,” Indonesia had the “Berkeley Mafia” — economists who studied there and brought back liberal economic reform.

8. Suharto Regime. You cannot understand politics in Indonesia without first realizing that the 65-year Suharto dictatorship ended only 11 years ago. Here is more on Suharto. It makes you appreciate Indonesia’s political progress.

9. Ramadan. My visit coincided with the holy month of Ramadan, a time when Muslims fast from sunup to sundown. In many places in the Middle East, I’m told all restaurants would be closed during the day. In Indonesia, many restaurants remained open, another sign of its religious diversity. It surprised me to see that when my Muslim hosts broke the fast at sundown after 9-10 hours of no food or drink they did so with a small piece of bread and drink, and then gradually amped up to real food. I’ve never fasted; in fact, I’ve never gone more than a few hours without food or drink. Especially given the heat, I was amazed at the restraint and discipline shown by my Muslim hosts.

10. Terrorism. Last year, terrorists released bombs in the Mariott hotel in Jakarta. The more famous 2002 bombing in Bali killed more than 200 people. The size and remoteness of certain parts of the country make it seem likely that radical groups will have the space to band together for some time to come. Nevertheless, the Indonesian government has been effective at capturing radical Islamist terrorist leaders. Just the other week a key radical cleric was arrested for having helped organized terrorist training camps.

I didn’t feel particularly unsafe anywhere in Indonesia. Note, at the big hotels, every time you enter you have to submit to a metal detector and car-search. But like in so many places, if you’re white, you can walk right through and nobody searches you or scans for metal. When will the terrorists figure out that being / appearing white is the way to evade all security in third world countries?

11. Reading. I took three inter-country flights and observed very few people reading either on the planes or in the airport. I tend to use this as a litmus test….for something.

12. Asian Neighbors and Immigrants. They don’t like the Malaysian people. I heard stories about Malaysia’s actively racist government policies that punish non-Malays. Not sure how accurate it is, but the Indonesians I spoke to see themselves as a more enlightened society. On the immigration front, Chinese Indonesians have been there for a long time and though they represent only 1% of the population they are power brokers in business. The nice business hotels in the country are full of Chinese Indonesian businesspeople.

13. Inexpensive. It’s a super cheap country across the board. India is dirt cheap but expensive as far as hotels go. Indonesia is cheap in everything. True 5 star hotels for US $100 night.

14. Israel. At one event the host at the school announced that (paragraphed) “We are to love all people, Jews, Christians, Hindus, everybody.” I was told that it was most unusual to specifically mention, let alone start with, Jews. The anti-Israel sentiment in Indonesia is just political. People don’t think Israelis should have set up a new state in Palestinian territory, and so they resent the state, the people, and of course the country that’s backed Israel since the beginning: America. Before Obama (who spent time in Indonesia growing up), most Indonesians had an unfavorable view of the U.S., mostly because of Israel, I was told.

15. Entrepreneurial Culture.  I did meet many very energetic and talented young entrepreneurs, and there is a big push within the country to seriously amplify the focus on entrepreneurship. The limiting factor, as it is almost everywhere, is culture. Not a huge acceptance of risk-taking or failure, overbearing parents, etc etc. Same old story. BTW, on the broader business culture, I found it cool that a man can wear either a suit and tie for a formal occasion, or a local batik — a brightly colored shirt that looks like a Hawaiian short sleeves shirt. Both are considered equally formal.

Bottom Line: Indonesia is a diverse country of rising geo-political interest with very kind people. For these reasons it’s worth a visit. The weather is a deal breaker for me in terms of longer stays, and that goes for all ultra-humid tropical climates.

(Me on the iconic mosaic promenade next to Copacabana beach on the one rainy day)

I recently spent 10 terrific days in Rio de Janiero and Paraty, Brazil.

It was more vacation than fact-finding so I skipped Sao Paulo and the normal set of meetings I would have arranged to discuss the politics and economics of the place. My impressions, then, are less intellectual and more experiential.

1. City / Beach. The beaches of Rio are stunning. But there are stunning beaches all over the world. Rio is different because a big, bustling city juts up right against the beach. As you lie on white sand, in front of you is ocean, islands, and green trees. Behind you are tall buildings, and hills packed with small homes. There is a certain allure to the remote island beach. But those places usually lack good infrastructure nearby. The Rio beaches are as beautiful as any I've seen, and there are plenty of bathrooms, food markets, showers, wi-fi, etc. nearby.

2. People. The Brazilian people were super energetic, diverse, friendly, and of course, very beautiful. I spent a good hour sitting on a beach chair on Copacabana beach, drinking a fresh coconut, and just watching all the people bustle around me. (And then several more hours reading books.) The racial diversity among beachgoers was striking. The commitment to string bikinis, even among 75 year-old 150-pounds overweight women, was impressive.

3. Safety. I've never traveled to a place where I had heard so many first-hand accounts of people robbed or mugged. Statistically, too, it's supposed to be bad: it is the top-ranked city in the world for "violent international deaths." This reputation probably explains why we saw so few Americans. I didn't feel unsafe at all, though. Granted, I stayed in the nicer neighborhoods and didn't wander around centro at night. But I felt more exposed in Buenos Aires than I did in Rio, and that includes comparing the airports and bus stations.

4. Paraty. This is a small colonial town in-between Rio and Sao Paulo. It is a lovely, sleepy place, with cobble stone streets downtown, beautiful ocean-front views, and rural dirt roads. Boat rides, horse riding, and plain old hiking all easily available.

5. Soccer. Soccer was everywhere. Truly, everywhere. Rich and poor, young and old. On beaches, on grass fields, on cement courts, on dirt paths. It makes sense that Brazil is a soccer power: when the best athletes in a country of 190 million people are funneled into one sport, they're bound to be good.

6. Favelas. We went on a tour of two Rio favelas, the famous shanty towns / slums erected on public land and run primarily by drug lords. There's much poverty. Some live underground and access the above-ground world via a maze of tunnels and ladders. Still, there is quite a functioning society in the favelas. Every store you could imagine. Banks. TVs. Etc. The main story doesn't seem to be jaw-dropping objective poverty (India is far worse) but rather the proximity of poverty to the wealth of Rio. The American School in Rio costs some $30k a year to attend and sits literally three minutes away from a favela. We were told on the tour that different drug cartels run different favelas but since they guarantee safety to the people (so long as they don't report any activity) the drug-run hoods are quite safe to live in. When police catch a kingpin from one cartel they will simply drop him off on the streets of another favela to ensure his swift death. Oh – and my ears may have deceived me, but I thought I heard a kid yell at us on the tour, "They don't even care about us."

7. Kites. Brazilian kids are obsessed with flying kites. Especially in Paraty. This was so memorable that it's worth its own point.

8. Patriotism. The people seemed extraordinarily patriotic. Many donned the national colors. Flags draped buildings and cars. Maybe this was simply leftover World Cup fever. But I felt something more. The Rio Olympics in 2016 may serve for Brazil a similar purpose as the Beijing 2008 games did for China: an announcement to the world that Brazil, pregnant with potential seemingly forever, has at last arrived on the global stage.

My friend Chris Sacca, micro-VC and former Googler, in a recent interview on TechCrunch TV says he prefers to hire people in Silicon Valley who've traveled / lived outside the United States:

Folks who have been exposed to [the developing world] tend to be a lot easier to work with here. They see the bigger picture, they feel lucky to be in such a privileged setting, and they go after what they're doing not just as a for-profit entrepreneur but they see a much more whole approach to business.

He goes on to talk about how traveling abroad forces humility on you. It also builds patience, in my experience.

On Silicon Valley, Chris says:

Silicon Valley is a way of thinking about business: it’s a way of focusing on end users and their problems; it’s a way of hiring smart people, paying them relatively little, but giving them equity in the company; it’s a way of sharing information with the people that you work with, flat transparent organizations… peers working side by side to solve problems; it’s a lot of optimism, it’s a lot of focusing on big problems and audaciously trying to pursue solutions there.

Below is the embed. In other clips, Chris talks about The Next Big Thing (mobile), Twitter, and other topics.

Here are seven assorted thoughts on one of my main side interests: the airline industry.

1. Free market needed. Imagine if Americans could only drive cars in America that were designed/made in America. Horrible! The Japanese are the best carmakers. Now imagine if Americans could only fly domestically on airlines run by Americans. Horrible! Yet that's what we have today. The single best way to improve the domestic U.S. flying experience would be to open up the market to competition and allow foreign carriers to service domestic routes. Here's my previous post on making the Open Skies Agreement truly global.

2. Three hour tarmac rule. The new three hour tarmac rule means the government can fine airlines that keep passengers on the tarmac for more than three hours. Generally, when it comes to these kinds of consumer protection laws, I would rather the market determine real need — let consumers vote with their dollars in favor of companies that offer certain protections. Apply this philosophy to airlines: if a certain airline felt consumers would value this "feature" (a guarantee that they would be able to access the gate area after three hours), they would offer it, and consumers would pay a premium for it. But this case is more complicated.

Let's review a typical flight delay situation. Before a plane departs, as passengers wait in the gate area, everybody's priorities are aligned: passengers and airlines want to get to the destination as quickly as possible. Remember, airlines lose money when flights are delayed or canceled. Before boarding, if the consumer wants to go to the bathroom, buy food, meander, or even choose not to board the flight, he can do so.

Once he boards the plane and the plane doors close, he becomes captive to the airline. He has no freedom until he's out at the gate area at his destination. As the plane readies for departure and taxis on the runway, passenger and airline priorities are still aligned: fly to destination as quickly as possible. Now suppose there's a delay on the runway. The plane has pushed back from the gate, but can't take off. The airlines at this point still want to get the plane off the ground as quickly as possible. Some passengers, however, no longer care about making it to their destination. After three stinkin' hours on a cramped plane, they want to stretch their legs, buy food, go to a full-size bathroom, etc. So their priorities have changed but they cannot act on them. This lack of freedom and the discomfort that can result (most recently a full night on a regional jet in Minnesota with no food and a broken bathroom) makes me reluctantly support the three hour tarmac rule.

3. Government subsidizing unprofitable routes. Someone who's keen on stimulating entrepreneurship in Chile told me, "We should lobby airlines to get them to start a San Francisco-Santiago non-stop flight." Make it easier for Silicon Valley folks to go to Chile. I replied, "If the route were profitable, it would already exist." He replied, "What kind of entrepreneur are you? Do you know how many things would never have been built if the attitude was, 'If it were good it would already exist'?"

The difference in the airline industry is that airlines can mine hoards of data around passenger traffic. For example, American Airlines can easily see how many of its passengers who leave SFO are bound for SCL (Santiago). I'm not sure but I presume it's also possible to see aggregated passenger traffic from other airlines. If the airlines saw a tremendous number of passengers departing San Francisco and connecting via Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, or Miami (the four non-stop gateways) to Santiago, they would introduce the route.

By the way, I think this is an easy way for a government to increase possible entrepreneurship: subsidize airlines to service an unprofitable route to the Bay Area.

4. Environmentalists and runways. Efforts to protect the environment ought to be subjected to a cost-benefit test. It's not always easy to do this, of course. (How to calculate the benefit of a pristine national park or clean air?) Generally, I am pro-environment and pro-conservation. I love the outdoors. But I think the environmental movement has gone too far in their effort to protect endangered plants and animals around airports and limit carbon emissions from more planes. A third runway in Heathrow would allow an extra 140 million trips a year by 2050.

5. Why not use the regional airline model in the whole industry? For regional flights, a brand airline like Delta will outsource the operation of the aircraft to a regional carrier like SkyWest. The plane says Delta, the ticket is booked on Delta.com, and the pricing / scheduling is run by Delta. But another company operates the aircraft and hires/fires the ground and flight personnel. It seems bizarre that a single company handles front-end marketing, reservations, customer service, aircraft operation, ground operations, baggage, maintenance, etc. Delta outsources food service to Gate Gourmet, for example. Why doesn't it outsource other aspects of its overall operation?

6. Eight hour workday too long for pilots? I recently spoke with the head of a major pilots union who told me management is trying to force pilots to fly more than eight hours a day and that this constitutes a serious safety risk. The union is lobbying congress. Should lawmakers force airlines to cap pilot workdays at eight hours? How many hours do pilots actually spend flying? My understanding is that 98% of the time the plane runs on auto-pilot. We should let one of the two pilots nap during the flight. Then allow them to fly up to 10-12 hours a day — just like the rest of us — or simply let management and pilots negotiate a fair work day with corresponding compensation.

7. Consolidation such as Delta-Northwest and United-Continental is good for the airlines, bad for consumers (less competition = higher prices), but perhaps long-run good for price insensitive consumers inasmuch as these companies will be able to offer better service, joint facilities / lounges, etc.

Chris G. wrote about how he reduces stress when traveling, and among all the good tips is this:

I often get stressed out spending small amounts of money. Overall, this isn’t always bad — it’s led to a healthy paranoia about debt and a lifelong adherence to frugality. However, it has its downsides too, in that I can spend hours walking around trying to decide what to eat, or hours trying to figure out the public transit system somewhere instead of just flagging down a taxi.

…I finally created a $10 rule for myself that has been rocking my world. The $10 rule is that when I’m traveling, I deliberately avoid worrying about most things that cost $10 or less. As I said, this makes a big difference. I actually eat three meals a day now. If I can’t find free WiFi, I’ll walk into a hotel and pay for the connection. SO MUCH LESS STRESS.

Rules like this reduce stress because they reduce the amount of thought you have to put into each decision (and ultimately reduce the total number of decisions). Evaluating options, weighing pros and cons, and then deciding: this taxes emotional and mental resources.

I should put in place a similar rule when I’m looking at music on iTunes. I will buy a song for $.99 or $1.29 if I know it to be good. But I will never experiment with music because I don’t want to pay a few bucks downloading songs I might not like, yet I will still spend ridiculous amounts of time debating it in my head.

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Here’s a piece on Salon titled the Art of Choosing: The hidden science of choice. The most interesting point is cultural: in America we glorify choice and teach our kids at a young age to do the same. Japan is different.

Levi is an American traveler and talented writer who's riding his bicycle through Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, and Kenya. His dispatches from the road are worth following if you read travel blogs.

In a recent post he first covers the liberating freedom of not owning much stuff. Things are a burden: nice and expensive things come with the stress of potentially losing those nice and expensive things. I know more and more people, including non-travelers, who have gone minimalist and report great improvements in psychic calmness.

In the second half of Levi's post he reflects on the flip-side of a life free not only of material stuff but also a regular schedule, regular commitments, regular friends, a regular bed:

at some point, you begin to wonder what you're doing. you begin to feel you don't have a purpose in society, that you are peripheral to the movement of every day life. i think this happens around the time that all the stress you had saved up from whatever you left has sloughed off, and your mind and spirit are a bit free again. the immediate purpose of escape, of release, of experiencing freedom is fulfilled. then if you are still on the road, the question is, why?

there are surely many answers to it: having always wanted to see such-and-such a thing; or doing what you're doing as a challenge (this probably applies a lot to bicyclists); having someone to meet or something specific to do later in the trip, etc. but there are also surely many travellers–like myself–who have no such answer. we are on the road, travelling, without really being able to say why is we are travelling. at least, there's no immediate answer.

and i have more to say about what kind of answers come, and what you can learn from travelling beyond the obvious seeing of sights, tasting of foods, learning of new languages, etc. but what i wanted to mention today was how extended travel can be the needed spoonful of sugar to make regular life go down. when you travel, you are always on the peripheries of regular life: you are a customer but not a worker, a guest but not a regular, a new friend but never an old one.

that life on the periphery–travel–makes you want a place. it makes you want people around you that you've known and will know for some time, some work that you can do every day, a regular bed to sleep at night with a pillow you're used to. it makes you want a home, to go home if you have one, to go make one if–like me–you don't.

and travel that way is a natural end to itself, and support to regular life: it puts you on the outside, free, and after awhile you want again to be inside, confined but comfortable, knowing your place in the world.

This is the classic heaviness/lightness dichotomy that was first popularized in the Czech novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being and more recently in movies like Up in the Air. George Clooney's character gives speeches about emptying your "backpack" of obligations and being totally and completely free. It's a good life, until we see Clooney in the end craving "heavy" commitments like a real, rooted romantic relationship.

The highs and lows of travel follow this all the way: the free spirit in you loves the opportunity to escape and explore and the freedom to live day-by-day, but ultimately the lightness becomes unbearable, and you must find a home, and stay there.

(thanks to Maria Pacana for the pointer)

A delightful piece by Jonah Lehrer in the San Francisco Panorama on the cognitive benefits of travel. He argues that travel is not just about pleasure. It’s about stimulating your mind in a way that enhances creativity. It doesn’t matter where you go or what you do — it’s the physical act of movement and the newness of anything new that generates new thoughts.

In fact, several new science papers suggest that getting away–and it doesn’t even matter where you’re going–is an essential habit of effective thinking. It’s not about vacation, or relaxation, or sipping daiquiris on an unspoiled tropical beach: it’s about the tedious act itself, putting some miles between home and wherever you happen to spend the night….

The larger lesson, though, is that our thoughts are shackled by the familiar. The brain is a neural tangle of near infinite possibility, which means that it spends a lot of time and energy choosing what not to notice. As a result, creativity is traded away for efficiency; we think in literal prose, not symbolist poetry. A bit of distance, however, helps loosen the chains of cognition, making it easier to see something new in the old; the mundane is grasped from a slightly more abstract perspective….

According to the researchers, the experience of another culture endows us with a valuable open-mindedness, making it easier to realize that a single thing can have multiple meanings. Consider the act of leaving food on the plate: in China, this is often seen as acompliment, a signal that the host has provided enough to eat. But in America the same act is a subtle insult, an indication that the food wasn’t good enough to finish.

Such cultural contrasts mean that seasoned travelers are alive to ambiguity, more willing to realize that there are different (and equally valid) ways of interpreting the world. This, in turn, allows them to expand the circumference of their “cognitive inputs,” as they refuse to settle for their first answers and initialguesses….

So let’s not pretend that travel is always fun, or that we endure the jet lag for pleasure. We don’t spend ten hours lost in the Louvre because we like it, and the view from the top of Machu Picchu probably doesn’t make up for the hassle of lost luggage. (More often than not, I need a vacation after my vacation.) We travel because we need to, because distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything.

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Here is the State Department’s commentary on the difficulty of learning various foreign languages for native English speakers. Ross Douthat on Avatar’s virtual appeal. (I loved the movie btw.) Cal Newport on what chess grandmasters can teach us about building a remarkable life. Best of Craigslist: sex duel with the neighbors.