Ririn arranged the use of a jeep with the hotel, to enable us to see some of the sights further afield. It was very hot, hotter or more humid than Surabaya, I thought.

Chinese Temple

Our first stop was at the Chinese temple, just outside the town. An elderly man took us inside and showed us around. There are several rooms behind the main room, containing a variety of different shrines, presumably to different deities. The guardian lions outside were a bit different from the usual carved lions that stand guard outside a Chinese temple.

Ethnic Chinese have been on Madura for hundreds of years. They were involved in the confused wars around 1740 when the ruler of Madura allied himself with the Dutch colonial government (the VOC, which started the wars in the first place by trying to deport the Chinese from Java).

Although they comprise only 4% of the Indonesian population, the Chinese are very strong economically, which means that they often bear the brunt of frustration caused by economic problems outside their control. During the violent upheavals that lead to Suharto's downfall in May 1998, many ethnic Chinese were among those killed, and the looting prompted around 150,000 to flee overseas, leading to huge amounts of badly-needed capital being transferred out of the country.

Things are looking better since Suharto was deposed. In 2000 Chinese New Year was celebrated publicly in Jakarta for the first time since the 1960s.

The Salt Flats

We then went to visit the salt-producing areas at Kalianget. Salt production was an important industry under the Dutch, and is probably still important to the economy of Madura.

Longton Beach

The sandy beach at Longton is pleasant enough. There are seats and tables set up for visitors, though a development of what appeared to be a beach-front restaurant/guesthouse was abandoned in mid-construction, probably as a result of the economic crisis. Several young fishermen were plying their trade with nets along the beach, but I didn't see them catch anything other than what looked like tiny shrimp, which I believe they take somewhere to breed.

The heat was tremendous all day, so upon returning to the hotel all I wanted to do was lie down, which I did!

That evening I went out for a walk and a bite to eat (Ririn stayed in the hotel). There was a concert of tradtional music by an all-boy choir at the Mesjid, which I stopped to listen to. On my way back to the hotel I stopped off at the nearby Chinese/Indonesian restaurant, where I made the acquaintance of Sirjurum, an English teacher at a nearby school. After we spoke together for a while, he asked me to give a talk on Ireland at his school the following day, which I agreed to do.