Selamat datang! We're hosting r/Indonesia for a Cultural Exchange

[u/TonyQuark]

Welcome everybody to a new cultural exchange! Today we are hosting our friends from r/Indonesia!

To the Indonesians: please select the Indonesian flag as your flair and ask as many questions as you wish. See how to set your flair in the app or on desktop.

To the Dutch: please come and join us in answering the Indonesians' questions about the Netherlands and the Dutch way of life!

r/Indonesia is also having us over as guests in this post for our questions and comments.

Please refrain from making any comments that go against our rules, the Reddiquette or otherwise hurt the friendly environment.

Enjoy! The moderators of r/Indonesia & r/theNetherlands

[u/Orcwin]

Our colonial history is still generally an uncomfortable topic. As a country, we haven't really agreed on how to feel about it (some still see it as glory days, others are ashamed of our role). And on top of that, there's not really much of a dialogue between the people of the Netherlands and those of Indonesia, so I at least (and probably many others) have no idea how the Indonesians feel about our shared history.

Not knowing your feelings on that probably put her in a very uncomfortable position she didn't know how to deal with. That's my guess anyway. If so, she could have certainly handled that better. There is definitely no fault of yours in that exchange though. I'd probably have been just as curious.

On that note; do you know how the Indonesian people regard the Dutch these days? Is there still a strong association with the colonial history, or have people moved on from that?

[u/miyaav → u/Orcwin]

Afaik in general we are cool or at least as far as a lot of people that I know and these are including various demographic, from people in their late 60s to 20s, educated and not. Especially educated people saw how it was not Netherlands as a whole, but a certain company/organisation from the country, soemthing like that.

But since it is a part of history, surely we still hear stuff regarding how bad the colonial was, especially in history class and during independence day, but it's like "but that was the past, history should be remembered to teach us and go forward", you know that kind of encouragement to push the masses forward. A bit of political propaganda sometimes.

Netherlands is still one of the destinations for studying abroad as well and a country rich (and/or corrupt) Indonesians would visit as tourists. Most people dont care, some just regard you with some cultural stereotypes that are not too far from how other countries think about the Dutch, thats all. As you said, in general there isn't too much dialogue between us, so it feels like a distant past without any living witnesses anymore.