Philodendron

It is another diversity of our backyard. This picture is an inflorescence of  an exotic plant, Philodendron (Philodendron bipinnatifidum). Although it is widely found in the humid tropic areas, many people find this species to be unique and exotic species. Some people make it as potted plants, but in our experiences this plant grows well in the open soil. It is very easy to take care anyway.

Mak sumai : ghost in the shape of tiger

I almost forget this word, mak sumai! The local paper yesterday reported that  61 years old man in one of the village in the Municipality of  Seluma has been missing since four days ago. People in that village believe that man has been hidden by a mak sumai, a ghost in the shape of tiger.  Mak sumai is a one of old-time popular belief of the Bengkulu people. Does really mak sumai exist? 

Rejang Lebong : The Second Vegetable Producers in Sumatera

Rejang Lebong highland is the second largest vegetable producers in Sumatera after Kabupaten Karo. (North Sumatera). This highland produces many kind of vegetables, such as hot peppers, tomatoes, cabbages, carrots, cucumber, beans, potatoes, shallots and many other fresh vegetables.  These vegetables are mainly  marketed to Palembang and Jakarta.

Palm sugar vs forest conservation

W. Marsigit et al, 2005

Palm sugar is one of the products produced by villagers in the province of Bengkulu. This  home-based traditional  industry has been practicing a long time ago by many villagers to support their family incomes. 

Must-read Reference : The 2011 Economic and Product Market Databook for Bengkulu, Indonesia

This book would be a very
good reference for investors, 

makers (to have  a better

down to earth programs),
researchers and students.

Such book will usually 
provide the economic
prospects based on the

economic potential of
Bengkulu.

The people of Bengkulu : Serawai

Serawai is the name of an ethnic group natives to the Province of Bengkulu. This ethnic is indeed the second major ethnic live in the Province of Bengkulu, after the people of Rejang. They mainly inhabit the area of Southern part of Bengkulu’s province. However, they are also spread over across the province, and also another part of Indonesia.  They do have their own dialect, a derivation of Malay language. 

Cross-country cycling : Sports & leisure time

The use bicycle for fun, leisure and sport is getting more popular in the city of Bengkulu. The bikers make use of the beauty of Pantai Panjang and other tracking path to have cycling activity. Some people groups themselves  into particular fun bike club to have regular cycling exercises.  In Pantai Panjang, the long white- sanded beach in the city of Bengkulu, we can easily find companies  that rent the bicycle in hourly basis with a very cheap price for a good and reliable bicycle, 1 – 2 USD per hour. 

Coal river-mining: Blessing or Disaster?

During the last three years, there has increasingly coal mining activity taken place in the river of  Bengkulu, a river that ends up in the city of Bengkulu.  The miners simply take the coal from the bottom of the river, pile it and sell it. Many people make this activity as additional source of income, or as their part-time job.  Buyers, which are more appropriated called as middlemen, pick it up and cash the divers. Individual can earn around USD 2-5 per day, depends on how compromise the weather or how good their mood to dive the coal from the bottom of the river.

The fort of Marlborough Bengkulu

The fort of Marlborough Bengkulu, which is believed to be established during the period of  1713 to 1719, is located near the beautiful long beach of Bengkulu City. I do not really comfortable to mention that this fort was established by The British during their stay in Bengkulu. What I truly believed that this largest fortress in Southeast Asia was painfully constructed by the local people of Bengkulu. 

Le mea

Le mea..., it is not the words of French !. It is the name of Rejang's cuisine instead. Le mea is made of fish-fermented bamboo shoots. How to make it ?. The washed bamboo shoot was chopped into small pieces, typically less than 1 cm3, and then mixed with fish and small amount of water, and finally fermented for 3-5 days in the closed media.

Enggano

Enggano island is one of the Indonesian outermost islands located in the Southwestern coast of Sumatra (+/. 170 km away), facing the Indian Ocean and is administratively governed by The Province of Bengkulu. Here are some related references to this unique community you might be interested to go through.

Morfologi dan sintaksis bahasa Enggano

Menguak Tabir Enggano

A new Burmannia from Enggano (Sumatra)

PS. Bengkulu needs Sponsor or Consortium

It is sad to mention that the only soccer team of Bengkulu playing in Ti-phone Indonesian League, PS. Bengkulu, is currently facing financial crisis. The local newspaper, Bengkulu Ekspress, together with PS Bengkulu management and the fans, Panglimania, has initiated (17/04/2011) a fund raising in order to maintain this club in the national league. They call for donations and charities from the people of Bengkulu or anyone like to donate.  Contributors may come to PS Bengkulu Secretariat or send their donations to Bengkulu Ekspress account, namely BENGKULU EKSPRESS PEDULI, account number 0115-01-044574-50-5. It is worth to mention that currently PS Bengkulu ranked 10th out of 13 teams playing in Ti-phone league.

Economic & Product Profile of Bengkulu

This is a highly recommended book for better investment plannings and strategies in Bengkulu. The local government, however, should also read this book in order to have better and reliable policies for the advancement of this province  economic growth.

Bengkulu must develop industry for (agricultural) product processing

It has been a long history that the province of Bengkulu is well known to produce many plantation crops, including coffee, rubber, cacao, black pepper and sugar palm. In addition, during the last 20 years there has been another fast-emerging crops that has been widely grown is palm oil. 

ni yao caifu ni xian zuo lu

I couldn’t agree more with this old Chinese proverb ‘ni yao caifu ni xian zuo lu’, which means (approximately) ‘build a new road, if you want to get welfare’.  The idea to establish a new road, connecting Muara Aman to Sumatera highway, in the province of Jambi is very important to the people in the Kabupaten Lebong.  Kabupaten Lebong, as we all might aware, located along the Ketahun River, surrounding by National Park Kerinci – Seblat, will remain isolated if the access to get this old gold miner’s town  relies only on its current connecting roads, from Curup and from Kuro Tidur’.  Establishing  another path of transportation, especially with Sumatera highway, will benefit not only Kabupaten Lebong, but also the province of Bengkulu in general. 

1000s of tombs discovered in Lebong.

A leading local newspaper, Rakyat Bengkulu, (03/11/11), reported that people of Lebong were surprised with the discovery of thousands of ancient tombs in the village of  Air Putih, Kecamatan Pinang Belapis. It is predicted that there might be more graves around rubber and durian trees around and covered with the shrubs.  Whose graves were those?  It was speculated that those gravestones numbered 1 – 987 belong to the gold miners who passed away between the years 1905 to 1938. Please note that since the 19^th century, Lebong Municipality has been well known as one of gold producers in Indonesia. It also found that most of the cemetery were tombstone-shaped cross, written with Arabic letters. Interestingly, most just a stone tomb, all of which have each successive number between one another.

This daily paper, however, also mentioned that people around this area has known the presence of these graves since tens of years ago, but they don’t really think it is important  to pay attention to these tombs.  In addition, in order to have better description of these tombs, local authority is planning to invite archaeologists in the near future to determine the importance of this discovery

Way to know Bengkulu

This is an excellent reference to know better about Bengkulu

Bunga Rafflesia sebagai simbol atau slogan?

Pemilihan lambang atau slogan harus mampu memberikan inspirasi bagi yang melihat dan mendengarnya, harus punya nilai filosofis yang mendorong orang untuk berkinerja dan mengaktualisasikan dirinya. Masyarakat Bengkulu sangat bangga mengatakan provinsinya sebagai land of rafflesia, diekspresikan dalam banyak simbol, slogan dan nama. Menurut saya tidak pas dan tidak pantas?. Karena :

anthurium

zie, 2010

Our wonderful backyard  flower is easy to manage, all you need is patience... :-)

Kamus Baso Jang !

Materials for a Rejang-Indonesian-English dictionary (Pacific linguistics D-58)

Another book about Rejang

The Rejang of Southern Sumatra (Occasional papers / Centre for South-East Asian Studies at the University of Hall)

Another thrilling book of Hoesel

Elisha's Bones

SNMPTN 2011’s Destination : Universitas Bengkulu

This 29^th years old university, located in the city of Bengkulu, is one fast-emerging university in Indonesia. Since 2007, it has become one of 50 Indonesian Promising University out of more than 3000 higher education institutions in Indonesia.  In this 2011 academic year, Universitas Bengkulu offers 34 sarjana programs (one year longer than Bachelor program) and 8 Diploma programs as well as 12 master programs.  These study programs offered by the Faculty of Education and Teaching, Faculty of Law, Faculty of Economics, Faculty of Social and Political Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Faculty of Basic Science, Faculty of Engineering, and Medical and Health Science programs.  High school students who want to go to university will make a good decision to attend this university. Detail info about study programs are available at this university official site (http://www.unib.ac.id).

This 29^th world university ranking (UI Greenmetric) is attended by almost 12,000 enrolling students, supported by more than 750 faculty members.  All the study programs have national accreditation,  excepts those of new established study programs.  Universitas Bengkulu  is a very cozy campus and  environmentally well managed, hence makes the students enjoy the academic atmosphere and able to complete their academic programs with competitive attributes. This university also offers a credit transfer program with Rajamangala University Technology of Sriijava, Thailand, and University of Malaysia Kelantan.  Student facilities including housing, unlimited internet access, digital library, sport facilities, gymnasium, campus bus are continuously strengthened to makes university’s motto, conveying better future, apply to every students.  

Managing economic growth in the conservation areas

As previously reported in my article entitle ‘Brief info of Bengkulu’, the province of Bengkulu occupies 1,978,870 ha of land, lies along the Bukit Barisan Mountain. This leads to the situation where only 46,5 percent areas are classified as conservation regions, either as National Park, Conservation Forest or other form of protection areas.  However, many reports indicated that this conservation region is no longer serves as conserving area, since it has been widely exploitive; illegal logging, illegal farming, etc. The rest of areas are available to support the 1,7 million people for inhabitants, plantation and other economic activities.

get register !

http://www.prelaunchmalaysia.com/bengkulu

The syllabic alphabet of Rejang : ka ga nga

Once you get Bengkulu, you don’t need to worry about how to communicate with local people. They don’t only primarily speak the national language (Bahasa Indonesia), but also many people here are able to speak English. Most people at the hotel, restaurant, mall or at the government office speak English.  You may also find that some people  here (by some minor ethnic group) speak their own local dialects, including Rejang, Local Malay, Serawai and Lembak). In addition, there is another local dialect which is spoken by a very little number of people, Pekal.

How to get Bengkulu?

It’s easy !, it’s only 55 minute flight from Jakarta (the capital city of Indonesia). There are 5 to 7 flights  from Jakarta  every day. So, your travel agent can arrange your visit to Bengkulu at your most convenient time.  However, you may also take a direct bus from Jakarta, Bandung, Palembang, Padang, Jambi, Pekan Baru, and Lampung. Once you get Bengkulu, you may take a rental car to visit any destinations within the province you plan to.  All the other towns is reachable within a day.  Although they offer visitors with various type of hotels or motels, I would suggest you to stay  in  Bengkulu City.  You could choose one of the hotel  located along the beach, Pantai Panjang, where you can enjoy the beautiful  sunset, white-sand, jogging and cycling track, and of course the place where you can enjoy the coffee. To learn more about the City of Bengkulu, please visit http://www.bengkulukota.go.id     This helpful site is managed by local government.   

Brief info of Bengkulu : Location and Population

The Province of Bengkulu lies between  101 20'  -  103 45' EL  and 2 25' - 5 00' SL, along coastal line the western part of Sumatera island, Indonesia.  Geographically speaking, this province  covers  ± 1.978.870 ha  of land and is located in the western part of Bukit Barisan mountains, faces the Indonesian ocean with 433 km of coastal line.   This province could be considered as a tropical rain-forest area as its  average annual rainfall is 100 mm/year , with the number of rain-day  between  100-250 days/year.

According to the 2010 census, the population of this province is 1.7 million people (875.663 males and 837.730 females), scattering  into 10 major towns, i.e, Bengkulu (a municipality as well as the capital city of the province), and other municipality towns, including Curup, Argamakmur, Manna, Muara Aman, Kepahyang,  Tais, Bintuhan, Muko-Muko, and Karang Tinggi.   For further info, I would suggest you to visit  http ://bengkulu.bps.go.id