Maybe it was the weirdness we experienced at the airport when we arrived, or maybe it was just my preconceived idea that all Indonesians were going to regard us as ‘Ugly Australians’ and treat us accordingly, but ever since we stepped foot out of the airport here, I’ve been in shock.

This place is phenomenal.

I normally cannot stand it when people go somewhere and announce that ‘the people in Country X are so friendly!’ To me, that statement always seems to come out weirdly. Particularly when people are describing their encounters in the developing world, I think it often comes across as patronising or strangely affected. And when the phrase, ‘they just smile so much – in all that hardship! – such lovely, happy people!’ is spoken, it makes me want to cringe and duck for cover.

But I’m about to break at least some of those rules (though not the one about the lovely smiles and the 'shiny, happy impoverished people' …).

I simply have to mention that the Indonesians we’ve met so far have been incredible: friendly, open, charming and just unbelievably, well, nice. There, rule broken.

People are lovely and friendly in most places, of course. But here, there’s been an additional kind of warmth and a real eagerness to engage. In Yogyakarta, there’s more of a sense that the chatting has its origins in business (ie, the conversation is likely to end with, ‘Come and see some batiks with me!’), but in Jakarta particularly, people were just out-and-out, over the top, nice.

Everywhere we went, people wanted to chat – whether they spoke English or not – and were willing to help us out. From schoolgirls in the street who wanted to ‘interview’ us about our views on Jakarta, to the guy selling fresh-boiled cobs of corn on the street, to the woman in the toilet at McDonald’s, everyone was unbelievably welcoming. It was like that whole ‘there goes another tourist’ mentality that you adopt when you see someone foreign in the street was missing entirely. Instead, we were treated like we were fresh and exotic and had to be approached immediately – just in case there was something we needed. Very unusual for a capital city, indeed.

The woman in the McDonald’s toilet in Jakarta turned out to have studied for three months in Adelaide. She wanted Andrew and me to come to her house (please bear in mind that we had just met her – and that the only interaction I’d had with her at this point was that she helped me turn on the hand-dryer!), and she seemed genuinely upset when I told her we had to catch a train to Yogya the next morning. Undeterred, she handed me her business card (she is a dentist), introduced me to her gorgeous daughter, and then asked if we could stay in touch! We have now exchanged addresses, so that we can meet up next time they are in Australia. Truly the most bizarre exchange I’ve ever had in a McDonald’s bathroom.

Here in Yogya, it’s been more of the same. Unbelievably disarming friendliness. One man wanted to chat about his thoughts on Red Gum’s 1980s hit song, ‘I’ve Been to Bali Too’, before launching into his views on Norman Gunstan, Paul Hogan and former Prime Minister Paul Keating. He was most keen to know what had happened to the ‘funnyman who played Norman Gunstan, as I haven’t heard anything about him in a while’!

Every time I’ve asked whether Indonesians find Australia offensive or irritating, I’ve been met with stares of blank incomprehension. It is certainly a far cry from the mentality I was expecting, given past ruckuses over issues like East Timor. ‘I love your country!’ said one teenage girl we were talking to. ‘Every time I see it on TV, I just love it!’ In Yogya, one guy said, ‘Oh no problems here at all. Maybe in Jakarta they would have problems, but definitely not here!’ Which was funny, because everyone in Jakarta had looked puzzled and confused when I’d asked them if Indonesians generally had issues with Australia. Things were not as I’d expected, that was for sure.

Also charming has been the fact that whenever we announce that we are from Australia, people tend to chorus, ‘Oh! So you speak Bahasa Indonesia, then!’ We shamefacedly admit that we do not, and they look a little crestfallen. ‘But most Australians who come here speak excellent Bahasa,’ they say – which kind of pleases me. It’s very nice to think that one image of us here is more along the lines of ‘excellent speakers of Bahasa’ than evil, imperialist wrongdoers.

The vibe on the streets in Jakarta and Yogya is a joy. The tropical air is unbelievably sticky, in a three-showers-a-day sort of way, and it’s thickly scented with the strong, sweet smell of clove cigarettes. Life ambles on in a tranquil, easy manner, and the presence of Islam is very different from what I had been expecting. There’s a very relaxed sense here – a very tolerant, open, at-ease sort of mentality. Some women wear headscarves, some do not. There is very little overt evidence of sex segregation, and for me to be able to chat to other women and girls is unbelievably easy. There’s none of the reticence in the women here that you can experience at times in other parts of the world. Instead, the women we’ve encountered seem very confident, forthright and independent. It’s lovely. Equally, the men we’ve met have been very respectful and relaxed, and there’s none of the machismo or sexual suggestiveness from them that can so easily mar your travel experiences.

The only thing that’s a little sad is that there are very few tourists here enjoying Indonesia’s bounty. Western governments’ travel warnings against coming here are extremely strongly worded (aka: ‘Defer all non-essential travel’), so I can understand why things are quiet. Still, coming here and seeing things with our own eyes has been unbelievably rewarding. We were extremely nervous before we came, and considered striking this portion of the trip altogether.

Being here, though, my sense of things is very different. There is no overriding sense of danger or of the place being on red- (or any other colour!) alert for terrorist incidents. That’s very different from other places we’ve been on this trip – most notably, Lebanon, parts of Egypt, and the USA. When we standing on a street corner in Jakarta and I was freaking out about going into McDonald’s, I asked the schoolgirl we were chatting to if she worried about bombs going off in there. She broke into uproarious laughter – as did her friend – and managed to choke out ‘there are no bombs!’ before collapsing in giggles again.

None of this is to say that terrorist acts won’t happen here again, it’s just to give a sense of what day-to-day life is like, as we’ve observed it so far. In the end, the one post on Lonely Planet’s Thorntree that made me feel at ease coming here was a statement by a Westerner living in Jakarta which read something like, ‘[Following the 2004 bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta, w]ill something else get blown up in the next year or two? Undoubtedly. But as to whether the risk to the individual is great – I just don’t think so. Life here goes on day to day without any concern about incidents of that nature. It’s not really a daily issue.’ Food for thought.

At any rate, I can confirm that our greatest moment of fear here so far was coming in from the airport at 11pm in the rain. The road was slick with a mix of oil and rain, and we were travelling at 120km/hr with a driver who was an unknown quantity. Now THAT was a death risk.