Obama also retains a soft spot for Indonesia, where he lived from age 6 to He moved to Jakarta in after his mother split up with his father and remarried an Indonesian man. They had his half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, who is traveling with the family. After her second marriage failed, Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, stayed on in Indonesia and Obama returned to Hawaii to live with his grandparents.
During a presidential visit, he delighted onlookers by proclaiming in Bahasa Indonesia that bakso, a savory meatball soup, and nasi goreng, flavorful fried rice, are delicious. They are two of the country's signature dishes.
Prior to arriving in Jakarta, Obama, his wife Michelle and daughters Sasha and Malia visited the resort island of Bali where they stayed in the tranquil mountain enclave of Ubud, touring sweeping terraced rice paddies and rafting the Ayung river. They then traveled to the island of Java to the historic city of Yogyakarta, where Obama's mother did anthropology research. They visited Borobudur, a ninth century Buddhist temple complex, as well as the ancient Prambanan Hindu temple compound. He arrived in Jakarta after visiting the cultural city of Yogyakarta and white-water rafting on the tourist island of Bali.
A lot of important things we discussed in a relaxed atmosphere while eating Indonesian meatballs," he tweeted. Indonesia, a country of million people, has experienced rising intolerance against non-Muslims and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. A leader of Indonesia's second-largest Muslim organisation this week called for a boycott of Starbucks, saying the international coffee chain's pro-gay stand risked ruining the "religious and cultured" core of the country.
We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn, and work. Australian troops 'could soon fight Islamic State in Asia'. More on:. And, as Obama was about to accept his Nobel Peace prize in , a group of locals commissioned a statue of the child Obama, and erected it in a Jakarta park.
But his visit in November was still well received. But it rebounded after his reelection, as memories of the Arab Spring faded and the conflict in Syria had dragged on. By the Indonesian parliamentary election, a couple of candidates clearly believed that they would attract voter attention by putting images or photos with Obama in their campaign posters. One such poster even brought together Obama and al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, with the candidate as the peacemaker in the middle.
Even under the George W Bush administration, the United States had realised the importance of East Asia , and engaged these regions while it fought a war in Iraq. But Obama benefited from the fact that he was not Bush, who was widely seen as a unilateralist and a warmonger. When he was first expected to come in March and then again June, the country whipped itself into a frenzy of anticipation: Books and movies about his childhood were released, celebrations planned, and exhibitions mounted.
But this time, the country seems sapped after twin natural disasters - a volcano and a tsunami - over the past two weeks that killed a combined total of people. There was speculation Obama would cancel again, and the country has been unwilling to get its hopes up.
Even the government waited until the last minute to announce that the visit was on. Hopeful he still might make a last-minute stop to his old elementary school, dozens of third- and fourth-graders, dressed in green-and-white uniforms, spent Tuesday morning practicing a song dedicated to him.
Obama moved to Indonesia when he was 7 after his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, married her second husband, Lolo Soetoro, whom she met when they were studying at the University of Hawaii. The neighborhood they first called home was Menteng Dalam, a Dutch-era neighborhood with red-tiled roofs in Jakarta's center, where many share fond memories of the young Barry. They remember that his mother would walk him to school through streets muddied by monsoon rains, that he was comfortable speaking Indonesian, and that the family kept white crocodiles and a monkey in their yard.
Before Obama's inauguration, Indonesia viewed the United States mostly as a target for protest. Hard-liners saw the George W.
0コメント