Foreign tourists are not always rich

A few days ago, after attending the ASEAN Blogger Festival 2013 in Solo, Central Java, I was asked to accompany five bloggers from the Philippines to the Borobudur Temple in Magelang because they want to enjoy spending time in the Temple and take photos. As I’m the only blogger who is from Magelang (but in fact, there were three bloggers from Magelang including myself, however, I am the only one who came back to Magelang. The other two went to Jakarta for a private matters) as I had a duty to accompany the Filipino bloggers.

Regin, Gail, Claire, Jun, and Cyntia were the 5 bloggers who I required to take to Borobudur Temple. They are excellent bloggers, friendly, and very polite, so I was happy to take them all.

From Solo, we used the train to get to Yogyakarta, the nearest city from Magelang, and we arrived in Tugu Station (Yogyakarta) at 6 PM. Subsequently, we were accompanied by a friend who originates from Jogja, named Anno; we immediately began to find a cheap hotel around Jogja. Finally, we decided to stay in Kombokarno Hotel, a medium hotel which is just about 50 meters from Malioboro Street. After check-in, Regin directly went to the room to watch the F1 that was aired in the local TV channel, whereas I, Gaile, claire, Jun, and Cyntia directly went to Malioboro to enjoy a romantic dinner in lesehan (‘roadside’ restaurant where you can eat while sitting on the floor mats) and went shopping for some souvenirs.


Enjoying Lesehan in Malioboro ‘sideroad’ with Filipino Bloggers

At 10 PM, we went back to the hotel because we can not stay up too late as we needed to go to Borobudur at 4 am.

After spending the night with a restful sleep, we finally woke up at 4 am. Consequently, we instantly packed our belongings and headed to the rental car which was ready in front of the hotel to take us to Borobudur.

When we arrived at the Borobudur entrance gate, we had to split up into separate counters, because I use a ‘local’ ticket, while five of them had to use the international (foreigner) tickets. And do you know how much the difference between local and foreign ticket prices? It is $17, the entrance fee for a local is just $3, on the other hand, foreigners need to pay $20.


Filipino bloggers and I while jumping up in the air, looks so nice

Inside the Borobudur Temple compound, there are a lot of beverage sellers who offer mineral water to us. They offered me a bottle of “Aqua” (popular mineral water brand in Indonesia) for 4,000 rupiah, but they offered my Filipino friends for 10,000 rupiah.

Regin then asked to me, “why the seller offered you a cheaper price than me?, it occurred as well for the entrance ticket, you've got the cheaper one, why?”, and I simply just answered, “Cause I’m local, and you're a foreigner, people in tourist sites always recognize foreign tourists as ‘rich’ and wealthy!”

With annoyed face, Regin sputtered and said “you know, not all foreign tourists are rich, I’m for an example, I’m a poor man who comes from Philipine, the country that has high corruption rate, I have to save up a long time to be able to get enough money to travel”, (but honestly, I'm not sure he's that ‘poor’, hehe). And I replied, “yes, I know, but the beverage sellers and the ticket entrance officer perhaps don't want to know it, hehe”.