Shopping in Indonesia

Shopping in Indonesia is worth the trouble because the country still makes things, and the useful knowledge is which island makes what. Cloth comes first. Batik is Javanese: wax drawn on with a copper pen for the handmade kind, stamped on with a copper block for the cheaper one, and printed cloth sold as batik is neither. Yogyakarta and Solo produce the restrained brown and indigo court patterns, Pekalongan on the north coast the bright ones, Cirebon the cloud motif. East of Bali the weaving changes to ikat, dyed thread by thread before it reaches the loom, in Sumba, Flores and Timor, and to songket, silk shot through with gold, from Palembang.

Where you buy sets the price more than what you buy does. Markets are the honest end: Sukawati in Gianyar for volume, the Ubud market once the morning vegetables clear out around nine, Beringharjo on Malioboro in Yogyakarta for batik sold by the metre, and Jalan Surabaya in Jakarta for objects described as antique that mostly are not. Fixed-price shops and the Jakarta malls charge more and argue less. The offer on this page is small and leans towards making rather than buying: a session at the bench with a batik artisan, drawing hot wax onto your own cloth, and the Ubud day tours that take in the craft villages.

Practical. bargaining is expected in a market and rude in a shop with price tags on the goods. The opening number for a foreigner is often three or four times the local one, so counter low and settle near the middle. Do not start at all if you have no intention of buying. Cash in the large rupiah notes moves everything outside malls and hotels. Markets open at dawn and the produce end is finished by mid-morning, while the souvenir stalls run to the evening. Be sceptical of two things: kopi luwak, now mostly caged civets and poor coffee beside the single-origin arabica from Kintamani, Gayo and Toraja, and anything called an antique in an airport.