Love mountain: Many large villas dot the hills of North and South Tugu villages, in the mountainous Puncak area, Bogor, West Java. While the area is known as a weekend getaway for wealthy Indonesians, it is also a popular spot where Arab tourists marry Indonesian women unofficially for a short period of time.
Mention the villages of North Tugu and South Tugu in the Cisarua district, Bogor regency, and most people will promptly associate them with the Puncak tourist zone, Arab visitors, and contract-based or unregistered marriages locally called nikah siri.
The two neighboring villages, only separated by the Puncak highway, have become a money circulation center where tourists, mostly Arab visitors, exchange their dollars in 17 moneychangers to the average sum of US$1,000 per person a day. In North Tugu, during the Arab tourist visit season, the money exchanged in seven changers may reach Rp 7 billion ($700,000) a day.
May, June and July is the peak season for Arabs tourism. Not surprisingly, all local shops, salons, money changers, travel agencies, villas, rental cars and car wash stations use Arabic characters for their names and notices.
Then vice president Jusuf Kalla once jokingly said the Arab tourist arrivals for unregistered marriages would result in good-looking offsprings and future TV drama stars. At that time, Kalla suggested promoting Puncak for tourists from Middle East countries. He later retracted his statement, saying it had been misunderstood.
Arabs are renowned for coming to Puncak — which they refer to as Jabal (mountain) — for holidays and “dates” with Indonesian women.
In fact, transactions with prostitutes and contract marriage arrangements start as soon as the Arab visitors set foot in Jakarta International Airport.
Now the dangdut or jablai, the local term for working girls, not only include women from Cianjur, Cimahi and Garut, West Java, but also from Jakarta and Cengkareng, Tangerang.
While in previous years Puncak foreign visitors always used airport taxis, today rental car drivers from Tugu villages are picking up Arab tourists at the airport and helping them pick out girls they like. These rental cars are known as “Arab taxis.”
Ready to go: Several drivers sit in a car rental shop in North Tugu village. They are on standby, ready to take Arab tourists around or pick them up from Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.
“A driver introduced me to an Arab tourist at Soekarno-Hatta, who was attracted to me. He asked if I was ready to accompany the Arab to Puncak, I accepted the offer as I needed some money, just as long as he wouldn’t be rough with me,” Alia said.
The 30-year-old, who met The Jakarta Post at a small salon in a villa in Sampay, North Tugu village, said she worked in karaoke parlors in the area of Cengkareng, employed to keep guests “company”.
“I’ve a child with my Indonesian boyfriend but now he’s left me. So I’m serving karaoke guests in Cengkareng, who sometimes take me to Jakarta. I have to work as a prostitute to raise my child, but I make fairly large sums of money,” continued Alia, as she had her hair styled before a mirror.
Alia claimed she had been married to an Arab tourist but only for a short time.
“I do not want to be in another one of those contract marriages as I’ve gained no benefit and I don’t want to be bound by vague ties. I will accompany the Arab man I meet at the airport for the two months he’s here, and get paid Rp 400,000 a day for it.”
— Photos by JP/Theresia Sufa
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