What do you think about Indonesia

I was there earlier this year and also in '94 - the driving is insane, the death toll must be horrific.

There were two main things that astounded me:

1. Lack of town planning
   There didn't seem to be any planning around infrastructure.
   In Surabaya we were on a lovely motorway, drove past one airport terminal and then were plunged back into a village and "back roads" to get to the terminal we wanted.
   Bali desperately needs an inland "ring road" to help traffic move efficiently around the island but instead it's a zig zag through little towns that must be unpleasant to live in with the constant stream of traffic
2. Litter.
   OMG, do the locals not realise what a beautiful country they live in? If the tourist dollars matter then that alone should drive a greater concern for the environment. Given that labour is so cheap why the hell aren't the local towns employing people to educate the locals, to provide better refuse systems and to clean up the litter that already exists?
   • In Bali the beaches were filthy. We went for a run one morning and there were people raking the sand but unless the rubbish came loose from the sand it wasn't picked up. I saw one guy raking over a large crisps packet but leaving it in place. He didn't seem to have a real understanding of what he was doing - but how hard is to understand?
   • In Lombok we'd drive past luxury resorts which, no doubt, were pristine but on the roadside outside there would be rubbish building up against the perimeter wall. Do they really think we don't notice that?
   • On Mt Bromo there was a woman selling refreshments in her tent. She took a pile of rubbish and scattered it into one of the natural channels in the sand and used a rake to cover it over. Her income relies 100% on selling to tourists who visit because the volcano is amazing - but they'll stop coming if they realise it's just another rubbish tip for the locals.

Oh, and I almost forgot. The beachy place we stayed at in Bali was awesome and we were considering having an en-masse family holiday there (we normally go to Rarotonga for them). We quite liked that it was a few roads back and much quieter. However on the day we left, I was waiting for our car to arrive and my husband realised he didn't have his phone (a hideous iphone 4, hardly valuable) and raced back in. The guy cleaning the place had moved it from where my husband knows he left it and put it under some cushions where he hadn't been sitting. He knew the game but it really disappointed us and consequently we wouldn't feel safe returning, or recommending the place to anyone.