Budiman BM – Medium

Feb 16, 2022

Murder on Swatowstraat

Love, Dukun and when Relationships went wrong On the afternoon of December 12th, Lim Long Soen walked into the police office at Paleisweg Medan, holding something like a ball in his hand. He went to the police inspector Mr. Van der Plank, writing at his desk. Van der Plank asked…

9 min read

9 min read

Dec 30, 2021

Life in the Far East by Billy Heaton

Billy Heaton is an Australian performer from Perth with his travelling Vaudeville around the world. In 1937, Billy travelled to Medan to perform in Medan, Malaysia, and India. He wrote about Life in the Far East. BILLY HEATON Writing from Medan, Sumatra, Netherlands East Indies (Published in Kalgoorlie Miner, Fri…

17 min read

17 min read

Dec 11, 2021

The Real Villa Patumbah

Villa Patumbah is located in kecamatan Patumbak in North Sumatra 3° 31' 3" N, 98° 43' 1" E. This is the original villa Patumbah. Deli tobacco started on the east coast of Sumatra in the late 1860s. Few Dutchmen found that deli tobacco leaves fetched a high price in Europe…

4 min read

4 min read

Nov 27, 2021

Bakaran Batu and the Red Clays of Deli

Early 1900 Tjong A Fie set up a brick factory outside the Medan town. The area used to be a tobacco plantation, but the soil was very clayey, hard, and poor in nutrients and yielded poor tobacco. The land belonging to Deli Mij was then leased to Tjong A Fie…

4 min read

4 min read

Nov 20, 2021

The Great Escape from Boven Digoel

Boven Digoel is in a remote location in the middle of Papua jungle used by the Dutch to settle exiled prisoners. It is hundreds of km upstream of the Digul river, in the middle of remote jungles, hot and humid, and malaria-infested. Communists, nationalists, dissidents who took part in anti-colonial…

6 min read

6 min read

Aug 10, 2021

Colonial Statistics Excel

The Dutch colonial has an effective administration system. They like to collect data, and statistics of demography, tax, income, etc. are well documented. In the era of manual data compilation and graphics, without Excel and Powerpoint, these are the early excel of data visualisation. Here are some nice graphs from…

5 min read

5 min read

Jul 22, 2021

A Short History of Kecap

On August 31, 1927, hundreds of people had been flocking to the grounds since the afternoon. By six o’clock, a dense crowd was waiting in front of the gate waiting for the opening of Pasar Malam, which coincided with the Dutch Queen, Wilhelmina’s birthday. The mayor, the sultan of Deli…

6 min read

6 min read

Jul 15, 2021

Rashomon, a Japanese memoir of the war in Sumatra

Rashomon is a famous Japanese movie directed by Akira Kurosawa. The story narrates a murder incident, but each character recounting the incident provides his/her own version of the story. The Rashomon effect is a term used to describe contradictory or descriptions of an event. A few years ago, I was…

5 min read

Rashomon, a Japanese memoir of the war in Sumatra

5 min read

Jul 4, 2021

Tanah Merah — The Red Soils of Boven Digul

BBC, the English news network in 2020, published a report on Korindo, a Korean-owned plantation company for using burning to clear rainforests in Boven Digul Papua. Boven Digul, still largely an intact forest, has a deep history in Indonesia’s nationalistic movement. A letter from the Wedana (district chief) of Boven…

6 min read

Tanah Merah — The Red Soils of Boven Digul

6 min read

Apr 4, 2021

Charlie Chaplin in Java and Bali: Romanticism over Realism

Eighty years ago, Charlie Chaplin visited Java and Bali. Did the visit change his western view of the world? Or is it a romantics. March 30, 1932, Charlie Chaplin and his crew arrived in Tanjung Priok. The Dutch were excited and expecting the Chaplin with a bowler hat and oversized…

14 min read

Charlie Chaplin in Java and Bali: Romanticism over Realism

14 min read