Welcome to My Crib™

One of the most common questions I get from Americans who know I live with a host family in Indonesia is “Do you live in a house or…?” I can only assume the omitted word there is “mudhut.”

People have no idea what Indonesia looks like. So this is my official MTV Cribs post.

Welcome to my crib, y’all. This is where the magic happens.

This is the front door I never use. Most Indonesian homes have gates like this and a tile step where you take your shoes off before enting. Note the sandals.

This is the room just inside the front door. It’s only for receiving guests.

This is how I usually enter my house, through the garage. Those are my clothes hanging there as well.

This is the garage, complete with my family’s fancy new car and my sweet ride (the bike).

Walking through the garage door, you see the waterfall on the right. Not typical for Indonesians but DOPE AS HELL. Above the waterfall is a skylight that’s completely open. It looks awesome when it rains.

This is the first thing you see walking through the garage door, the kitchen. This one is dry but it’s common for Indonesians to have a wet kitchen as well.

This is the living room where the family spends most of our time, complete with the fancy new leather couch they bought while I was gone. On the left you’ll see a “mattress” laying in front of the guest bedroom door. My family is more often on that than the couch, which is common. It’s just a piece of foam with a bedsheet on it and different from a mattress you would sleep on in a bedroom. The TV is just to the left out of frame. The curtained door is to the guest reception room and the front door. The other two doors are my ibu and bapak’s room and my little sister’s room

This is the room right next to the living room. The door is the entrance to my ibu’s midwife practice and that’s the family computer. There’s also a second kitchen setup but it’s never used. The stairs are out of the frame to the right.

This is the kamar mandi, the bathroom, which was directly behind me in the last photo. Eastern latrine, mandi basin full of water, and dipper all included. Indonesian bathrooms are wet meaning you can splash water all over the floor when you shower and it just goes down the drain.

To the right of the bathroom, the musholla or prayer room. It makes for convenient feet and hand washing before prayer.

Inside the musholla. My family prays here together five times a day, facing Mecca (to the right).

The stairs to the second floor! Something I will never understand is why the stairs here are always so tall–these are a good nine inches high and Indonesians are way shorter than I am.

The top of the stairs/the doctors’ bedroom. That’s all their stuff by the way, not that I’m much more tidy.

This is our shared upstairs kamar mandi, but it’s only a shower without a toilet. You heard that right: one toilet, eleven people.

The room just outside mine. One of my neighbors visited me and thought all of those suitcases were mine. I’M NOT THAT BAD.

Finally, my room, mosquito net and all. I frequently hide here so no one knows how much chocolate I eat.

Bonus Afdan being a dork photo. I like pretending I can’t see him if he’s behind the mosquito net.

And that’s my crib! Now enough of that, you guys gotta get out. GET OUT OF HERE.

(not pictured: my home theater + Scarface poster collection and the Green River in my fridge)