Skip to main content


One of the funniest things when I was living in Indonesia: because Malay and Indonesian are so similar, I kept saying things to the motorbike taxi drivers that to me were just things like ‘hello’ and ‘I’ and ‘brother’. I was wondering why everyone kept giving me their phone number. Those words, very neutral in Malay, were actually total come-ons and flirty language in Jakarta.

Don’t say ‘aku’ and ‘abang’ to strangers in Jakarta.

#TootSea #Malaysia #Indonesia #Languages