Unlike Chinese or Indian or even Filipinos that has fewer population, you don't really see Indonesian overseas. Therefore, majority of the world's population has not developed visual sensors to differentiate Indonesian from the others. Being said that, Indonesian looks very different from one another. Some looked somewhat "African" (they are Pacific Islander though, but not very distinctive to some people), some ethnic group resembles Chinese, the others look somewhat Arabs, and the majority looks just Malay (another term that I refuse to say, but let's say "Malay" to generalize the looks of people in the archipelago). Another thing is that, Malay don't have some obvious physical features. Again, unlike Chinese or Indian.
So being an overseas Indonesian, I have encountered different response about my look.
When I was in Japan, I asked a stranger girl in Todai with my crappy Japanese to take my picture (the momiji in Todai during autumn was very beautiful by the way) she then replied me with some unknown language. After she threw several sentences and responded by my confused look, she then told me "I thought you were Thai".
Another day in Singapore - arguably my second home (not so happy with it though) and where Malays are abundant, I was eating Tandoori chicken set. The store staff who is a middle aged Chinese lady suddenly asked me "How do you find the food here?". "Oh, it is really good", I replied. "By the way, are you Melayu or Filipino?", she asked again. "Oh, I am actually Indonesian", answered me. "Sama, saya juga", she added. That was unexpected.
Next is when I was in a mosque in China, waiting to break my fast. I was the only person there who did not understand Chinese but not the only non Chinese. And then someone asked me with arguably good English, "Where are you from? Are you Malaysian". At least his guest was not that wrong. In fact I might have been more surprised if he got it right in just one guess. Because again, there are virtually no Indonesian "Malay" overseas.
Do you notice the connection of those stories? They all guessed that I am a human being. Okay, we can narrow them down to human being from Southeast Asia. But what if I travel to somewhere further where the local's sensor is even worse? Such as in *insert any random country where the majority of its citizen is Caucasian who does not have that many interaction with Asian*. I feel very relieved that no one asked me some questions such as:
"Are you a hippopotamus?"
"Are you a cockroach or a shoe box?"
Phew, thank God. I am a human after all. And a human is not that different to other human to certain extent. So shall I experience world peace starting after I published this post? Nah, not in anytime soon.
No, I don't look like this.
Courtesy: Internet (YOU DON'T SAY)
