So the airport in Yogyakarta has this tiny warung right outside the arrivals gate. Not inside, where the chain coffee places are. Outside, past the taxi drivers, on the left. The sign says "Warung Bu Darmi" in hand-painted letters, and the menu is a piece of cardboard taped to the wall.
I sat down there in March 2024, jetlagged and sweating, and pointed at something that turned out to be soto ayam. Fifteen thousand rupiah. About 70p. The woman running it, Bu Darmi presumably, watched me eat with this expression I can only describe as "concerned amusement." I was eating too fast. Using the wrong hand. Dripping broth on the table.
She said something I didn't understand. I shook my head. She repeated it slower. I still didn't get it. She laughed, grabbed a napkin, pointed at my chin.
That was the moment, weirdly, that made me want to learn Indonesian.
Not some grand plan about career prospects or connecting with 270 million people. Just a woman trying to tell me I had soup on my face, and me standing there useless.
I'd done Spanish at school. Three years of it. Could conjugate in my sleep, knew the subjunctive, got good marks. Then I went to Barcelona and everyone just spoke English to me. Six months and I barely used it. All that work, and the language itself felt like homework I'd finished but never handed in. I came back to the UK feeling like I'd wasted years on something that didn't want me back.
Indonesian was nothing like that.
The first thing you notice is that the words just... sit there. "Makan" means eat. Yesterday, today, tomorrow, the word stays the same. No conjugation. No tenses built into the verb. You add "sudah" for something that already happened, "akan" for something coming up, or you just let context do the work. After Spanish and its seventeen forms of every verb, this felt like someone had taken the handbrake off.
But here is the part that actually hooked me. Indonesian has this system where you build words from roots by adding bits to the front and back. Take "tulis," which means write. Stick "me-" on the front and you get "menulis," to write (actively). "Di-" on the front gives you "ditulis," being written. "-an" on the back makes "tulisan," a piece of writing. "Pe-" plus "-an" makes "penulisan," the act of writing. And "penulis" is a writer.
All from one root.
When that pattern clicked for me, around week three, I remember sitting in my flat in Manchester with this vocabulary drill running on my laptop and suddenly realising I could guess the meaning of words I'd never seen before. "Baca" is read, so "pembaca" is... a reader. Yes. "Kerja" is work, so "pekerja" is... a worker. I felt like I'd found a cheat code.
I texted someone in Jakarta two weeks after starting. A guy called Ari I'd found on HelloTalk. My sentences were awful. "Saya mau belajar bahasa Indonesia karena... saya suka... Indonesia" with about thirty seconds between each word. Ari didn't care. He corrected me gently, told me my grammar was already better than most beginners, asked me what I did for work. We talked for an hour. An hour! In a language I'd been studying for fourteen days.
Try doing that with Mandarin at the two-week mark. Or Arabic. Or even French, where you'd still be fighting with gendered nouns and pronunciation rules that seem designed to make you feel stupid.
I think the reason Indonesian worked for me, really worked, is that nobody expected me to learn it. There was no pressure. No "this will look brilliant on your CV" angle. My mates genuinely asked me why I'd bother with "a language nobody speaks," as if the fourth most populous country on earth was some obscure island nation. That ignorance was actually freeing. I wasn't performing language learning for anyone. I was just doing it because the words made sense and the people were kind.
And the people really are kind. I went back to Yogyakarta six months later with enough Indonesian to order food, ask for directions, make small talk. The difference was night and day. At Warung Handayani near Malioboro (different place, great ayam bakar, maybe 25,000 rupiah), I ordered in Indonesian and the owner's whole posture changed. She leaned forward. Started asking questions. Where was I from, how long had I been learning, did I like the food. When I said the chicken was enak banget she brought out an extra portion of sambal matah and wouldn't let me refuse it.
That just does not happen when you point at a menu and say "this one please."
There is a practical side too, which I didn't think about at first but now appreciate. Indonesia is the largest economy in Southeast Asia. Jakarta's tech scene is massive. There are 17,000 islands, most of which see almost no foreign tourists. If you speak Indonesian, doors open that don't open for the average backpacker doing Bali-Gili-Lombok on a two-week circuit. A friend of mine spent a month in Flores last year and said having even basic Indonesian transformed his experience completely. People invited him into their homes. He ate meals with families. He got directions to beaches that aren't on Google Maps.
I'm not saying Indonesian is the best language to learn. I have no idea what that would even mean. But if you've tried other languages and bounced off because they felt like an obligation, there's something about how this one rewards early effort that just kept me going. The grammar forgives you. The pronunciation is almost entirely phonetic. And people are so genuinely happy when you try that it creates this feedback loop where you want to keep trying.
I still can't roll my Rs. My accent is undeniably British. I forget words mid-sentence and have to make these ridiculous hand gestures to fill the gap.
None of that has ever mattered.
I keep a running list of phrases from my trips, and looking back at it, most of the ones I use constantly are things I picked up in the first month. The rest is just repetition and refusing to be embarrassed.
If you're thinking about it, just start. Don't research the optimal method for six weeks. Don't buy three textbooks. Just learn twenty words and try to use them. The language will meet you halfway. Genuinely.