Back to HN The Amphibious Villagers of Indonesiaby haritha-j | 37 points | 13 comments | 2026-06-14 08:55:04 Central Open Source Link | Read Source Here Open on Hacker News Commentsobezyian
I've been living for the past few years in another coastal
region in Indonesia, which happens to be flooded since a
millennium ago, probably more.The flooding the article is
talking about is relatively recent so the disaster aspect
is real. It catches people by surprise. But when the flood
has been there since time immemorial, people find ways to
adapt and stop treating it as a disaster.Where I live,
houses are built on the water, even today. Poles are
driven in the bottom, and you build on top. For streets,
they pour shit ton of rubble to displace the water, then
put tarmac on top. In the past, there were almost no roads
at all, people moved around in boats. You want to buy food
- you go with your boat to the "local market", which is
just a bunch of other boats with sellers.It affects the
language as well. Since your house is high above water,
you don't say "I'm going out", you say "I'm going down" -
because you have to go down the stairs and into your boat.
When you invite guests in, you say "Please, come up!", as
if you are in a tree house :) This wording is used even
today, when most houses are at ground level.When you order
food where you can choose the protein part yourself, the
seller asks you "What [kind of] fish?", and you can say
"eggs", or "chicken breast"! Historically, since most of
the meat available was various kinds of fish, this was the
established expression, and it has stuck to this day.
| > tensegrist
> When you invite guests in, you say "Please, come
up!"japanese also does this idiomatically: the verb
上がる "to rise" can be used for "to enter (a
house)", which gives rise to expressions like
お上がりください for "please come in"
| > bcjdjsndon
So life carries on just fine despite floods? Whoda
thunkit
| kakacik
Well they should look at their own sea gypsies - bajau
people, how they live and lived in the past. Its wonderful
to experience them and also read upon their history - in
the past they had literal floating villages, migrating
with seasonal currents, in complete tune with their
environment.In 50s IIRC forming government forced them to
have stationary location/address, so they stubbornly
agreed but still have all houses rising from the ocean on
pillars, just anchored to some rocky cliff.I love visiting
that country, so vast, so diverse, so exotic to common
western reality.
| > xinuc
The problem is, Indonesia is so diverse. Bajau people
and the Javanese (the ones discussed in the article)
have nothing in similar in their way of life.Asking
Javanese to learn from Bajau people is like asking
ordinary Americans to learn from the Inuit, just
because they happen to be citizen of same nation
state.
| > 331c8c71
I looked it up and it's quite fascinating indeed but I
cannot stop thinking about sanitary challenges...
| ur-whale
https://archive.ph/bcGNj
| > MisterTea
Unfortunately, this is one of those scroll-jacking
sites so all the images are piled up along with the
text making this link almost useless.
| soulchild37
The paywall is so huge I can't even view the title of the
article lol, bye Economist
| > charlysl
https://archive.md/bcGNj
| bcjdjsndon
Tldr; in a country full of floods another part has started
flooding.
| > lstodd
you forgot the point: no one cares, because it's been
like that forever.
| > > digitaltrees
Comment not worth the bits the many processors
serving http requests have to fire off.
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