Kampoeng Maen Fair 2008

Excited and Exhausted ….. Two words that came up from my daughters and nephew.

I took them to Kampoeng Maen Fair, with the intention to balance their knowledge of Indonesian traditional game versus the modern one, especially after they went to Kidzania, the game zone with modern tools where they felt the unforgotten experience.

The atmosphere of Kampoeng Maen Fair, really reminds me of my childhood where our imagination can fly high, where there’s no clean and dirty concept, where the heat of the sun has the same temperature with the air con.

The idea of 7 (seven) Kampoeng were brilliant, every child were so excited with the activities. They are willing to queue just for the sake of the game.

The most popular game was Flying Fox game, as a person who had went several times in outbound activities, Flying Fox were something a “normal” one. But for a child, it’s an amazing game, their mind started fly to the unknown space.

And because it was the most popular, Flying Fox also the worst queue in that Fair. It took more than an hour to be able to try that game.

The second worst was the queuing in Kampoeng Rasa, where the kids can learn how to cook some of Indonesian desert like Martabak and Arum Manis. When my daughters wanted to learn to make Arum Manis, the Caldera officer in duty said that they were taking a rest, and then an hour later they said that they didn’t have the ingredient any more. I was so upset.

The other upset things was when we were in queue to play with Indonesian traditional game, the Caldera officer in duty suddenly got amnesia of us, who had been first in queue, when a lady suddenly abrupt in front of him, before pleased her and her kids to by pass us.

The last one was no garbage bin. This is un-acceptable situation for me. I taught my daughters to throw the trash away in the garbage but in this Fair, it’s so difficult to find a bin.

Just wondering why suddenly Caldera forgot to put a lot of garbage bin in the arena. I was speechless, especially when my daughters asked me why there’s no garbage bin here.

As far as I know, Caldera is a group of nature lover. And based on my knowledge as a nature lover we are not allow to threw the garbage everywhere especially when we climbed a mountain we have to bring down the garbage back.

Well …. Maybe the event is too big and make them forgotten one of the important thing, “How to take care our earth”.

The idea of the fair was brilliant; the execution was far from brilliant.