This is not an aspect of your OP, but something that you wish to do to somehow denigrate my experiences. Fact is, I was born into what you describe in your aforementioned narrative. The value of life was cheap, many of my contemporaries never made it past their 16th birthday.
While I have physically made it out of that environment I never truly have left in the form of giving back to those who are still there. In fact I am going to travel back there in a few weeks, I go often.
As a traveler I do not visit resorts, but enjoy exploring the land that I am traveling to I do not have to visit rubbish collectors to understand, empathize or possibly assist the inhabitants of the area. My last trip I did visit with business owners who I found to have been having a difficult time with the economy and patronized their stores which stimulates the economy and provides funds for rubbish collectors to have jobs.
However, even if I did vacation to a resort that is immaterial to your OP.
Nevertheless, all this is meaningless as it relates to your OP. I find the OP very disingenuous and a contrivance.
Now please go and make me a sammi with all this baloney you are serving here.
Ah, excellent, a reply with a few real details and little explanation.
I was also born in a rough environment but with a far better life expectancy than 16.
I would be interested to know where your extremely difficult place was.
Experiences in any given country make a massive difference to your perception of that place so your claims require background to validate them.
My first visit into Asia earned me a grand total of bugger all as far as knowledge is concerned. It wasn't until my next visit I managed to start putting the pieces together but so many never manage to get any insight into the country they visit or live in.
I was lucky because I got to know so many friendly locals who started to show me the nuts and bolts of their country.
I try to get to know as wide a cross section of society as I can so I may get a real idea of what makes the place tick.
The vast majority of richer, upper and middle class people either have no clue as to the rest of population or are doing their best to forget their own experiences and background.
Indonesia is really a first (Or maybe second) generation middle class, mostly made up of people from the villages who managed to get a better education and a better job.
However, there is also a large, semi educated population with political ambition but no way to achieve it though normal politics.
Joko, you may have heard of him, is an exception to this but he's one in a million.
That's where more radical Islam comes in to play, it's commonly more political than it is religious and that makes it bloody dangerous.
Basically, you have leaders with a lot of ambition and followers with not a lot of education, thus the followers' minds can be manipulated.
Back to the question I posed to you.
Unless you've wandered around in the areas those people tend to live, you won't be very likely to come across them, thus, probably would have no idea of their existence.
Most tourists and people on business trips would never come into contact with them.
You'll very probably have to google, "FBR" but I've met many of them and have a far better understanding than you can ever get from internet pages or as a visitor that doesn't get out properly. I don't believe they get a mention on Lonely planet.
J.I. probably don't either and I've met some of their men, now dead after a terrorist attack and the police action to get rid of the bastards.
You'll probably have to google them as well but I used to talk to them in a bookshop and met the policemen who killed them.
In fact, although it was by accident, I knew of their imminent deaths 24 hours before they did but I can't give details as to how that happened for security reasons.
Back to the issue in the OP.
I'm often asked if I'm American and their faces become so much more friendly when they find out I'm not.
They do this because, in my opinion, the Americans governments for many years have angered so many people with murderous foreign policy, many people no longer see the difference between Americans and your government.
Anyway, back to my question.
Mr Connery, can you detail your experiences with the FBR and/or J.I so we may hear your responses, based on experience and meetings with more extreme groups.
