Ethnic Sports

Apart from the popular football and badminton which are the English invented games, there are dozens of Indonesian sports. However, most of them are not fully developed nationally, but rather concentrated in particular parts of the country. The only internationally recognised Indonesian sport is Sepak Takraw. It is also played in Malaysia and Thailand.

It is a game involving three players per side and the object is to volley a woven ball over the net into the opponents court using any part of the body except the hands or arms. Each team is allowed three contacts with the ball to get it over the net. Unlike the similar game concept of volleyball, in takraw one player may take more than one contact consecutively. The length of the game varies. Matches are won by winning 2 out of 3 sets. One set is 15 points. The third set, if necessary is played to only 6 points and is referred to as a "tie-breaker". Unfortunately, the game is not as popular as it is in Malaysia and Thailand.

The game mainly played on the badminton court, for convenient reason since almost every school in Indonesia has badminton court. Some said that the name Galasin derived from the the old days practise of using pole or salt to draw the lines. There are 4 horizontal and 1 vertical, each line is guarded by one player. Your opponent have to start from the first horizontal line and pass through the fourth and then go back to the first line to score 1 point and restart the game, in doing that they shouldn't be touched by any of the guards. The guards have to be on their lines. The vertical guard is used to prevent the movement from left half and right half of the court. The player can not go out of the court to pass the guard (sometimes it is allowed if one foot still inside the court), otherwise the touched rule applies, which resulted in their team having to do the guarding.

This is like a cricket except the bat is much smaller, well not really a bat, but a bamboo stick and we're not using ball either but another shorter bamboo stick. The wicket is a stone or a brick. First, place the small stick on the stone leaving about part of the small stick overhanging and then hit the overhanging bit using the long stick to launch the small stick as far as possible (if your opponent caught that stick you're off). Your opponent from the place where the stick landed, has to try to throw it as close to the stone as possible (if they hit the stone you're off or if it reaches at least the long stick's length from the stone you're off too). While your opponent throw the stick you have to be ready to hit it away from the stone. You have to do this everytime they do that. If you succed the first, the second action : hold small stick to stand between your hand and the stone and hit it, the same rule applies. And the last one is to lean the small stick on the stone, using the long stick try to flick it up and hit it. This is usually the time when you either failed to hit or you did hit, but it landed too close, so your opponent can hit the stone easily.