Kos-hunting

By Linda McRae s27
University of Tasmania

Here’s an introduction to house-hunting Indonesian-style. 

You can find various types of accommodation:

1. Home-stay: this is where you live with an Indonesian family, but have your own room. Usually pretty luxurious, as the families tend to be quite well-off.

2. Kos: can be loosely translated as a 'boarding house.' These range from being similar in size to a homestay (but with more rooms) to huge places which look more like housing complexes. They are usually strictly all girls or all guys, with a guest room at the front of the house for guests. A typical kos will either have a bathroom inside your actual room, or shared. They also range in curfew limits - from 9pm (usually only reserved for the stricter girls' kos) to no curfew at all (i.e. all guys' kos!), and may provide a range of services. At some, breakfast or wifi internet might be included, the room might be furnished or you might have to pay more to hire furniture etc.

3. Kontrakkan: this is where you rent a house (i.e. with a group of friends). These are highly variable in price.

In general, kos are far more popular and plentiful in Jogja, as they tend to be cheaper and provide a group of similarly-aged uni friends. To find a kos which is suitable for you, you basically have to get into the suburbs and walk/ride around, asking everyone you see whether they know of a vacancy. Then you get to see the room/s. The decision/negotiating/payment process normally takes place over a cup of hot sweet tea and cake. There’s no bond here, but the asking price is usually a minimum of 1-3 months upfront, but can also be 6 months or a year!

I’ve moved out of my previous ‘homestay’ house into the coolest place imaginable. After almost a month in my previous place (in Pogung Baru), I’d had enough because the Ibu kos (the woman who runs the place and looks after people) was way too overprotective, asking me where I wanted to go every time I walked out my door into the kitchen. There was also a curfew and although it was supposedly at 11pm, whenever I got home after 9 the place was often completely locked...which could prove problematic. Plus in the last week the owners decided to take in a new friend… a HUGE rooster, which lived on the other side of my window, about a meter away. Combined with the 3am get-up time to eat breakfast for Ramadhan, the 4am wake up time of the rooster and all the other problems, I promptly decided to start house-hunting again.

After a few days of looking, I came across an enormous pink place, and a few guys there said that if I came back the next day I should be able to meet the owner and ask if there were any rooms. The fact that there were guys means it’s mixed, which is pretty rare. I went back the next day and the owner was re-painting a room. I basically said that I wanted a room straight away, so this is now my new place! 76 people live here in total! It’s crazy!!

Most of the people I’ve seen here are male, so I asked how many females there are. Thanks to me, the female population has just incresed by 100%! There are now two of us! Everyone has a door that opens outside, with a bathroom within the room, so it’s very private. Almost all the residents are students, and although most of them are not here at the moment because it is the end of Ramadhan (Idul Fitri) holidays, it still seems pretty busy.