Road To ASEAN Blogger Festival 2013

The ASEAN Blogger Festival 2013 will be held in two days. Bloggers from ten ASEAN countries are ready to begin their journey to Solo, a small city in Central Java, Indonesia. Solo is a well-known international tourism destination. The government and residences of Solo have a determination to maintain its cultural heritage despite of the city’s rapid  development. Solo is certainly one dot that must be put in the ASEAN cultural heritage linkage.

Tourism Contribution Toward ASEAN Community

Reading the importance of tourism in ASEAN future on www.asean.org, I understand that tourism will eventually contribute to the overall goals of the ASEAN Community by 2015 through promotion of growth, integration and competitiveness of the tourism sector and at the same time deepen social and cultural understanding as well as facilitating travel into and within ASEAN.

Tourism will be an economic engine and a tool for development and change in ASEAN.

Therefor, tourism becomes one of the priority sectors for ASEAN integration. It is a pleasure matter which will be able to unite the region easily, but also a very serious bussiness which will be able to grow the economy of the region rapidly.

The Cultural Linkage

To keep the ideal of ASEAN Community through tourism in the heart of ASEAN countries, the citizen needs to have a strong connection. The socio cultural is the most possible approach that can be done. The similarity of culture and tradition in most ASEAN countries will be able to provide a mutual perception and understanding to bring ASEAN Community goals into reality. However, it needs to be connected in some intensive presentations, discussions and events.

Solo, which has declared itself as the tourism ambassador, has an important role to start the cultural heritage linkage connection. The linkage will unite the ASEAN countries into the same path to enter the ASEAN Community by 2015. When the socio cultural foundation is strong enough to support the economic activities, ASEAN will become a prosperous region.

Social and Cultural Experience

As an Indonesian live in Sumatra, which are closer to Malaysia and Singapore than to Jakarta, me and most of Sumatran have a good adaptation with different nationalities. We have direct flights to both countries. We also travel to other ASEAN countries for vacation, school program, medication, shopping and vise versa. We also work together with employee from Malaysia, Singapore and Philippines in industry, plantation and mining.

The bond between ASEAN countries the in this area is probably tighter than other parts of Indonesia. We know how to respect each other. Although some countries have different religion majority, but the Malay bond raises the common denominator which makes all the differences less important.

In my area, reinventing cultural heritage hopefully will not be a hard work. Because, we never lose it.

Bloggers Involvement

Bloggers have important role in reinventing cultural heritage. Bloggers browse a lot, travel a lot and read a lot. When they travel, they will take pictures and notes, then share them in blog and social media. Everything spreads quickly and is able to be read longer through blogs. If we want to have a program with high impact and last longer, bloggers are the best partner.

Bloggers are not attached with time, place and obligation. They can just blog anytime and anywhere they want. Imagine if bloggers have the same idea of reinventing cultural heritage which can be able to raise the common denominator of ASEAN. It will be a smooth road to ASEAN Community by 2015.