About Learning Indonesian Games

Marbles, or Kereleng

• Many Indonesian boys play games with marbles. In one popular marbles game, as the website Living in Indonesia describes, each player puts his marbles inside a circle, and each drops a marble to decide who will go first. The player whose marble falls farthest from the circle begins. He tries to knock the other marbles out of the circle by hitting them with his "striker marble," and keeps any that roll out. He loses his striker marble, however, if it doesn't roll back out of the circle too. If he succeeds, he can attempt to hit his opponents' striker marbles. If he succeeds at that, he can claim their striker marbles, causing them to lose a turn.

Lompat Tali

• Girls often play lompat tali, similar to jumping rope. They use "ropes" made from many elastic bands looped together. Two girls hold the ends of the rope and spin it while another jumps. Gradually they raise the height of the rope if the jumper doesn't trip. As Living in Indonesia points out, the flexibility of the rope helps to keep children from getting hurt even when they are jumping quite high.

Bekel

• Many Indonesia girls enjoy playing bekel. This game strongly resembles jacks, though it has a few differences. Instead of trying to pick up all the jacks while the ball bounces, the player tries to pick up one at a time without moving the others. If successful, she drops the jacks again and tries to place one jack right-side-up between each bounce of the ball. If she does this, she again picks them up one at a time while the ball bounces, and then picks them up two at a time, three at a time, and finally, all at once.

Congklak

• Indonesians have played congklak (or dakon), which may originate in ancient Egypt, for centuries. It has many similarities to mancala, which people sometimes play in the U.S. Players use a rectangular board that has at least seven indentations along each side, in which they place shells, beads, seeds, corn or stones. The board can be elaborately decorated and quite large, or small and simple. Using the 98 markers, players each try to get the most "seeds" into their "storehouse" at the end of the board" (see "Congklak Instructions" for detailed directions).

Kubuk

• Like bekel, kubuk challenges a player's coordination. In this game, players scatter seeds on a table and try to scoop them up with a spoon-shaped leaf. Players cannot drop the seeds or touch them to other seeds, and whoever ends up with the most seeds wins.

Sut

• Sut is an Indonesian version of "rock, paper, scissors." In this game, players shake their fists, and on the count of three, they each make a shape with their hands: elephant, person or ant. Elephant (gajah) beats person (orang), and person beats the ant (semut), but the ant beats the elephant because it can crawl in its ear and tickle i.

  Indonesian children often play with tops called gangsing and enjoy kite flying (layang-layang). They often have strings on their kites that are coated with crushed glass, and they try to cut each other's kite strings in flight. Whoever finds a runaway kite gets to keep it.