Every Independence Day (August 17), aside from holding our national flag raising ceremony at the National Palace, traditionally every school or neighborhood will hold competitions and games that are unique to this day. They have become part of our tradition and culture, and a must-have activity every time this day rolls around. Here are some of them, some of which I have participated in during my school years.


Dating back to the Dutch colonial days, Panjat Pinang is one of the oldest and most popular traditions in Indonesia.

Every year, in towns and villages around the country, tall nut-trees are chopped down and their trunks placed vertically, in the center of each settlement. A wheel full of prizes is placed on top, before the trunk is covered with oil or other lubricants, and young men are invited to try and reach the prizes.

Since the nut-tree poles are fairly high and very slippery, a single climber would have almost no chance of reaching the top, so contestants usually work together and split the rewards, if they succeed. Prizes consist of drinks, food, clothing and other assorted goods.

This type of pole climbing was introduced to the Indonesians by Dutch colonists, who came up with it as a form of entertainment. Every time an important event took place (like a wedding or national holiday) they would install a Panjat Pinang pole and watch the natives attempt to reach the prizes.


This is basically a competition to eat without using your hands, which is harder than it looks (that girl is cheating, by the way, but she's probably frustrated cause I've been there before xD). Kerupuk is one of our traditional snacks typically eaten along with any main dish. They are deep fried crackers made from starch and other ingredients that serve as flavoring. These are hung in intervals in front of each contestant and whoever finishes theirs first wins.


This is probably the most simple one. All you need is a rope, and two teams. Each team needs to have the same amount of people. The middle of the rope is tied to mark its center, and there is also a line marked on the ground.. Whichever team manages to pull the center of the rope past the line on the ground toward their side wins. This is a highly competitive game and is usually the most tense!


This one is also super fun and simple. Basically you wear the sack and try to jump ahead of everyone else, but you have to stay in your lane. Whoever gets to the finish line first wins. This is also sometimes done as a relay race with teams.


This competition involves holding a spoon in your mouth with a marble on it and racing to the finish line without dropping the marble. If you do, you must go back to the start line and start all over again.

There are a bunch of other ones that also sometimes makes an appearance, like trying to put a pencil into a bottle (the pencil is tied to your lower back so you have to crouch down backwards), trying to pull out coins stabbed into the sides of a watermelon, and other variations. Usually they don't require a lot of tools and so pretty easy to set up.

We do 'Rope Pulling' here, but we typically call it 'Tug of War'. It's very popular at school pep sessions xD My sister did a sack race once, and she fell and I couldn't stop laughing xD

Wow ya'lls Independence Day looks way more fun than ours. Usually we just eat barbeque, drink and pop fireworks xD