Learning the local language is a great bonus; I met these guys in Senaru, not far from Gunung Rinjani in Lombok, and they became my instant friends
I learned a new language while in Indonesia, and it made travelling there so much more rewarding. Bahasa Indonesia (bahasa means 'language' in Indonesian) is a whole lot easier to pick up than English, and it doesn't take long to become proficiently fluent (by which I mean able to travel without having to resort to screaming loudly and slowly in your native tongue).
Bahasa Indonesia has no tenses, no conjugation, no sexes, no irregular verbs and no plurals, it uses the Latin alphabet, and it's easy to pronounce. Literally all you need is a good vocabulary, because once you've got the words and a basic understanding of the grammar, you can speak the language as fluently as is possible for a foreigner. To say something like, 'I want to go and climb that mountain tomorrow,' you say, 'I like climb that mountain tomorrow,' or to say, 'Can I please have a cup of sweet tea,' you say 'Please sweet tea'. It's very easy.
There is only one important point, though: in Indonesian, the letter 'c' is pronounced 'ch', so cap cai is pronounced 'chap-chai': the letter 'k' is used for hard k-sounds. There one notable exception, though: Coke is pronounced as in western English, probably because it wouldn't sell too well if pronounced correctly in Indonesian...
I spent the first few days learning the greetings, the numbers and the basic grammar, and within a week was speaking reasonable sentences. With the constant learning of new words that happens as a result of travelling alone, the language barrier I'd feared simply evaporated: besides, so many people speak English in Indonesia too, you can't lose.
Finally, as an added bonus, Bahasa Indonesia is almost identical to Bahasa Malaysia, so what I learn in Indonesia will also be very useful for Malaysia.
All this rather goes against the grain of this particularly accurate joke I heard on the road:
What do you call someone who can speak three languages?
A polyglot.What do you call someone who can speak two languages?
Bilingual.And what do you call someone who can only speak one language?
English.
Ha bloody ha.
