1. Cooking and housekeeping.
My wife says if an Indonesian woman doesn't know how to cook, she'd be ashamed to say that to other women. She's a woman. She knows how to cook.
I used to work in an office with a bunch of married women. They could cook, and they'd bring stuff to work. I started bringing in fruit every day to pull my weight. They all had an ethic of keeping the house that I could pick up on from conversations. My wife is an excellent gourmet cook. Indonesian food is really good stuff. It's not too common in the US where I'm from, but it is really good, and there are multiple ethnic groups with their own cuisine and my wife cooks all kinds of stuff. The gatherings of Indonesians have had some pretty good food, like for independence day.
2. Low divorce rates.
Among Christians, divorce seems to be rather rare. Some of the Muslim groups have high divorce rates, and their divorce rates have gone up recently. With mixed marriages in the US city I live in, there are maybe 2 or 300 couples here, mostly Indonesian women with American men of Caucasian or Asian ethnicity. I haven't heard of a single couple divorcing or separating in five years out of the whole group. I can think of a couple of them who had been divorced, but one was probably a Muslim at the time.
3. Virginity.
Marrying a virgin decreases your chances of divorce over marrying a woman who has had multiple sexual partners. Virginity at marriage seems to be the norm. I know some men seem to think of virginity as a turn off. I don't get it. Why would another man's fluids having been in certain places be attractive? Marrying a virgin is a lot better for reducing the chances of disease, and IMO, it's probably a better bet if you don't want your wife to be the type to cheat on you.
4. Positive attitude toward sex in marriage.
When Indonesians joke about sex, it's usually along the lines of married couples having sex. They joke about newly weds having sex. The expectation seems to be if you are married, you have sex. In the US, it seems like people joke about sex drying up when you get married. It's a different mind-set. Indonesians in general seem to think if you are married, you are supposed to have sex with your spouse. A wife will likely consider it part of her duty as a wife, too.
5. Submission to husbands.
The most common religion in Indonesia is Islam. Christianity follows after that. The average Indonesian woman would probably agree with the statement that a wife is supposed to submit to her husband and that the husband is supposed to be the leader of the home.
Women are women and you have to manage your relationship. If you always say, "I don't know dear, what do you think" you may end up in a kind of warped relationship. But if you are a man and you play the role of a confident leader, the woman submitting is a cultural 'script' an Indonesian woman should have been exposed to. She should see that as the way things ought to be. So you don't usually have to fight with some kind of feminist mindset or philosophy if the woman is from Indonesia.
6. Hard workers.
A lot of Indonesian women are hard workers. My tip if you are looking for one is to find a woman who grew up hand washing her family's laundry, instead of a rich girl who ordered the maid to wash her laundry.
7. Status for foreigners.
Marrying a foreigner is considered high status. Now there are also some stereotypes about foreigners divorcing a lot, and in their country, some of the oil men get temporary contract wives. But for the most part, marrying a foreigner is considered a plus, at least marrying a Caucasian and probably even an Asian from a developing country. They'd be okay with marrying Filippinos. There does seem to be a bit of a negative attitude toward Africans among some people (like the police at times), though I know of Africans who have intermarried with Indonesians, too.
An average looking Caucasian may be considered good-looking in Indonesia. Light skin and a western nose are considered attractive traits, and he looks kind of exotic to the women there.
Someone on one of these forums said that western men usually marry ugly Asians, physically speaking. That hasn't been my experience for the most part. I have seen some western men whose wives did not seem attractive to me at all. But I see that with guys who marry white women from their own countries quite a bit, too. In general, it seems like white men marry attractive Asians. If they live there, it's easy to do that, since a lot of women may be interested. They don't always show it. Some do. I had a woman I talked to for a minute or two give me a name card with her number on it. Other girls flirted overtly. Some did not, but paid a lot of attention. A couple of girls from church had me give my mom gifts when I went home for the holidays. Someone explained they may by trying to soften up a potential mother-in-law.
My wife is really pretty, and I know it's not just my thinking that because of all the Facebook spam she gets from guys that she tells me about and deletes from time to time. There is also a South American man in my city here in the US married to a beautiful Javanese girl in her 20's. Some of the old guys get pretty wives there. If the girls are a bit brown, locals consider them ugly, even if their features are beautiful.
For looks, for me personally, if when I was looking, in the US, maybe 1 out 100 college-aged girls met up to my standards of someone who I was attracted enough to for me consider as a potential marriage partner, it was probably 1 out of 200 for Indonesian girls. But I was probably considered 5 times more desirable. Jakarta is a crowded city with lots of people. I was selective and met someone who had the type of character I was looking for, too.
