Designer’s wheels behind leaders’ bamboo bike bromance

Friendship on wheels: Jokowi and Albanese rode Spedagi bicycles crafted by Singgih earlier this month. — AFP

AS Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo led Anthony Albanese around the lush gardens of a presidential palace south of Jakarta earlier this month, he presented the new Australian prime minister with an unusual gift: a bamboo bike.

The night before, designer Singgih Susilo Kartono learnt it would be the Spedagi model he crafts in a small village on the island of Java that the leaders would ride side by side in a unique moment of bicycle diplomacy.