Sam's Trip: Indonesia to the End (March 1)

Oh dear. I started this posting on February 24. I have spent hours uploading photos, swearing not to upload photos, and uploading more photos. In any event ....

Yogyakarta and Surrounds

Yogyakarta was next on the agenda. Described as the spiritual home of Java and surrounded by truly mag archaeological sites, Yogyakarta was on lots of people's agenda.

I got into town on February 19th via train from Surabaya. I took a charming bekac (tricycle rickshaw) to an equally charming hotel where I had not made reservations. No rooms. My response was to be self defeatingly frustrated (I like trains, without necessarily arriving refreshed by trains). So, in the beginning of rain, I decide I'm going to walk to the next hotel, and the hotel after that, in what is now fully begun rain.

My third try is a hotel I'd stayed at some 15 years ago, which I was not going to stay at, hence one and two, but which in the rain I was reasonably sure I could get to through some slightly freakish display of memory. Except I got lost and wet and then got to the hotel by following signs. I think this still counts as some sort of freakish display, without any constructive brain engagement.

The rain stopped, the sun came out, and birds somewhere were doubtless chirping. Yogya is a bit noisy so I cannot swear to the bird part. I walked around, avoiding batik touts as best as possible, though I did buy a conical straw hat of the sort used by local farmers and bekac drivers.

Over the next four days I did what was there to be done: I visited the local palace (Kraton), sat through some of a shadow puppet show, saw a dance performance much more overtly theatrical from a tourist point of view than I'd seen in Bali - plenty of plot, and watched some local fishermen using really large tackle, in the form of traps that you could crawl into.

I have a modest goal of racking up many types of semi-purposeful transportation, so local horse power, in the form of an andong, was a must do. Mine got the horsy equivalent of a flat tire, which added a bit to the memory.

My first excursion was to Prambanan, a beautiful Hindu complex (reached by local bus!) with some less large but still beautiful Buddhist temples.

And the local school outing. Apparently teachers find it bad form to pass up the chance for some Q&A between students and even a slightly used tourist. This is charming. Even standing in the sun, this is charming.

Next up was the prodigiously fantastic Borobudur, a somewhat earlier than Prambanan Buddhist site. I got there with an early morning mini-bus ride with a group of tired backpackers.

Borobudur covers a low hill in a many terraced square building. The lower terraces are surrounded on both sides by truly lovely sculptures of the life of Buddha, Buddhist teachings and the story of Buddhism in Java.

The top of the temple is surrounded by a large number of large Buddha sculptures in curious stone lattice work. And two groups of students from competing English language schools, both of which broke into many gangs to seek out and speak to tourists "for just one minute."

One of these engaging groups decided that dancing was in order. Yes, me too.

I also took a train to nearby Solo, a town of like size to Yogyakarta with it's own palace and sites. I was visiting in the days leading up to an Islamic holiday. This seemed an excuse to have fairs in the squares in front of both the Yogya and the Solo palaces.

Solo had some young girls trying out their dance moves.

Both towns are big on batik (cloth drawn with wax and dyed) and leather shadow puppets (the best hides come from Sulawesi or so I'm told). I am the proud owner of both, if a person who has sent items home via Indonesian sea mail can be said to own something.

A fowl interlude (for that certain someone who knows who he is)

But Yogyacarta has more than batik and shadow puppets and straw hats on offer. It also has the Pasar Ngasem, or bird marked. To be sure there were pretty birds, but for me it was all about the chickens.

You had your standard chickens in their prime.

You had all kinds of goodies to keep chicken in their prime (in case the photos are unclear, they are of seed, crickets, ants and maggots).

There were also some chicken somewhat past their prime, and other chicken that seemed to be going through some difficult youthful phase of experimentation with fashion. Do chicken mothers worry?

Then there were the things that "taste like chicken".

OK, I've never actually heard anyone describe bats as tasting like chicken, but it seems inevitable.

Bandung

Some places I take too. Some places I do not.

I arrived after a night train from Yogyakarta, no doubt cranky. The train station was perfectly nice. The strolling guitarists were well represented.

I found the market odd. I thought the city's mosque had a minaret that looked like something from air traffic control.

I did however find a cafe during a rain storm.

I did not take to Bandung.

Jakarta

I like Jakarta. I think I want to live in Jakarta. I probably just want to be the young Mel Gibson in The Year of Living Dangerously, complete with a wise dwarf (played by Linda Hunt) and the beautiful love interest (played by a young Sigourney Weaver). I think I want to live in Jakarta.

Jakarta has more than its share of monuments to Indonesia. It also has a fantastic "old school" museum of dusty shelves and cavernous rooms without benefit of lighting consultants filled with archaeological finds and ethnological displays.

I stayed up north, towards the old Dutch port of Batavia.

This part of the city has a number of small museums in old nicely mantained colonial era buildings, a square that saw good use day and night and a large number of other buildings needing bunches of care.

There is also the remains of the Dutch era canal system. The main canal ran in front of my hotel. It was the foulest smelling most vile looking bit of water I've ever seen. The only good that could be said of it is that it seems to keep mosquitos away.

The canal discharged (flushed) into the old port. This still sees lots of really cool business with cargo ships that would have been at home 100 years ago. I hired a small boat to be paddled around in. Another form of transport.