Jogja

I took the train to Yogyakarta (pronounced Jogjakarta for some reason) on Wednesday morning. I like trains for some reason. Had a little concern when it was 45 minutes late showing up, but the rest of the ride was fine. Pretty comfortable actually, even more so as it was only about 25% full, and you could rotate the seats. The scenery along the route wasn't spectacular though, mostly just rice fields. About an 8 hr ride.

The Ibis hotel was walking distance of the train station, and I liked the place. Unfortunately I just booked 2 nights there, with the next 2 nights at Sheraton. Regretted that a bit, as Ibis was about 1000x better location. At least I planned things such that location wouldn't be as important for those nights. Ibis also has better timing with breakfast (starts about 4-4:30am!) and less expensive, and generally a nicer feel in my opinion. Sheraton is "fancier." Main reason I stayed there at all was because of SPG points.

The first night, I headed to Purawisata to watch a Ramayana ballet ($13). It was quite a good performance, and I was able to follow it for the most part. A group of visitors from Jakarta were friendly.

Thursday I walked towards the Kraton, which is the sultan's palace. It was a little confusing, as I guess there are a couple entrances, and a couple sub-features, like the water garden, where sultan could sit on his balcony watching his harem bathe - dude knew how to live! :) (admissions ~$1 each) On the way there I was intercepted by someone who was a school teacher from Medan, his class was with the other teachers in the museum so he was walking around. Tried to convince me that the Kraton was better from 2-5, and that I should go to "Batik Art Center" first as it closes early. I had read that Kraton closed at 1, a little strange. After we parted, I went to the Kraton not the art center (and the Kraton told me they close at 1:30). After looking around there, the provided guide strongly suggested I go to "Batik Art Center." Felt a little more suspicious. Does this place just pay people around town to tell tourists to go there? (someone else that evening also suggested to go there). I suppose that's just advertising, nothing particularly vindictive about it, but still I don't like it. Went around another part of the Kraton, again was a celebrity with local-tourists. A little kid was pretty cute. The palace wasn't particularly special though. A couple neat things were where it showed the family trees of the past sultans, literally represented as trees (fruits are boys, leaves are girls). Some sultans must have been pretty busy, you could tell they had a really large... tree. Current sultan has just 1 wife, 5 daughters, no sons. Somehow I ended up on a side street under a big tree with some locals playing a game where you flick disks on a board. It was nice and peaceful compared to the hectic main streets, and feels good to know there are such places. At the water garden there wasn't much to see, though a couple was getting married. Wandered in the community around it, met an old man who was some community leader, though he mainly just bred birds and grew plants. That was another nice experience. Overall people are quite friendly here. I feel a bit bad that my first reaction is usually to distrust people who want to talk to me, but actually most of the time it's a simple matter of wanting to meet a foreigner, and practice English.

Tried to do a little shopping, but, felt too hectic. Also, in one store, the scent of incense and perfumes combined with the local music was enough to drive me crazy in a short time. So I returned to the hotel, then went out to a shadow puppet show in the evening ($3), Yogyakarta is somewhat famous for shadow puppets. For quite a while, it, ummm, sucked. Yeah, not impressed whatsoever. I wondered why it was called shadow puppets, if they didn't seem to be doing anything with shadows. Eventually, the sole other person watching got up, and walked to the area 'behind' the stage. Finally something clicked, I followed, and realized that was the 'proper' place to be, as you could see the shadows of the performance that was happening in the first area. Still, overall I didn't enjoy it much, couldn't tell who any of the characters were, and seemed everything was just fight scenes, which were impressive and well done but quickly lose their novelty. I walked out early. Discovered some fair going on, there were games, and amusement park rides (which passed Indonesia's stringent safety regulations I'm sure) and people selling stuff. Would have been a really cool place to hang out with friends I'm sure. People selling bunnies because year of the rabbit is about to start. I read in the newspaper that every year of the rabbit, a few months later SPCA groups in asia receive tons of rabbits, while streets are also filled with tons of rabbits, as people start to realize it's not just a cute fluff ball but an actual creature that needs caring for and so they discard them.

Friday was Dieng Plateau day. I hired a car+driver to make it far easier to get there. A little expensive though. Too bad I hadn't found anyone to share the cost, as it's one of those things that would cost the same whether there is one person or five people. Mostly farming in that area, nice scenery, I'm amazed at the extent of terracing. Weather was cool, felt a bit like Kananaskis in summer. Visited a couple little temples, it felt good to walk around in the fresh air. Visited Sikidang crater, it stunk, I honestly have never smelled something like that. Makes rotten eggs seem like rose petals. The boiling mud and steamy vents were a bit scary. Went to 'coloured lake' which wasn't very coloured, along with 'mirror lake' which wasn't mirrory. Trail map was unclear so I wandered aimlessly for a long time but evenutally it connected back where I wanted to be. Saw a few other little sites around there, none too remarkable.

On the way back to town we stopped at the highlight, Borobudur. For those who haven't heard, it's kindof like Angkor Wat, but far less famous. Huge buddhist temple, hundreds of years older than Angkor Wat, was abandoned for a long time but today is again used in pilgrimages. Always impressive at these massive places, thinking of how much effort it would take to construct something like that today, then imagining how many times more effort it would have taken 1200 years ago. And despite being in an area of seismic and volcanic activity, it's survived pretty well. I admit whenever I see an old church or temple, I'm a bit saddened to think how many lives and lifetimes were lost to the creation of a religious monument. But still cool to be there, though some parts were closed to clean up Merapi ash. There were school groups there of course, and as usual people wanted to talk with me and take photos, though this time I found it getting tiring, as for their school assignment they had to interview foreigners, so several times I was asked basically the same set of questions, while being recorded. Still, would feel crappy to say no to them.

I forgot to mention, the rented car was solar powered! Though you will find that far less awesome when I tell you that "solar" is the Indonesian word for "deisel fuel."

Saturday went to Prambanan in the morning, the other amazing temple in this area. It's Hindu, built a little more recently, but also very impressive. There's a Buddhist temple built near it at the same time, kindof nice to see those two religions lived in peace, at least at that time/place. Prambanan got a bunch of damage from the 2006 earthquake so many chunks of it are closed off permanently. After that, went close to Gunung Merapi, got to look at the area where a village used to be until Nov 2010 when Merapi wiped it out. Already seems like people are trying to rebuild a bit. From there, went to a silver workshop, apparently this area is famous for silver jewelery and other stuff, it was pretty intricate. Then I checked out a nearby crop circle from a couple months ago. Most likely it was not created by aliens. My driver pointed out that the power lines right above it might have gotten in the way. After a little shopping downtown, I returned to the hotel. Next morning headed to the airport to return to Jakarta.