By golly it has been a busy few days! Friday morning I packed up my bags ready to move into my temporary (maybe) kos. I say maybe because I had the best intentions to pay for a down-payment for another kos (which is currently being repaired), but decided not to because I like it here. But I’m still not really sure if I should stay here or not. I tried making a list of pros and cons, but some aspects carry more weight than others, so it kind of evened out. Oh well, I will make a decision eventually (well I’ll have to), but at least I have a month. Oh, I hate making decisions!
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| Me and my awesome as pendamping, Shelly |
So back to Friday, Nick, Joey, Jack and I (Joey and Jack are the other anak ACICIS living here, both from WA) met Joey’s and my pendampings at the hotel and came to our kos. We put everything in place for about half an hour then headed off to find some lunch (minus Joey’s pendamping because he was berpuasa). We ate at a lovely little warung around the corner from our place, with five meals and four drinks costing a grand total of Rp.32.000! (About $3.50) I love Indonesia! We then headed off to do a bit of manchester shopping. It was just a bit funny seeing guys trying to pick out sheets and towels. Good fun :)
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| "Gula" = Suger, and loads of it! |
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| Joey and Nick checking out the towels. |
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| Jack with a snaz as Batman towel, that he nearly bought. |
In the evening Dimas (one of the people who works for ACICIS) invited us to come along to a salsa night at the Sheraton hotel. Dimas is actually a really excellent dancer and came 14th last year on Indonesia’s Got Talent! Look on YouTube if you don’t believe me. So Shelly, the guys from my kos and another guy from ACICIS soaked up the amazing luxury of the Sheraton, paid about the same price for one meal as was spent at lunch time and had free salsa lessons from a pro. Apparently though I’m not very good at salsa, as Dimas kept pulling me up. But that’s ok it was lots of fun. And there is salsa again on Tuesday so we might go again, so that we’re all better than beginners.
Saturday was a mad as, full on, touristy day. Nick, Joey, Jack, Rachel (another ACICIS friend), Dimas and I all caught the Trans Yogya bus to the Kraton (Sultan’s Palace), where we also met another anak ACICIS, Eli. I had a wonderful conversation with an old lady on the bus. We discussed everything from how many kids she had and where I am from and where we were going, to religion and the fact that Joey looks Iranian and Nick looks English and is very tall (“Kasihan” she said, haha).
When we got to the Kraton we looked around one section ourselves and then had a tour guide for the other part. It was amazing to hear that the current sultan, Hamengkubuwana X, actually studied at UGM. So I will be studying at the very same university that the sultan studied at! How snaz is that! I also found it interesting that his dad, Hamengkubuwana IX, studied in the Netherlands for 10 years, but he had a plaque (see below) saying that he was first and foremost Javanese. I thought that was lovely. HB IX was also a special guy because he was the only sultan in Java (maybe Indonesia) who supported the establishment of the Republic of Indonesia, free from Dutch control. This earnt Yogyakarta the title of Daerah Istimewah Yogyakarta (DIY = The spedial area of Yogyakarta). We had yummy Javanese lunch at the kraton. Nick’s choice was especially interesting – pigeon. He is always going on about how much he loves pigeons (not in terms of food), so I was like “How can you eat that!?”. But he didn’t eat it all, as it came with the head and everything!
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| View of an outside part of the kraton, looking towards the streets of Yogya. |
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| The sultan's crest. It consists of the Javanese letters "H" and "B", for Hamengkubuwana. All the sultans are named Hamengkubwana, the current one being the tenth. |
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| Hamengkubuwana IX's plaque saying that he is first and foremost Javanese. |
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| An amazingly decorated roof. Not quite sure of the significance, but the gold leaf and chandelir is quite impressive. |
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| Hamengkubuwana II's family tree. The trunk is Hamengkubuwana, each branch is a wife, the leaves are daughters and the fruits are sons. What a busy man is all I can say. |
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| A tad more reasonable, Hamengkubuwana IV was a bit "more modern"... still more than one wife, but less children. |
After the Kraton we checked out Mirota Batik for some necessary batik clothing. Batik is a traditional Javanese fabric, with patterns made from putting wax onto fabric and dipping it into dye (the background to this blog is batik, although just imitation). I didn’t find anything, but everyone else did, so that’s good.
On Saturday night we went to the Ramayana Ballet at Prambanan Temple. Prambanan temple is a massive as Hindu temple close to Yogya. Unfortunately my camera was not a fan of taking long distance photos at night, so you can either google it or I will definitely return in the daytime with pictures to share. We had buffet dinner there, which was nice. But I think I am becoming very accustomed to spicy food already, as even though it was tasty, it was a tad bland (so that the tourists could handle it). The ballet was amazing! But it’s not ballet ballet, more like if you can imagine Balinese dancing with gamelan music, acrobatics, cute little kiddies dressed as monkeys and burning down thatched houses!
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| L-R: Rachel, Me, Eli, Jack, Joey, Nick at dinner overlooking Prambanan. |
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| Little kiddies in their monkey outfits performing part of Ramayana. |
When Sunday came around we decided we wanted to santai saja. So we all lazily got up at our own pace and met Rachel near our kos for some gudeg for brunch/lunch. (Gudeg is a curry made from jackfruit, which looks a lot like meat, but isn’t. And it usually comes with a ridiculously cooked egg that has turned brown… I don’t know how they do that, but it is ok, that’s how its supposed to be.) After eating, we headed to Amplaz (short for something Plaza), a super duper massive shopping centre in the centre of town. We all needed a few bits and pieces, like clothes and towels (as the ones we bought on Friday don’t dry very well). But because it was a massive shopping centre everything is pretty much what it costs in Australia. I got completely ripped off on a pair of jeans, but they were the only ones I could find in my size in several stores. Indonesians are tiny! Nick had a field day in Gramedia (a big bookshop, kind of like Borders, but still operating)! Oh! And I found a “batik” dress. It looks really nice, but is not real batik, as I bought it from CareFour, which is kind of like an Indo equivalent of Big W. For dinner I had soup – my first meal in a week not involving rice. It was nice, but I did miss the rice a bit (In Indonesia, if you haven’t eaten rice, you haven’t eaten). After wandering around a ridiculously consumerist place for several hours we came home and chatted with Pak Agus (our Bapak kos) in the gazebo and drank coffee/tea, while learning a bit of Javanese.
Monday has been good. We had an Amazing Race type thing around Yogya to familiarise ourselves with how to book and buy train and bus tickets to other cities. I was a tad disappointed my team didn’t get to all places, but we learnt what we needed to so that is the main thing (I need to try and be a little less competitive). I’m now about to go shopping at Matahari again, and this time I will buy clothes, even though they are a tad “expensive”, because I am acurrently wearing pretty much the last of my clean-ish clothes and need clothes at lest to get to the laundry to pick them up tomorrow. (But I really do need clothes anyway, I actually broght more souvenirs than clothes to Indo.)
Sampai Jumpa,
Katrina
