I have decided to set myself a challenge: re-cap the last several days using no more than one paragraph per day. Let’s see how this goes.
Thursday 25th August
On Thursday, Nick got back from his trip to Banjanegara and Salatiga to visit his friend his family had been hosting for the last month in Melbourne. His friend’s aunt gave him a variety of goodies, including some (surprisingly) yummo dried-fried bananas, I think with the skins still on. In the afternoon, Joey, Teal and I went to Iga Bakar (meaning grilled ribs) which I think may be my fave food place in Yogya. After finishing our ayam bakar (grilled chicken), all the waiters wanted photos with Joey as they thought he bared a massive resemblance to Danni Pedrosa (a motorbike racer). After that we headed to the fish spa again, also with Ella (an ACICIS student from England) to get our feet all nice and fresh. In the evening, Nick, Jack, Joey and I went to the movies with Adeline (who works at the laundry across the road) and her friend Kiki to see Fast and Furious 5. I wasn’t really keen on the actual movie, rather seeing the Indo subtitles. After the movie, we were joined by Red and Teal at Raminton House, a very unique and interesting place to eat. My meal was ridiculously massive (never, ever order bubur ayam there unless you could eat a horse! Of which there were several at the back, pretty much in the kitchen). Another odd feature of Raminton House is a random spa in the middle of one of the dining areas, apparently only available for men. Loony! Around 9pm we headed off to Brett’s (another ACICIS kid from last semester) and Wahyu’s kos to grill corn. The previous night at futsal I was informed by Brett how fun it was, and as I was a bit skeptical, so they invited us all around to give it a go. As it turned out it was quite fun. Teal and I also had a bit of a djembe lesson from Wahyu and believe we are now masters of the djembe.
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| Wahyu teaching Teal and I the jembe (with Jack watching on). |
Friday 26th August
Around midday, Joey, Jack, Teal, Red, Eli and I met at Jombor bus terminal ready for our exciting as trip to Borobudur. It was nice timing, because as soon as we got there a bus was pretty much ready to head off. After our hour and a half bus ride and ten minute becak ride we arrived at a losmen (kind of like a hostel type place) suggested to us by the other ACICIS kids who went a couple of weeks prior. We settled in, ate some food and napped, so by the time we got to Borobudur, it was nearly closed for the day. But we still went in anyway because 45 minutes is better than no minutes. I think the pictures are the best way of describing Borobudur. But just so you know: Borobudur is the largest Buddhist temple in the world. It was built around the late AD700s, initially as a Hindu temple, then continued as a Buddhist temple after the ruling kingdom in the area changed religions. It consists of ten storeys, the bottom seven containing the carved stories of Buddha around it’s walls and the top three containing buddhas sitting within stupas (bell shaped things, see pictures). The different levels are supposed to represent the different stages of one’s journey to enlightenment, as the carved, story levels are seen as more straight forward and simple for those not so far along their journey and the top levels are more abstract and therefore aimed at the bodhisattvas (those close to reaching enlightenment). I wrote a couple of essays about Borobudur in my first year, so I was pretty excited to see it in the stone!
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| Front view of Borobudur |
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| Back view of Borobudur |
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| The detail of the reliefs is amazing. And that the blocks just fit together so well! |
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| I'm trying to join iin with the party under the tree... don't know how well that worked though... |
Saturday 27th August
After not nearly enough sleep we all awoke at the lovely hour of 3.45am and then walked over to another hotel to go on a sunrise tour. We got some snaz sarongs (unfortunately not for keeping) and torches (probably for keeping because we weren’t asked for them back) before walking over to the temple at 4.30am. Once there we staked out the best sunrise viewing location, then waited. It actually took a while for the sun to finally get up, but it was nice just relaxing on the temple. It was amazing though how photo driven some people were. Admittedly I was taking a few photos too, but then I remembered something I read in The Big Issue once, that so many people go overseas craving the perfect photo, but aren’t actually concerned with making memories in their head and actually experiencing it. So I forced myself to put my camera down a few times (but you probably wouldn’t believe it with all the photos I ended up taking).
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| (L-R) Teal, Joey, Jack, Eli, Red and me dressed up in our sarongs very early in the morning! |
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| Buddha's view of the sunrise with the mountain casting a shadow onto the sky. |
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| Just couldn't resist being a tourist! |
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| View of some of the stupas (L) and the wall (R) from the 7th level. |
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| A buddha who has lost the top of his stupa. (There are buddhas within all of the stupas on the top three levels). |
After yummy “morning tea” (read: breakfast, as it was only 6.30am) as part of our tour, we went back to the losmen and slept until check out time. Then we came home and slept some more. And of course, why not top off a nice lazy day with Mr. Burger and Dunkin Donuts for tea (don’t worry, it doesn’t/won’t happen all the time, but is nice occaisionally).
Sunday 28th August
Sunday marked Jack’s 23rd birthday. Since pork is forbidden in Islam, it is near impossible to find. But Jack was missing bacon, so we found a place that had an “American Breakfast”. It was a really nice place actually, with a fish pond one side of the outdoor dining area and a field on the other side (something like cassava maybe?) Our neat as makan “sagi” (our made up term for brunch, incorporating siang (afternoon) and pagi (morning)) consisted of juice, tea or coffee, any sort of eggs you wanted with bacon and real bread with both pineapple and dragonfruit jams. So good! Also at the restaurant was a swing, so we all had a bit of a go of that too! After preparations in the arvo we had a satay dinner and party in the gazebo. It was nice just chilling and chatting away. And Nick and Maisy provided entertainment by playing a game of “guess what animal I’m acting out”. Apparently Nick’s crab impersonation wasn’t good enough, so Maisy showed him how it is done. Most adorable thing. Ever.
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| (Closkwise from front) Joey, Red, Me, Teal, Tim, Jack, Eli, Shelly, Shelly's friend, Nick's chair. Eating our "American breakfasts". |
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| Joey on the swing. |
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| Shelly on the swing. |
Monday 29th August
Monday was pretty relaxing, yet somehow busy. I’m not entirely sure what I did during the day really (although I did skype a couple of people). In the evening Nick and I met our friend Vandi for the first time in person. We’ve been facebook friends for a while as he wants to practice his English. We were also joined by Nick’s friend, Clinton, visiting from Australia for a few days. After yummy bakso (a type of meatball soup) together we came back to the gazebo (yup, it’s definitely the place to be) to play a few rounds of tepuk nyamuk. Tepuk nyamuk means “hit the mosquito” and is like an Indonesian version of snap. Lots of fun, but I had a bit of a hard time keeping my competitiveness under control…
So my paragraphs may not be the most usual sized paragraphs, but I don’t think I’ve done too badly. I’m getting there and hopefully can be up to date by tomorrow.
Sampai jumpa,
