Yogyakarta: a city that is fit to prosper.

It was recently the Chinese New Year, which meant we had a day off school (again). So, for the three-day weekend, my friends and I stayed in Indonesia on the island of Java (where we live) but traveled to Yogyakarta (pronounced as if it is spelled with j’s instead of y’s, and it is a long ‘o’, and it’s called Jogja, for short).  It was a jam-packed weekend, yet relaxing at the same time. We left straight from school on Friday, the 8^th to catch our hour-long flight.  As I learned from Wikipedia, Jogja is the capital city of the Yogyakarta Special Region in Java. It is well known as the centre of classical Javanese fine art and culture such as batik (a type of dyeing that is done using a specific technique with wax on cloth), ballet, drama, music, poetry and puppet shows. It also used to be the capital city during the Indonesian National Revolution from 1945 to 1949. Another interesting fact, thanks again to Wikipedia, is that yogya means ‘suitable, fit, proper’, and karta means ‘prosperous, flourishing’. Therefore, Yogyakarta is “a city that is fit to prosper.” 

So, here is what we did for the three days we were there. Friday night we walked out to the main road, from our hostel, to find a place for dinner and buy some snacks for breakfast. The driver we hired for Saturday picked us up at 4 a.m. to drive us to Borobudur. According to the pamphlet I got there, it is the largest Buddhist temple in the world. Here’s what it has: six square platforms topped by three circular platforms, 2,672 relief panels and 504 Buddha statues. The main dome, in the center of the top platform is surrounded by 72 Buddha statues, each seated inside a perforated stupa (the things that look like bells). Apparently, it is Indonesia’s single most visited tourist attraction, which explains the ridiculous number of people. Let me explain.

We had hoped to do a sunrise tour, but after much confusion at the entrance gate due to the language barrier, our lack of patience, and mostly the fact that we had not hired a guide for the tour, we just had to wait until 6 when they actually opened. It was basically deserted at that point, which we should have taken advantage of, in hindsight.  To show respect to Buddha, you’re supposed to circumnavigate the temple three times before entering the top tier from the east entrance.  Well, I don’t need to tempt fate by disrespecting Buddha, so we took our time walking around the different levels, slowly making our way towards the top tier. Unfortunately, it being a Saturday, there came to be a huge number of students with school study tours. Basically, we were surrounded by a ton of people who wanted to have their picture taken with us ‘bules’ (that’s Indonesian for ‘white person’).  It was fine when it happened the first few times, and we even talked to some students whose English exam final was to talk to people in English, and then we had to sign a paper and grade them.  I think I may be in at least twenty pictures with strangers (that’s not counting how many other times that has happened since I moved here in June). It got real old, real fast! We took some pictures of the Buddha statues, and tried to enjoy the view, but then we pretty much ran out of there.  The highlight of that was the fact that we used our KITAS (our Indonesian i.d. card) to get us in for the much cheaper price instead of paying as international visitors.

Next on the agenda, we asked our driver to take us to Kemongan, a local pottery village. We walked up and down the street, looking in the shops at the handicrafts and interesting pieces of arts and crafts. Danna found a didgeridoo for only $3, and I found a great painting of Buddha for $5!

Then, we were off the Prambanan, the largest Hindu temple in Indonesia, as well as one of the largest in Southeast Asia. This was much more enjoyable than Borobodur for the simple fact that it was significantly less crowded. There was one of the temples that has been found to be “relatively safe” for visitors, so hard hats must be worn to go in.

We ate at a restaurant on our way back to the parking lot, and we plotted where to go next, since we had our driver until 10 pm. The only other place that we thought of going, depending on the time we had left with the driver, was Mt. Merapi. Well, it turns out this isn’t just any volcano, it happens to be Indonesia’s most active volcano, having most recently erupted in 2010. We paid the entrance fee to drive in, and then our driver parked and let us out. We just went wandering by walking up a road up the side of the hill. We had no idea where to go or what we would find, but that’s the best part of the adventure. We just planned to be back to the car before it got dark, so that gave us a little over one hour of exploring. It turns out we made a good decision, and when we veered off the paved road to a dirt road, we stumbled upon the lava flow path from the last eruption. It was amazing, terrifying, and I felt humbled by the volcano.  We took some pictures, and then we headed back to the car.

Our next, important stop was finding Amanda’s Brownies. We had discovered these brownies in Bandung, and they are delicious! We bought two boxes to share; one for dessert later and the other for breakfast in the morning. Our last stop for the night was dinner at a restaurant recommended by a friend. She told us to get an order of the local chicken to share, because it is prepared differently than in Jakarta. That recipe did not disappoint, and I would say it was the best chicken I have had in Indonesia. I was only grossed out a little when I realized that the entire chicken was on the plate, including the head and neck.  Our driver got us back to our hostel at 9:55 pm, and we paid him the ridiculously small amount of 600 000 Rupiah for eighteen hours of driving us around (that only ended up being around $15 USD per person).

On Sunday, we walked around the city of Jogja. I was in charge of the map, and we had about four places that we knew we wanted to see at some point in the day. With my mad navigating and map-reading skills, we made it to all of them. The funny part about it, though, was that it did not happen in the order or ease with which I was planning. We made it to a local market easily enough, but it was super crowded and none of us were looking for anything in particular, so we walked around, browsed quickly, and were off to our next destination. On our way to the Sultan’s Palace (yes, this province has its own sultan), we stopped to buy water and got to talking with a worker in the store. He told us the traditional dancing and singing that usually takes place in the palace was going to happen later than scheduled due to some important ambassador or someone visiting. He recommended we check out the National Art Group instead, since it’s only open on the weekend. We were warned about scams where people take you to art galleries and try to sell you the traditional batik cloths, so I was a bit skeptical. He gave us general directions, but we only found it with the help of a local man who was walking on his way home from his job as an overnight nurse at a hospital. He lead us there and was very helpful and friendly. It turns out it was not a scam, and we even got to watch two artists as they worked on their pieces. The basic of batik involves dipping a small, pointed tool into hot wax and covering the designs on the cloth, by either filling in spaces or making dots. Then, the cloth is dyed and the wax is removed. I bought some very beautiful pieces that I am very excited to show off someday as they hang on the wall in my house.  We returned to the palace, and it turned out we had, unfortunately, missed the traditional dance.  We wandered around the outdoor areas of the palace and were eventually headed to the exit when a man came over to us and told us he would show us traditional puppet making. This will probably sound shady, but we followed him, and I am glad we did. We learned that they use buffalo skin as leather for making the traditional puppets. We watched as he explained the different parts of the body and each meaning, as well as the intricate painting. All in all, it takes about two weeks to complete one puppet, start to finish.  We had some “street food” for lunch, which we bought from a woman whose cart was set up under a pavilion next to the street. It was just rice, green beans, and a fried egg on top, all for about 70 cents. 

Once our bellies were full, we hopped in two bacek (a bike taxi, a pedal bike, that is) on our way to the Bird Market. It is exactly what you would imagine a bird market to be. There were a BUNCH of birds in cages, hanging around, from colorful parrots to plain pigeons. It was strange, and I don’t understand the fascination or interest with all of the birds, but it was fun to see.  We felt guilty making an older man pedal us back to the center of the city, but it would have been a long, hot 2 km return hike, not really knowing our way, so we decided to take a bacek again. Since we had been searching for Taman Sari (Water Castle) since leaving the palace, we simply asked to be taken there. As it turns out, we had eaten our lunch basically at the base of the ruins of the water castle. I found out that it was the place (or at least part of it was) used for bathing by the concubines (basically a mistress) as they waited for the sultan to choose one (thanks to Wikipedia, again).

Sunday night we saw an outdoor ballet performance of the traditional Ramayana and Shinta story. It’s basically a Romeo and Juliet story, but one character is Buddhist while the other is Hindu. It was interesting, had beautiful traditional live music, and it made me ‘more cultured,’ as my dad would say.

On Monday, we went back to the Sultan’s palace to see the traditional singing. We walked out the southern exit, to find the Southern Square. There are two Banyan trees where the story is that if you can walk from the edge of the square blindfolded and end up walking between the trees, then it’s a sign of good luck.  Of course, we all had to try: Kristina nailed it, Nicole had a little help from the man who rented us the blindfold, I needed a little more help from the man (I take that as a sign that I’ll have good luck in life as long as I have a little help from my friends), and Danna almost ran into the tree.  She tried a second time, and then asked if that meant she would have bad luck or just neutral luck. We bought more brownies on our way back to our hostel. That was about all we had time for, before heading back to the airport.