Yogyakarta :: Indonesia
The last shadow puppets.
Places: Solo, Yogyakarta, Prambanan & Borobudur.
Coolest thing I did: Sunrise (sort of) over the largest Buddhist monument in the world.
Coolest thing I didn´t know: Cockfighting is apparently banned during Ramadan. Man, fun police or what?
Solo didn't particularly improve in my mind with the last day I was there, though I did enjoy spending the last night eating on mats on the pavement from the little stall holders that ply their trade on most city streets in Java. One thing you learn really quickly here is the people are all tiny and the portions of food match. I think most nights I have a starter and 2 or 3 mains. This lends itself well to eating from the street vendors as they all do one thing really well and you can go to a few of them on your way home, noodles at one, fried chook at another. It works very well. They also think the sight of me sitting cross-legged on the ground with the little Indonesians is a funny, funny sight. Kids just giggle their arses off at me.
The one thing I did learn is every time there's sectarian unrest Solo is most likely to be the place it happens. It's also the home of Jemaah Islamiyah, the Nasi Goering of the global Jihad movement. Most people not from Java were seriously confused as to why the hell I went there. I have to agree with them a little. Damn you Lonely Planet.
Yogyakarta is far more of a city than Solo is, despite their being founded at the same time for roughly the same reason. As I brushed over last time the Dutch really couldn't be bothered with that whole empire running thing like the Poms, they just wanted the money from the spice trade. They split up the Sultanate in Java into two parts and allowed each of the Sultans to found a city, build a palace and do whatever they wanted so long as the nutmeg kept flowing. One city became Solo and the other Yogya, both with the requisite palace (or kranton, as they're known in these parts).
Lets make no bones about it, both palaces are a bit shit. When I think of Sultans palaces I think of Topaki in Istanbul or something like the one in Bangkok, with giant gold Buddhas and such. The ones in both cities here look very low rent and a bit scruffy looking. That's because the sultans all went into politics when the civilians took over and don't really have much money left these days. With hindsight missing both palaces wouldn't have been a great loss. And unless you're really, really into horse carriages, the museum attached to the one in Yogya can safely be avoided.
I did like Tamansari though, the Sultan's old water castle. What's a water castle, I hear you ask? It's a place where the Sultan can perve on chicks swimming in his pools, pick one and have them come to his private pool for a swim and a "relax". He did this every day apparently. There was an earthquake sometime in the not too distant past that knocked the thing over so they're busy rebuilding it as we speak. This means that part of it looks like a pile of rocks and part of it looks brand new. The effect should be better when the whole thing is fixed up.
Next to Tamansari is the bird market, Pasar Ngasem, which I liked because it was a little different. Besides your standard racing pigeons and fighting cocks (as I said, off due to Ramadan) you can buy all sorts of non-birds. You want snakes, geckos, mice, rats? No problem. How about crickets, grasshoppers and locusts? All there too. Apparently if you boil up bats they're good for curing asthma. I declined drinking the python blood, telling them I was already virile enough. Even though they said it wasn't too bad with Redbull. I think I'll stick to vodka thanks.
As far as I know I don't have H5N1 yet, but I can certainly see how it came about. You want to smell the combined output of thousands of birds in one small space. I think the guy with the best business sense was the bloke selling birdseed. I reckon he was raking it in.
All this ye olde stuff is good and well but it's not what Yogya is all about. Stretching down from the main train station is the street confusingly named after the patriarch of the Churchill family, Jl Marliboro, which is shops all the way down. Mega malls rising out of a metropolis of stalls selling fake everything, this is where you find most people who look Indonesian in town. Hipster kids in Vans and skinny jeans brushing shoulders with Batik clad old grannies hauling their loot home, it seems like shopping is the only time you see Indonesians doing stuff besides hassling you to buy stuff you don't want.
Due to Ramadan most of the students have left town and the rest are not doing the things they shouldn't be doing all year, like drinking and smoking, meaning the nightlife here is currently non-existent. You can get a beer, but you'll only see other white faces as you do. This meant I did something cultural at night for one, I went to see Wayang Kulit, which means shadow puppets. They do look cool, and are accompanied by a full Gamelan orchestra, but they invariably act out scenes from the Ramayana, with the voices and singing in Javanese. Apparently the Ramayana is a Hindu epic about some dude Rama, who does some stuff. All I know is it's really long and confusing, especially in Javanese. Again, only white faces in the audience and everyone was too polite to be the first one to leave. Lucky for them I broke after 35 mins and I swear 3 quarters of the room followed me out. I did like the fight scenes however, which were like the kung-fu scenes in Team America, with two puppets flailing at each other in mid-air.
Java has been colonized by waves of Eastern types before the Dutch stumbled upon them, the first of these being the Hindus and Buddhists from India. Both left the legacy of an awesome temple just outside Yogya and it's about half a day to see each one.
The Hindus left Prambanan, a complex of temples spread over several kilometres but focused mostly on a temple to Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu, the Boston Celtics back-court of Hindu gods. Even as you cross the plain towards the site you can make out the jagged shards of temple in the distance, which on closer inspection are covered in carvings telling all sorts of (I imagine) Hindu type stories. No nudie bits though, which I've been told are quite common on the ones in India. I got led around by an eager student whose English teacher makes them walk up to white people and tell them about the temple for practice. The lad in question was going to work for a shipping company in the Netherlands so I'm sure his intricate knowledge of all the English words surrounding Hindu architecture will put him in pole position for that.
The Buddhists left their biggest monument on Earth at Borobudur, which I took an overnight trip out in order to see at sunrise. It's a multi-layered temple, with carvings going from mundane human things like eating, shagging and animal husbandry all the way up to the top, which represents Nirvana (insert Kurt Cobain joke here). As you climb it you get carvings all the way up, with niches holding Buddhas in various states of repose looking out at you. Once you get to the top the Buddhas are these bell shaped cages called stupas, of which there are 72. It's possibly one of the most impressive bits of architecture I've seen anywhere and I've looked at a hell of a lot of old buildings in the last few years.
Unfortunately, it rained. A lot. After paying 4 times the asking price to get up to the top of the temple to catch the sun rising over the mountains to the East we got little more than a sliver of red in a grey sky. It was still a good time to be up there, as the hordes pouring in at the official opening time of 6am attested to but looking at all those postcards of sunrise over the temple it does feel a bit like a lost opportunity. The pictures will probably come out quite well though, with everything having a sheen to it because of the wet and the rice paddies and mountains in the background all covered in mist and cloud. Still an amazing site.
So I'm back in Yogya today waiting to catch the night train to Jakarta tonight, which I'm informed by the Lonely Planet (and other tourists pretending they heard it from somewhere else) that it's lovingly known as the big durian, spiky on the outside and stinky on the inside. Can't wait!