Our five days in Yogjakarta are drawing to a close – we originally only intended to spend a couple of days here (we built in three days to visit Mt. Bromo), but re-arranged our schedule, per my previous blog post. We arrived in Yogyakarta after a 12 hour travel day across eastern Java. Our journey was only slightly more than 400 km., but the infrastructure here doesn’t exactly allow for speedy travel. We shared a mini-bus with a couple of Dutch students (all the tourists here seem to be Dutch or French); rather disturbingly, our driver didn’t eat or drink once during the day-long journey as he was fasting for Ramadan. On the plus side, the gas stations along the way were all complete with prayer rooms (segregated of course!), so our driver could keep the faith while transporting his (considerably less devout) passengers. After about a week here, I’m finally starting to get over my guilt at enjoying mid afternoon ice cream cones, while the fasting populace stares at me hungrily (that being said, we’ve passed by quite a number of homes where behind closed doors people are enjoying food before sundown – for some people, it might be more about appearances than anything!). But back to the trip. It is worth noting that about 90% of the traffic here consists of scooters. Gas is cheap (consistently about $0.50 a liter at the stations, or even less if you purchase it on the side of the road in a used Absolut Vodka bottle), and you can pile a whole family/bale of hay/cow/tree onto one small scooter, making them an economical (if not safe) choice for the typical Indonesian family (who earn, on average, $3,900 a year). The juxtaposition between vehicle safety for children here, where you’ll see a 14-year old driving a scooter through psychotic traffic with her 7-year old sister in front of her an her 2-year old brother on her lap, versus North America, where new parents invest upwards of $1,000 for the best state-of-the-art carseat, is relatively astonishing.

After a month staying at some of the dodgiest establishments Asia has to offer, we checked into a nice hotel in Yogjakarta. It’s been fabulously refreshing to know that our sheets have been washed, the shower doesn’t double as the toilet, and that said toilet isn’t full of ants or just a hole in the ground. Admittedly, my standards have lowered a little since the heady days of business class travel, but even considering this, Hotel Eclipse has been a nice, relaxing place to spend a few days.

One of the main reasons that we chose to visit Yogjakarta was to visit the ancient Buddhist Shrine of Borobudur. We hired a driver to take us here and Prambanan, an impressive Hindu Temple just outside the town. While Prambanan is largely a Hindu complex, it also includes a Buddhist temple, which features some Hindu carvings, showing some evidence of intermingling between the two religions. Interestingly, you are surrounded by the sounds of the call to prayer from nearby mosques at both Prambanan and Borobudur. Here are some highlights from Prambanan.

En route to Borobudur, we visited a smaller Buddhist temple, Mendut, with an ancient tree perfect for swinging!

Yes, we’re five

Buddhas in Mendut temple

We arrived at Borobudur right before sunset. It is truly spectacular – the shrine has six square platforms and three circular platforms at the top, with 2,607 reliefs and 504 Buddhas. It is not only a shrine, but a place of pilgrimage for devout Buddhists – they circle each floor three times to pay their respects to Buddha (we circled each floor once and it still took us two hours to complete the trip). Borobudur definitely deserves the World Heritage status bestowed upon it!

These lions are supposed to be frightening but they look cuddly to me!

All of the reliefs are very intricately carved and tell a unique story

A view at sunset (as an aside, you’ll note that my hair is constantly in a ponytail – even at 5 p.m. it is 38 degrees (100 fahrenheit) before humidity here – it is unbelievably hot!)

The stupas at the top of the shrine

A view of the jungle below

Another worthwhile excursion was to the suburb of Kotagede, which used to be the home of the royal family, and includes some of the best examples of traditional Javanese architecture. Here are some scenes from the neighbourhood, which is filled with winding alleyways, courtyards, flag-lined streets and friendly inhabitants.

   

There are birds throughout the city, especially in front of storefronts and homes

A system of weights helped the street vendor calculate how much we owed for our oranges

Personal care items are often sold single serve

A typical alleyway

A Javanese style roof

Another colourful alleyway

Kotagede is also the heart of Yogjakarta’s silver industry. We visited a number of shops, and one of them gave us a tour of their silver-making facilities. While there is certainly a lot of artistry involved in silver making, the set up was closer to an assembly line than anything else.

The silversmiths, who train for about four months before commencing employment

Flattening the silver chain

They use a local fruit to shine the silver; it actually froths up like soap and leaves the silver sparkling (as an aside, the necklace that I ultimately ended up buying at the shop is already tarnished – I need to find some of this fruit!)

After a few days exploring Yogyakarta, we began to realize that it’s not a city best experienced by hopping from one tourist destination to the next, instead, just wandering the streets is a fun way to appreciate the people and the culture. There is a pretty strong youth culture here that we haven’t seen anywhere else in Indonesia – one of the things that struck us was the quality of public urban art – and it’s everywhere!

One of the nicest walks we took was along one of the rivers that runs through the city. There aren’t a lot of tourists that visit this part of town, so we were a novelty. As a result we met many of the people who lived along the riverbank.

There are reams of potted plants throughout the city, these were some of the prettiest. Yogjakarta is full of colour.

While some of the homes along the river were quite modern, some were very basic. The well above illustrates the point nicely.

I mentioned earlier that the traditional tourist destinations were not the highlights of our visit. Our visit to the ‘Water Castle’ is a good example. The ‘castle’, depicted below, attracts a good number of tourists everyday. Unfortunately, it resembles a ramshackle Drug Lord’s house more than anything … a reminder to us all that cement should not be our building material of choice. It doesn’t age too well.

Imperial Water Castle, or Soviet prison?

The Imperial Garden … seriously.

Another winner was the Sultan’s Palace – the main tourist attraction of Yogjakarta. The bored expressions of the guards and whining screams of the children really said it all. After wandering through a portrait gallery where we were treated to watercolors of about 200 sultans and their wives throughout the ages, it was time to bid adieu, forever.

The Sultan experiments with different looks

On a more positive, less sarcastic note, the food here is really fantastic. You can get a really good curry at any number of street stalls. One of my favourite experiences was a couple of nights ago, when Linds and I went on a quest to find Java’s famous Jackfruit curry. We tracked down a stall, took off our shoes and sat at the roadside restaurant. Once the meal arrived, it became quite clear that while respectably adept with chopsticks or a knife and fork, when denied eating utensils Lindsay’s Medieval eating skills leave something to be desired. A small crowd of local merchants gathered to watch Lindsay’s valiant attempts at eating. At first, their laughter was subtle, but after a while they couldn’t politely control it any more, and they were howling. When I started laughing, they just lost it. Eventually, some of our fellow patrons came to Lindsay’s aid, and he recovered well. It was a teachable moment.

Nasi Gudeg (Jackfruit Curry)

Lesehon Restaurant, which we’ll always remember fondly as the place that Lindsay learned to eat with his hands

Finally, for the benefit of my packaged goods friends, I thought I’d share some photos from a local mall. I love visiting malls, particularly grocery stores, in foreign countries – I think it’s fascinating. Here are some items of note:

Happytos

It cost less for eight single serve Tim Tams, than a packet of eight. A poorly executed pricing strategy by this grocer!

Many of the personal care products here have whitening properties – this deodorant was no exception!

Nori Seafood Flavoured Lays

A haircare model wearing a Hijab – I thought this was fascinating

Blueberry, everyone’s favourite handheld