Bangkok will be our final destination in South East Asia, where we have spent the better part of two months now. I’ve spent time in the south of Thailand before, but never actually visited its bustling capital. Lindsay has actually been here twice (in 2000 and 2006), so its been interesting to listen to his observations about how the city has grown up (perhaps less interesting for him, considering he spent five days taking in popular tourist sites for the third time!).

Bangkok is much more modern than I had anticipated. While the cities of Laos, Vietnam and Indonesia felt like they belonged squarely in the developing world, Bangkok felt closer to Tokyo and Kuala Lumpur, with its vast infrastructure, varied nightlife and multicultural restaurant scene (though nothing beat the traditional Thai food, we’ve enjoyed some amazing meals!). It is clear that despite recent political unrest, the city is on the up and up. New buildings are rising everywhere and it appears that the government has mandated an improvement in public transport to ease the city’s congestion problems – the newly completed train from the airport was the equivalent of $0.15. That being said, a 3 km cab ride is about $2.00, so perhaps transport is just cheap, despite gas prices that mirror those at home. I loved the brightly coloured cabs, which made even the most horrible traffic jam look whimsical and fun. My favourite were the pink cabs, coloured as such in a tribute to the King (of course, what Royal doesn’t love pink?!?).

A view of Bangkok’s vibrant traffic

The buses are colourful too!

While there are cultural elements of Bangkok that are common across all of South East Asia (a love of saccharine pop music, the embrace of male vanity, the pursuit of prestige and luxury, the prevalence of sparkly gold things, female construction workers and the underlying pressure to conform), there are many elements that are distinctive and unique. First, the amazing temples, as well as the royal palace, which are incredibly striking. We also visited the Jim Thompson house, which was filled with beautiful antiquities (Jim Thompson was an American who arrived in Thailand as part of the OSS – the precursor to the CIA, then made his home there after falling in love with the culture and the crafts. He is widely credited in popularizing Thai silk in the West).

Aforementioned female construction workers

Lotus flowers at the Jim Thompson house

The Marble Palace

The Lucky Buddha – it’s difficult to see from this picture, but he’s actually about 30 m. tall

A monk climbing the steps at the Golden Mount, Bangkok’s most important Buddhist Temple

Eagles at the Royal Palace

Roofs at the Royal Palace

The Reclining Buddha – another impressively large statue (it’s about 20 meters long, housed in a temple)

A fuller view of the Reclining Buddha

Beyond the classic sites, Bangkok is home to a burgeoning arts scene – there are an incredible number of budding young artists in Thailand, from designers to graphic artists to painters. We had a great time visiting Chatuchak market, the famous local shopping extravaganza that sells everything from baby huskies to gold Buddhas, and bought a great piece of art from a local artist (unfortunately it’s somewhere on a slowboat to Vancouver at the moment, or I’d have taken a picture to include here).

Chicks for sale at Chatachak market

Street Art, representative of the modern arts scene, is common in central Bangkok

We’re heading for India tomorrow – it will be a departure from the culture here and we’ll certainly miss South East Asia, but we’re excited for a new adventure.

We have just spent the past nine days in beautiful Laos, a landlocked country in South East Asia that borders China, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. As soon as we arrived, we knew that this would be a much more laidback experience than Vietnam – we flew into Vientiane, which is the capital, and were immediately struck by the open-air arrivals terminal and the lack of crowds.

We decided to fly directly to Luang Prabang, which is the cultural capital of the country, named as a World Heritage town in 1995 because of it’s 34 temples and the Buddhist traditions that still take place today (i.e. there are alms giving ceremonies for the monks every morning).

The flight there was gorgeous – it’s only 400 km (but as we learned later, a 10 hour bus ride), and we flew over striking limestone mountains and jungle, for essentially the entire length of the short flight. There was also a dramatic landing, complete with lots of turbulence (which after multiple flights over mountains and jungles in the tropics, I’ve learned to get comfortable with).

The view from the plane

Luang Prabang is a city of about 200,000 in Northern Laos, at the crossroads of the Mekong and the Nam Khan river. The population has exploded in the past ten years or so, partially due to tourism and urbanization, but also because the average Laos family has many children. Unlike Vietnam and Indonesia, Laos is sparsely populated, so the government hasn’t implemented any population control mechanisms. Anecdotally, urban couple have four or five children, while rural couple have nine or ten. There were little Laos babies everywhere.

On our first day in the town, we signed up for a cooking class at one of the local restaurants, Tamnak Lao. Those that know me well will attest to the fact that the culinary arts are not exactly my strong point, despite my love of food. I happened to come down with the 24 hour flu during our prearranged cooking class in Bali, and Lindsay was convinced that I was faking it (okay, not really, but it was quite a coincidence). I woke up full of health and vigor though, so there was no avoiding this cooking class! We were lucky in that we were the only two participants in the class and there were two instructors, Leng Lee and Phia Yang. The day began with a visit to the local market, where we were introduced to local delicacies such as buffalo skin, ant eggs and Pa dak, a local rotting fish based dish (to be fair, 99% of Laos dishes use delicious ingredients that are much more palatable than these ones!). We learned that the women working at the market (largely farmers’ wives) leave their rural townat midnight in order to arrive at the market to set up at 2 a.m. Here are some highlights from the market:

Phosy Market Scene

Dried Buffalo Skin

Pa Dak (the rotting fish dish)

Pig snouts and hooves. Again, these images are really for shock value, most of the items sold in the market were delicious and fresh to Western eyes, as well as Laos eyes.

Like Banana Flower!

Laos cooking is very central to their culture, and is quite different from other South East Asian cuisines (this was a surprise to Lindsay and I – we expected the food to be similar to Thai, but sweeter and more peanut filled). Typical ingredients include garlic, ginger, galangal, kafir lime leaves, coriander, lemon grass and tamarind. They also use oyster sauce, soy sauce and fish sauce in moderation. Eating is very social, and meals aren’t regimented. Rather, they take place ‘whenever you’re hungry, of course’ (which I guess makes sense). Food is also invariably accompanied by Beer Laos, the ubiquitous local beer that I’m convinced drives 50% of the Laos economy, as well as ‘Laos Laos’, the national whisky, which Lindsay attempted to drink one night and ended up pouring into a planter, his eyes filled with tears. Families and friends always eat together and generally share dishes – the Laos people love a party.

After we had gathered all the necessary ingredients, we returned to the cooking school, where Leng and Phia demonstrated two classic Laos dishes, Luang Prabang Salad (a chicken salad with homemade mayonnaise), and Feu Khua, fried sticky rice with chicken and vegetables. Sticky rice is integral to Laos cooking, and is cooked in a special steamer that can be purchased at the local market.

When the demonstration was finished, we cooked them ourselves (with considerably less finesse!), and ten enjoyed them for lunch.

The ingredients for Feu Khua. Our instructors taught us to prepare all the necessary ingredients beforehand, and place them in small bowls – this streamlined the cooking process

Feu Khua (instructor made)

Luang Prabang Salad (instructor made)

Our versions!

Proof that I really did spend a day cooking!

After lunch, our instructors demonstrated five more dishes, of which we would select three that we would prepare ourselves. This dishes included:
- Chicken larp (a flavourful chicken salad)
- Khrua Sen Lua (vermicelli noodles with pork, vegetables and Woodward fungas)
- Oh Paedak (Laos pork casserole)
- Khua Maak Kheua Gap Moo (fried eggplant with pork). This was my favourite dish by far; interestingly, I don’t really like eggplant at home, but the smaller, more flavourful Asian eggplant is delicious!
- Geng Phet (chili casserole)

Larp

Khua Maak Hheua Gap Moo (my favourite!)

Our instructors also demonstrated how to cook sticky rice and Luang Prabang Jeowbong, or chili sauce, which is to die for – it’s actually more sweet than spicy, and complements the food beautifully.

Steaming the sticky rice

At the beginning of the afternoon, this all sounded a little daunting, but I was starting to really enjoy cooking (yes Mom, it’s a miracle!). I was struck by the simplicity of the dishes, and the fresh flavour of the vegetables and herbs

When we had finished preparing the three dishes we’d selected, we sat down to an early dinner (i.e. 3:30, after eating lunch at noon). We stuffed ourselves with the delicious food – this was a wonderful introduction to Laos cuisine!

Chef Lindsay

Chef Wendy

The next day, we signed up to do a hike through the mountains. We were a little discouraged by the drizzling rain in the morning, but didn’t let it dissuade us from going. We were joined by a local guide, as well as an Irish couple (who are moving to Vancouver next year) and a British man living in Namibia (after chatting with him for a while, it is now on my list of countries to visit!). The hike was relatively flat at first, taking us through rice patties and farmers fields. Eventually we started our ascent into the limestone hills – it was spectacular. The countryside in Laos is lush and green, and the jungle was well preserved in this area. Unfortunately, what we didn’t expect was the downpour that ensued – we hadn’t brought our raincoats and were pretty soaked. This wasn’t hugely uncomfortable as the weather was warm, the issue was actually that at some points, we had 2 inches of mud stuck to the bottom of our shoes, which made for some interesting descents. Surprisingly, I was the only person not to fall on my bum during the hike – it was very slippery!

Elephant rice

Lao countryside

A limestone mountain

Lindsay’s muddy shoe

Another shot of the countryside

We passed through a number of small villages along the way – 80% of Laos’ population is rural, and all of the people we met along the way were subsistence farmers and their families (that is, all of the people that actually emerged from their homes in the rain – our guide told us they thought we were crazy for being outside in the wet). Lindsay managed to terrify a young Hmong child by sticking his tongue at her – as we left the village, we watched helplessly as the traumatized two year old sobbed into her sister’s arms. Here are some photos of the towns that we passed through:

A typical village home

Some terrified children (just kidding, for the most part, Lindsay was able to interact with the local kids without reducing them to tears)

Another view of a village – this one complete with satellite dish (keeping in mind that these are subsistence farmers)

The next day, it was pouring rain again, and this time we confined ourselves to our guesthouse, as well as a few of the myriad cafes and restaurants around town. The French left behind a few nice legacies in Luang Prabang – the cafes with their delicious Laos coffee, the baguettes, which you can buy on the side of the road for $0.25, and the wine, which is readily available and quite cheap. The architecture is also distinctly colonial – the river and the main street are lined with impeccable wooden guesthouses.

A typical wooden storefront

The view from the top of Luang Prabang across the Mekong

A storm over Luang Prabang

Beautiful flowers growing in the wild

This is not to say that Laos doesn’t have it’s own distinctive style and culture. The food, as mentioned earlier, is unique and delicious, and the crafts, in particular the woven silk, are amazing. Every night, women come in from the outskirts of the town, bringing beautiful silk scarves, blankets and clothing – they are impeccably laid out on tarps in the night market. The market itself has dozens of stands, many with identical wares, and quality that surpassed anything we’d seen thus far. As an aside, competitors selling the exact same good or service in close proximity to one another is definitely a common theme in Southeast Asia – it’s literally perfect competition everywhere. Even the stores in the malls are arranged in categories (beauty, sports, fashion, etc.). We spent some time exploring the town’s temples as well – while they lack the opulence of a typical Thai temple, they are quite charming.

Buddhas at one of the many temples

The rain finally subsided (we discovered midway through our time there that we had chosen to visit Laos in the height of its rainy season), and we spent a day at the elephant village. The village is a sanctuary for elephants that have spent their lives working the logging industry, where they were overworked and systemically abused. For myriad reasons, these elephants were no longer useful to the logging companies, and the elephant village adopted them. The village has nine elephants, all female (you can distinguish between the two because female Asian elephants don’t have tusks). We had signed up for ‘Mahout’ training (‘mahout’ means elephant trainer, so we were training to train) and commenced our day with a ride on our elephant, Mae San, and our mahout, Mr. Pan. Mae San was a 35 year old elephant, who was blind in one eye. We began on the howda (carriage), then Linds and I each took a turn on the elephants neck. It was a little scary at first, particularly on the downhill portions, but once you realize how strong and enormous the elephants are, you relax a lot. Following our ride, we began our mahout training, which is a series of commands that include: Forward (pai), backward (howhow), left (sai), right (kwa) and mount (seung seung). When you make the ‘seung seung’ command, the elephants actually raise their knee up so you can climb on (it’s pretty high up, but you can use their ears to hoist yourself .. it doesn’t hurt them).

Lindsay riding the elephant (Mr. Pan and I are in the howda)

Climbing up (graceful as usual!)

I made it

Linds and I feeding the elephant

After lunch came my favourite part of the day – elephant bathing time. Our guide basically told us that we were going down to the river to wash the elephants, which I assumed entailed me, armed with a hose on the riverbank, lazily spraying the elephant as he splashed around. How wrong I was. In actual fact, we rode our elephants down to the river, and when we reached the water, the elephants just plunged on in .. with us on their backs. I was first in line, so this was a bit of a shocker. This was exacerbates by the fact that my elephant was crazy. He dunked his head, then dunked me, then climbed up the riverbed to eat bamboo, leaving me struggling against gravity on his back. Elephants are hungry beasts that eat up to 250 kg. of food per day, but I swear mine had a particularly voracious appetite. This Portion of the day reinforced a critical pillar of ‘mahout’ training – ‘never completely trust an elephant’. They are gentle, sensitive creatures (they have even been know to cry!), but they are still wild animals. In fact, it usually takes over 10 years for the elephants to trust and obey their mahout! Here are some highlights from elephant bath time:

Heading down to the riverbank

And … in the river … very wet

My elephant reaching for his 8,000th carbohydrate gram of the day

We reluctantly said goodbye to our elephants, and took a boat ride to the Tad Sae waterfalls nearby. If you close your eyes and imagine tropical paradise, they might be featured!

A view of the falls

The monks swimming in the waterfall

Another view, further up the hill

The next day, we rented a scooter (we have wanted to do this for ages, but Laos is the first place that it didn’t feel suicidal to do so) and visited another of falls, which were equally spectacular.

The next day, we took the bus ride to Vientiane, the capital, to catch our flight to Bangkok. At first glance, a 10 hour bus ride might appear inferiour to a 1/2 hour flight, but then we saw our bus …

And we realized that clearly the ‘king of bus’ was the only option.

I will miss Laos – its been my favourite destination thus far, and we definitely plan to return one day. It is unspoiled, charming and unbelievably picturesque.

Linds and I arrived in Hanoi, and as soon as we embarked upon our journey from the airport to the city, were immediately thrust into the chaos and the bustle of the place. Prior to our trip, when I rhymed off our itinerary for friends and family, their response to most destinations was universally favourable. This was not exactly the case for Hanoi, for which their reaction was met with either unbridled enthusiasm or disdain. After spending a couple of days here, it has become clear to me why the city is so polarizing … the traffic. While I have to admit that the extent of my travels through the undeveloped and developing world aren’t enormous, I can say with certainty that Hanoi has the most insane traffic I have encountered yet.

There are virtually no pedestrians; instead, everyone rides scooters and motorcycles. There are also some buses and cars (the kings and princes of the road!), and some bikes (bottom feeders). There are no rules to speak of. Traffic lights are optional; watching scooters drive through an intersection is akin to an accelerated, motorized version of Red Rover. Except everyone gets through unscathed (at least insofar as we observed, I’m sure that there must be exceptions). To hesitate or swerve is to admit defeat, and actually probably poses more danger to you and your fellow motorists than simply forging ahead blindly. After several near death experiences (at least in my head), I realized that adopting this same zen-like mental fortitude was required in order for pedestrians to cross the road. I developed a ritual. Whenever we approached an intersection, I would take a deep breath, give myself a little mental pep talk (‘You can do this Wendy! Be Brave!’) and then I would basically hurtle myself in to what appeared to be an impenetrable wall of vehicles. It worked. Anyway, enough of my (probably overly) dramatic traffic rant. I’ll leave you with these photos, which might do it more justice:

Bad

Worse

Worst

Aside from introducing us to the city’s traffic rules (or lack thereof), the drive from the airport also gave us a wonderful view of the colourful French colonial architecture that still dominates the city’s skyline. After arriving at our hotel, we went for a walk, enjoyed some street food (a delicious and enormous ‘hot pot’), and checked out Lenin Park (lest you forget that this is a communist country). While the traffic makes it difficult to walk around the city, it is a wonderful way to take it all in – there are vendors, street markets, restaurants and people just hanging out everywhere you look – it’s really full of character. Here are some pictures of the scenes around the city and Lenin Park.

Getting a haircut on the street

Typical Colonial architecture

Woman performing aerobics en masse in the park (everywhere you went in the early morning and evenings, large groups of people were exercising together in parks, on sidewalks, and my personal favourite, traffic medians, where I saw some elderly Vietnamese women performing morning Thai Chi)

This merry-go-round in Lenin Park had seen better days – essentially the entire park was under construction (i.e. completely dug up), but this didn’t stop hoards of people from visiting

There are street vendors everywhere in Hanoi – they typically carry baskets of food like these on their shoulders – like a giant scale. You can buy fruits, vegetables, insects, grubs, you name it really!

Trees lit up at night

It was nice to see a sunset again – prior to this, we were so close to the equator that the sun literally just fell out of the sky and suddenly it was dark!

The next day, we visited the city’s historical prison, which housed Vietnamese political prisoners locked up by the French in the first half of the 20th century, and Americans during the Vietnam war. It is actually on the grounds of the Hanoi Hilton, and there is a pre-school overlooking the prison grounds – a wonderful scene for young children to mold their minds by!

A cell door

Another view of a cell

Some (incorrect) propaganda. They may have taken some liberties with history here – for me, it evoked memories of the portrayal of the American ‘imperialists’ in the National History Museum in Cuba (complete with satirical cartoons of George W. Bush and entourage). According to the museum, the Americans had a wonderful time in Vietnamese jail – they played basketball, ate well balanced meals, enjoyed Christmas celebrations, and most importantly, their benevolent Vietnamese captors taught them valuable life lessons, such as ‘God is watching people outside of America. Not just in America, like the Americans believe.’ Or something to that effect.

Below is a picture of John McCain, who they apparently tended to with care and nursed back to health. They didn’t mention the accompanying torture, and I have to admit I was curious about his reaction to the prison’s rhetoric when he returned for a visit in 2000.

In all seriousness, beyond the exhibit’s hyperbole, the 20th century was tremendously gory and difficult for the Vietnamese – the prison visit certainly made me appreciate and sympathize with how much the Vietnamese people went through during the past 100 years.

That afternoon, we spent more time wandering around the city, here are some highlights:

Typical cityscape

The old city wall

Eggs for sale (duck, chicken, quail, you name it!)

Roast pig’s feet – considered a delicacy

We crossed the main highway to visit the river’s edge, which we expected would be quite developed. Instead, it was essentially a small row of slum houses, with people (aptly named ‘River People’), who lived in abject poverty in stilt houses, just minutes away from the city’s core. While Vietnam’s economy is exploding, the disparity between wealthy and poor is obvious. It will be quite fascinating to return to Hanoi in ten years and see how much it has changed – right now there are no chain stores, few Western brands, and no supermarkets, people still buy vegetables at the side of the road and eat on plastic chairs outside restaurants (the cafe culture appears to be a charming hangover from the French occupation). I’m not sure how long this will last.

We purchased and tried a custard apple, which tastes as good as it sounds!

Then, we went wedding dress shopping for Sharon. There were some excellent options to choose from. I think that she’ll agree with Lindsay and I that purchasing her wedding attire from Vietnam is the only fashionable choice!

That night, we had a wonderful, memorable dinner at a restaurant called The Green Tangerine, that our friend Beau recommended to us. It was a fantastic recommendation – the dishes were a fusion of Vietnamese and French food, and the ambiance was beautiful. I’d highly recommend this place to anyone who happens to visit Hanoi.

The next day, we set off for Ha Long Bay. This was the main destination of our very short stay in Vietnam. We’d booked a trip on a junk (wooden boat) for the night. After a squished 4 hour bus ride (they insist on piling as many people as they can into the mini buses in Asia, and the seats are really far too small for anyone above 5’3″ and 100 pounds … poor Lindsay!). We boarded the boat – it was an eclectic group – a Chinese nouveau riche couple, a quiet Chinese family, a group of Vietnamese guys in their early 20′s, three British teacher couples, and us. Ha Long Bay is absolutely spectacular. It is also unbelievably touristy – especially since we were there on a holiday weekend in August. At one point, I counted 40 other boats in near vicinity of ours. We took a ride through the islands, and visited a spectacular cave (we don’t have pictures – Lindsay refused to take the camera because he was so annoyed at how busy it was – we both regretted it!). The cave was absolutely enormous, and contained graffiti dating back to the early 20th century (French names), which was quite interesting. Here are some shots of Ha Long Bay.

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That night, after dinner, our exuberant tour guide informed us that because two of the English school teachers were celebrating birthdays, he was going to ‘make a party’ for us! We had just finished our dinner, and were relaxing on the deck enjoying the view (above), and so groaned a little at the thought of returning down below deck for some forced fun. When he rolled out the karaoke machine, the groans deepened. But .. when birthday cake and wine were served, folks started getting a little more jovial. Finally, when our fearless guide serenaded us with a beautiful Lionel Richie song in broken English, we all got into the spirit of things. Lindsay’s rendition of G’n'R’s ‘Sweet Child of Mine’ scored 100 on the karaoke scoring machine (a highly scientific tool), and inspired a very sincere compliment from one of the deck hands (“You’re a really good singer”, “Thanks!”, “No, I mean it, you’re a REALLY good singer”), but in my mind, it was this young Vietnamese man who stole the show. After years of practicing in front of his bedroom mirror, it was finally his time to shine.

Did I think that I would spend a moonlit night in one of the world’s most serene and peaceful World Heritage Sites with a bunch of Vietnamese guys singing ‘We are the World’? No. Was it fun? Absolutely. I have to admit that this was a hilarious night.

This will give you a sense of just how many tourists (largely Chinese), visit Ha Long Bay.

As our tour drew to a close, we visited a local vendor for a treat. What else to try, but an ice cream for lady? Mmmm, lady ice cream.

This will be a very short post, since we’ve been in Kuala Lumpur for all of about 16 hours and are in the airport now, waiting for our flight to Hanoi. Unfortunately, during our time here, we had a couple of travel mishaps, both taxi related. On the way from the airport into town, our taxi driver got pulled over for running a red light (he was, on every level, an absolute psycho), then dropped us off in the totally wrong part of town. We were staying at our friend Jen’s place near the downtown core, but got dropped off about 2 km away in a somewhat seedy neighbourhood. Some aimless wandering, a sign language dotted conversation and another $10 cab ride later, we finally arrived at Jen’s place. Unfortunately she’s actually out of town on business, so we walked around the downtown core on our own. I was truly struck by the modernity of the city; the skyline is full of sparkling new glass buildings, the most famous being the Petronas Buildings, depicted below.

I’m sure that when you have some time to explore, there are lots of interesting things to do in Kuala Lumpur – but since it was about 4 p.m. when we arrived in town, we were rather restricted to the corporate downtown core, so decided to take advantage of the local mall’s offerings – we watched Inception (which was was pretty good!) and went to California Pizza Kitchen. More New Jersey than Malaysia, but it was fascinating to see how affluent and Westernized Kuala Lumpur is; there are even American-style suburbs encircling the city – a far cry from rural Indonesia!   

We had a 6:30 a.m. flight, so got up at 4 a.m. Unfortunately, this is where the mishap #2 came into play. Our cab driver dropped us off at the wrong terminal for our Air Asia flight. In most airports this wouldn’t be an issue, you’d simply walk or take a 3-minute train ride to the correct terminal. In Kuala Lumpur, however, the other terminal is 20 km away, so we missed our flight. As such, we’ve been hanging out at the ‘Old Town White Coffee‘ shop for three hours, waiting for our new flight to Hanoi at 10:45 (another 2 hours from now). Kuala Lumpur is a dynamic, impressive Asian city on the rise, but it’s cab drivers certainly leave something to be desired.

Palms in the central city park

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