12th – 19th September
Now we have left I can tell you that near to the city of Yogyakarta is Mount Merapi. Gunung Merapi (literally means Mountain of Fire in Indonesian/Javanese), it is an active Stratavolcano. It is the most active volcano in Indonesia and has erupted regularly since 1548. The volcano last erupted in November 2010 and so was due to erupt again within a year! So it wasn’t the most relaxing city we have visited! In fact a month before we arrived they planned to evacuate the city. Also three other volcanos in Indonesia have erupted in the last few months! Glen, being ever positive said “look on the bright side, if Mount Merapi erupts while we’re here the blog will write itself! Lol!”
We arrived in Yogyakarta knowing that it had 21 Universities and two UNESCO World Heritage sites. What we didn’t know is how many happy, friendly and warm people it had who were so proud to be living in Jogja (as they call it) and they were so welcoming towards two middle-aged westerners. The people we met will stay in our minds longer than the temples.
We had heard that the locals would bother us, by begging, which they did and offering us their services which they also did, but I think Glen bothered the locals more than the other way around! I am missing various foods from the UK and friends and family, whereas Glen is missing his Guitar! If we see a Guitar shop he goes in, tunes them and has a strum. (Smile) If he sees someone on the street with a Guitar (they are everywhere!) he goes and talks to them. Guitars have replaced Kites here. Also when we were in Sanur (Bali) we went into a shop and the young guy serving quickly put his Guitar away as we walked in but Glen encouraged him to play it and we spent ages in there without even buying anything!
Whilst walking through a back street in Yogyakarta one afternoon we saw a half naked old man making Guitars in a dark room. Glen went in to talk to him and strum a few of the Guitars, again nothing purchased but a desire fulfilled. (Below is the same man who had clothes on the following day and sat outside seeing as he now realised he might have visitors!!)
I have not taken photos of all the the people Glen has sat and played a Guitar with, although I wish I had now. I just wasn’t sure what a group of young guys would think if I took photos of them.
This group of teenagers invited us to sit with them after Glen asked them to play a tune on their Guitars as we walked by. They were not only happy to sing and play their songs for us but also let me take photos. They want to be our friends on Facebook now :s they were sat on the pavement on thin rugs in the dark and were so happy. I can’t imagine teenagers in the UK making foreign tourists so welcome somehow.
The hawker stalls and people sat on the pavement selling food there were even grubbier than other places in Asia. That did not put Glen off. I think his eyesight is failing and his sense of smell is for sure! (Smile) they are all so friendly and such lovely people though you just have to ignore the dirt!!
We came across a catering company in one of the back streets and spotted their vans that had the company logo on and I thought ‘ah a proper food production company ‘ but no! Another evening, when we walked by, the doors to the building were open and we could see loads of women sat on the floor in near darkness preparing food just like they do by the hawker stalls and cafes. No sanitised area like in a catering company in England. They also had woven trays with rice drying on the pavement outside, leaves having blown on top and goodness knows what else, oh and tea towels drying on the plant pot!!!
I had always assumed that when we saw the rice drying in Bali on the pavements that it was for offerings but they are not Hindu here and do not therefore put offerings out. We decided to ask a few people and apparently it is being dried so it can be ground down to make rice flour!! and will be used to make, amongst other things, peanut crackers which, up until now, we have been enjoying! You would think that a catering company would have a clean drying room or something not have it on the pavement ! Unbelievable. It is not poor or rough people who eat from these hawker stalls either. Well dressed young people sit there with their bowl of rice and noodles and chicken heads and necks! It is hard to believe!
I have just taken a break from typing this (we are in the airport) to go to the toilet. In there was a sign of how NOT to use a western toilet!! I could have done with a sign to show me how to use the squat toilets when we arrived in Asia two months ago!!!
I did say a while ago that I thought they were standing on the seats didn’t I, seeing as they were covered in pee!
The food areas are dark, some of the hawker carts do not have lights to see what they are cooking and they wash up in a bowl in the gutter in the dark. It puts me in mind of medieval times on ships when they fed the crew below deck in the dark so they couldn’t see the maggots in the meat and the weevils in the biscuits!! (not sure if I learnt that at school or when visiting The Golden Hind replica in Brixham harbour years ago)
The other day we saw an old women unblock the drain in the gutter by her stall…..with her ladle!! If only they could see how we live back home with our anti-bacterial sprays etc lol!
I say people have been very friendly here and they have, however, there was one exception. I got ‘happy slapped’ by an old women!! I know no one was recording the assault on their mobile phone but I got slapped and the old women was happy! Lol! Basically an old women walked by me and slapped me hard on the arm whilst smiling at me! I was so surprised I laughed, Glen said I should be cross but It was so random it was funny I looked back at the women and she was still looking at me and she was still smiling…. well I think it was a smile!! Glen thinks she was just mad. We were on our way to the Sultan’s Palace…. for anyone who was thinking of going… don’t bother!! and as for the Museum!!! We were robbed…. not only did we pay the entrance fee (only the equivalent of 75p but still!) but we had to pay extra to take photos. (54p… the badge and elastic band must have cost that!) The thing is there wasn’t anything to take photos of! I didn’t know whether to feel annoyed or to feel sorry for them! Thankfully we didn’t pay for a guide at the entrance! The ‘Museum’ had a few pictures on the wall and other than that it was just empty rooms!!! Seriously! totally empty!!! Weird! Anyway we only went in there because we thought it was the Sultan’s Palace …..but no! So off we went around the corner to what we hoped was the Palace entrance…. We paid another 54p to take photos (tut!) ever optimistic! There were guards everywhere, guarding things that I did not want to take photos of let alone steel! So I just took photos of the guards instead. Some became serious once I pointed the camera at them others continued to laugh and smile…. and smoke!
We were told that once you work for the Sultan you have a job for life. Then your children have your job! they have to wait for their father to die before getting a guards job! Mmmm my mind was working overtime here…. when I saw a youngish man dressed as a guard I knew he had lost his father, it was sort of sad.
They put me in the mind of a cross between our Chelsea pensioners (because of their uniform) and India’s caste system, whereby you grow up knowing your fate and what life you have ahead of you. Their first son gets the guard job, second son gets to be a puppeteer, third son to be a batik painter etc. They all had great respect for the Sultan. He pays a good salary apparently and keeps the city stable unlike other places around Indonesia.
Once we had walked around the grounds taking photos of this guard and that, we were directed out the back into the area where the Sultan’s workers/staff lived…. we were shown how they make puppets out of buffalo hide, punching holes to make the intricate patterns. We were also shown some brilliant Batik paintings.
We had great conversations and learnt so much and only a little sales pitch at the very end from the Batik painters…. “sorry, we can’t buy anything” we explained, we told them about travelling with back packs for months to come which meant we couldn’t buy and carry anything. They were understanding and happy, or so we thought. Our parting words were “which way do we go to get back to Malioboro Street?” And they pointed us up the street and told us which way to go. As we walked and walked and walked we realised that they had directed us the long way around! perhaps they were not so understanding about us not buying anything after all.
We had read that they eat cats and dogs here. We had this confirmed when speaking to one man in the street. When I looked disgusted he said “only local dogs” oh that’s ok then we thought! He said some people also eat rats and bats but he didn’t.
We have seen cooked bats being sold on the street! also birds other than chickens, tiny birds, I assumed they were little chicks at first but when I asked a local man stood in the queue waiting to buy some he just pointed to the sky!! There are stacks of chicken and ducks heads and necks and chickens feet, and thicker legs with claws on, not sure what they were from!
We should have been be having nightmares there!
We were looking to get a train to Jakarta (and then fly out from there) but everyone we spoke to even a person from Jogja who spoke good English said for us not to go. He moved his family there after signing a two year contract with work but broke the contract after a few months as they didn’t like it. People say “it is dirty, the streets are busier and dirtier than Jogja”….well they are pretty busy and dirty here!
Most of the tourists were Asian and not everyone spoke English. We had to write our meal order down one night in a Muslim restaurant as they couldn’t even cope with us saying the order and pointing to the menu. They are lovely people though. When we got lost one afternoon I kept asking people in restaurants and shops the way (and in hotels where we thought they would speak English) but they just giggled as they had no idea what we were saying! There were lots of students about (it is a Uni town so no surprise there) and they try to help but they say ‘left’ and point right! Lol! No wonder we got lost.
We seemed to be a bit of a novelty around the place, there were not many white tourists. The kids stared at us and people smiled from far away as if they had seen someone famous! We sat in a local restaurant with the locals one lunchtime which just sold chicken satay and rice and very good peanut sauce, but the chicken was not from a part of a chicken we could fathom and not what we have had before! It was too chewy to actually swallow!!! So what was going to be a cheap chicken and rice meal turned out to be an expensive rice and sauce snack! Lol! Although again we sat by some lovely people.
To save money and to better understand the local people and their transport system we decided to take the local bus to Prambanan, the tallest Hindu Temple in Indonesia. When I say the local bus the one we took was in-fact a grade up from the cheapest local rusty bus, thank goodness! We waited for the 1A bus to arrive and sat in a very futuristic (for Jogja) bus shelter having already paid the fare at the turn style. We started to chat to two Muslim girls as they spoke a little English, they were learning two languages at school. English and Arabic and it gave us a chance to refresh our very limited Arabic. It became a game of saying as many random non-related Arabic words as we could…. Min fadlak, Mumkin, Malesh, Mumkin, Mish, Mafish, Mushkella and Inshallah (Denise, we have to be honest here and say we could only remember half of these ‘M’ words at the time!)
Anyone who knows me well, well anyone who has met me basically, will know that I am very chatty whereas Glen is quieter in comparison, but not here! He has been talking to everyone and anyone on our travels, people in buses, people in the street, bothering people I call it (chuckle). Whereas I have asked people, who have been sat on he pavement eating fruit, what it looked like inside, Glen actually eats some of it when they offer it to him! He has spoken and played the Guitar with people in shops and on the side of the street like I said. Everyone has been so welcoming especially as we are so much older than the people who we have met.
In Yogyakarta they were so proud to be living there and loved the fact that we liked it there. They put us off going to Jakarta, not one person had a good word to say about it from young people on the street to people in shops and hotels. Taxi drivers and the like have explained that Yogyakarta is special as it is safe, there isn’t any terrorism or political problems like there are in many other places around Indonesia. They seem to be not the slightest bit bothered by the fact that they live next to a volcano that erupts every four years and have regular earthquakes! they laughed when I said “why do you stay here with the earthquakes” Our driver calmly told us of the destruction of the 2006 earthquake and tsunami and pointed to bridges that had to be re-built, he told us that his house was raised to the ground. But he was happy, he kept laughing, strange. I think he was over tired and silly like kids get when they are tired. On the way to the temple he was falling asleep as he was driving! Glen had to tell him! He said he had been up since 3am as he did the sunrise trips as well as the sunset trip he was taking us on! I said he should have a sleep for two hours while we were in the temple, he laughed and said he does sometimes.
Borobudur is a Mahayana Buddhist Temple in Magelang, Central Java, Indonesia. The monument is also a UNESCO designated site and consists of six square platforms topped by three circular platforms, and is decorated with 2,672 relief panels and 504 Buddha statues. A main dome, located at the center of the top platform, is surrounded by 72 Buddha statues seated inside a perforated stupa, not that you can tell the size of the place from our photos.
When we returned our driver seemed even happier, waving at us as we walked towards the car park. We got in the car and it wouldn’t start! Another man pushed us and it finally started. He laughed. I asked whether he had had a good sleep while we had gone and he said “no I have been talking to my friend” and waved to the guy who had just given us a push! Joy! So basically I asked him questions the whole way home to make sure he didn’t doze off!
We flew into Yogyakarta a week ago with the sole purpose of seeing the Borobudur and Prambanan temples but we got so much more out of our stay there. The local people were lovely, the Asian tourists found us intriguing! One lady shuffled up to Glen to have a sneaky photo by him and when we noticed they sort of asked if it was OK. I made sure I got in the photo too!! Someone else said that Glen looked like an actor in a film? People continually asked where we were from and we have spread the word about Bristol and Bath as they seem to think England is split it to two cities, Manchester and London! One driver asked if we spoke cockney even when we said we were not from London! (Chuckle)
Knowing that I had two flights ahead of me I was nervous and therefore quiet at breakfast, in the taxi and in the airport. It was a first for us, two flights in one day. (And me being quiet!!!) Glen on the other hand was happy and chatty. We stood in the queue to pay for our airport/exit tax and the lady behind the screen was taking ages looking at our boarding pass and folding it and turning it over and over so Glen said “what is she doing, origami?” I started to chuckle and then he said “is she making it in to a lotus flower?” He does make me laugh. Happy days. (smile)
Mandy I have just caught up with your blog it just brilliant, you both look great.
you have taken some amazing pictures keep it up take care you two.xx
Love the temple & some stunning colours in the market. Glen looks like he’s lost weight. xo
Sounds like you really enjoyed this part of you trip 🙂 xx
Just so happy to get in and out of Java without any natural disasters lol!!! Xxxxxxxx