Nice end to a full but fun day :)

Tourist day around Jogja

Today we played tourist... Jess S's mum is over for a week from Aus so I tagged along to see all the touristy stuff..The Buddhist (Borobudur) and Hindu (Prambanan) temples, a silver factory, a batik factory, lunch at an Indonesia-wide famous restaurant... It was really nice. We had our own hired car and driver (Jess' Mums assistant teacher's brother... theres always a connection in this place!) and spent the day visiting the sights outside of the city. Itwas much easier with our own transport, things seem to take so much longer when you have to rely on public transport! Our first stop was a temple called Candi Mandut, smaller than the others but built beforehand and separate fromBorobudur. On this trip Ive seen quite a few temples, which you can walk inside, adn theyre all empty so it leavesquite a bit to the imagination. but this one actually had buddhas inside! Stone ones anyway, and Hindu offeringsof flowers and incense at their feet. It was great, nice to find one temple where the statues hadnt been stolen!Borobudur was nice... not much different to last time... Im beginning to wonder how much consistency there is inpeople telling stories, or if they just make things up or agree just to make you happy lol. We didnt get a tourguide, Mas Wawan, our own guide, a local, filled us in on a few things... slightly contrary to what i was toldlast time...hm. It was really good- yesterday we went to the Office of International Affairs at uni and gotour temporary student cards (never mind that weve already been at uni for more than six weeks, no hurry!), which are wonderful things to have- because were students in Jogja, were classed as residents not as tourists, so wegot in for a tenth of the price poor Jess' mum had to pay :S no complaints... tho not looking forward to goingback as a normal traveller! We got harrassed quite a bit at Borobudur, a bit less than last time tho, because therewere other foreigners there the hawkers had someone else to focus their attentions on. Theyre so persistant, sometimes I just cant believe it! So so frustrating, I bet we said "No, thankyou" about a hundred times today, andprobably about ten to each person! It really puts me off buying anything. There were some nice things, but giveme shopping in peace any day and Ill be much more interested. I do feel sorry for them tho, theyre so desparate, if only someone could get thru to them how rude and frustrating it is to follow someone for ten minutes, walkinginfront of them and shoving your goods in their face and repeating over and over how much it costs, etc. Canteven look at anything or anyone or youre a target! Arg- the safe haven of the car! Strange place.Next was Prambanan, the Hindu temple built on the other side of Jogja. It was only actually built about 50 yearsafter Borobudur (buddhist temple), because Borobudur was so massive and intricate, they say it took over 100 years, three generations, to build it and by that time the Hindu influence had moved in and combined with Buddhism... sothats why Jogja has a lot of both Buddhist and Hindu history, before the Muslims came and pushed it all onto Bali... I really liked Prambanan. It was like Borobudur, lots of carved stones depicting stories, but there are more temples, each relating to a certain facet of Hindu culture. It was a bit sad tho, theres still a lot of damagefrom the earthquake, and we couldnt enter the platform for the main temples because they were still fixing themup. All around the major temples were hundreds of smaller ones and practically all were just rubble and piles ofstones. Massive job, reconstructing temples from the 8th century... I did like it tho, with all the different temples. It was easier to picture what they wouldve looked like when they were built, really peaceful.We had lunch as a restaurant, famous Indonesia-wide for its fried chicken... and it was good... expensive tho! But probably worth it. The Muslims have a few exceptions to their fasting rules: if youre pregnant or sick, youdont have to, and if youre travelling, you also dont have to. Well... we travelled to a different province in Java, maybe that counts?! Besides, its too hard to refuse something when your guide is raving how good it is and how youhave to try this "traditional Indonesian" food. :SWe went to a silver factory and had a look at them making jewellery and statues then wandered into the shop. A guycame up and said "Oh what are you looking for Misses? A ring, some earrings, a bracelet?" so I said we werent sureyet and he started taking me off! He imitated me several times, which really pissed me off so I decided then and there I wasnt going to buy anything! Rude, I just dont get how these people dont understand how RUDE they are! God...too expensive anyway. I could buy the same things in the market for a third of the price :P Bodoh.Cos Jess' mum, Di, is an Indonesian teacher at home, she was sort of doing a documentary of her travels, she hada video camera and was interviewing people and filming everything. So we did a little tour of a batik factory, to see how they do their traditional fabric dying and patterning... Mas Wawan, our guide, delivers food, catering stuff, to restaurants late afternoons so while he had the car, wewent around and delivered a whole lot of rice packages and little food snacks to cafes around the place. Got mehopelessly lost but its good to see more of the city and get my bearings a bit in areas I dont know so well.For dinner we went to my boarding house owner's restaurant... It was really good and much bigger than Id thought. We also had a play with their puppy, whos grown about 4 times as big in a month! And out the back, they have a boys kos too, which wasnt very nice. Happy Im living in my kos in the nicer suburbs... lol.

The Mandut buddhist temple~ one of the few still with a Buddha inside

Carvings on the outside of the temple & us with Buddha

Offerings at the feet of Buddha

Apparently he's quite different to most Buddha statues- he isn't in a pose, instead he's sitting in the Western-style with his feet flat on the ground

Us at Borobudur temple

Jess' mum Di, me, Amy & Jess

Chelsea... hehe

Candi Prambanan~ the Hindu temple complex just outside Jogja

One of the (maybe 200) piles of stones where there were once temples

Poor Candi with braces...

Puasa

Ive started doing puasa, the fasting... no im not turning muslim, dont panic! Im just going to take a leaf out of their book, and do it out of respect and sympathy for the people in the world who dont have all the food and luxury that we do. Its not full-on fasting, its fasting during daylight hours, and i did it today, and am evenmore determined to keep going for the remainder of ramadan (about 2 1/2 weeks). The Muslims pray at about 3am andhave their breakfast then, before the 4am prayer and then eat again after the final prayer at 5.40pm, but im notso inclined to get up at 3, especially as no-one in my house seems to, maybe if the other girls were, id join them.So ive decided to have breakfast before seven and break the fast at the usual time. Its not very hard lol. I haverice and eggs and vegies for breakfast, which keeps me going for ages... Theres a bit of a 3.30pm tired moment, sotoday i had some juice and rested in the air con for an hour or so and felt normal. We had dinner at about 630pm and i wasnt even hungry. It feels good, even tho Im not physically doing anything to help people at the moment, Ifeel like Im doing something to support other people. Ill see how it goes, it will be so amazing if i can keepdoing it until the end of ramadan, when theres huge celebrations and festivals... It will really be something I canbe part of, and not just as a token fast.

Weekend at Dieng

The Dieng Plateau... what a beautiful place! Its so peaceful and cool... literally, the temperature dropped as soonas we got over the border into the mountains and was about 15 degrees overnight- heaven! Its nice to snuggle undera blanket to sleep instead of clinging to a fan... It took about 4 hours to get there, 3 by minibus then 1 by normalbus. The minibus was nice, we were sitting next to a guy who had a few boxes of pizza, i was hoping they were travelling snacks but no, for his family in wonosobo :( lol. The Dieng area is much more mountainous than jogja, and the bus trip in was beautiful. So green and pretty. We wound our way up the mountain and thru heaps of littlemountainside villages, all with a couple of mosques. People in the area were much less used to seeing white peoplei think. They stared, but unlike Jogja people, they only stared and didnt call out and harrass us. It was kind ofnice. We said hello to a ffew people and asked directions, quite pleasant when people arent used to tourists and sodont have the confidence or feel the need to be so forward. Dieng was such a sweet town. We stayed at the Bu Jonoslosmen, which was nice, and the owner was really friendly. The main attractions of Dieng are its temples and geothermal activity. Cos it was once a volcano, there are still sulphur lakes and craters and random bursts ofsteam from over the hills. The temperature was nice tho, great for walking, which we did so so much of! We got upat 3am, after being woken by the 230am call to prayer from various mosques, to walk to a lookout point before thesunrise. It was freezing but we did it, about an hour to the highest town in Java, Sembungan, then another halfhour up a very steep path to the top of a hill. It was so beautiful tho, definitely worth it. As we sat huffingand puffing on some rocks on top of the hill above the clouds, the sun came out and coloured the mountains. It wasgorgeous. I couldve sat there for ages but we went back down and moved onto a waterfall that the guide swore wasonly 2.5km away... yeah right :S after half an hour of very steep downhill walking thru the towns crops and fields, we spotted it in the distance, twice as far away! We decided to look from there and then started the climbback up... only to flag down a kind farmer with a truck to take us back up the hill! It was great fun, 6 of us sliding round the back of this truck, bit rough tho lol. We wandered on to have a look at a bubbling sulphurcrater (bit scary) and then a temple, Candi Bima, the oldest in Java I think. Me and Jess walked around it seventimes for goodluck while the guide had a nap in the shade. Complaining of how tired he was, the guide then tookus to a coloured sulphur lake, quite pretty, and we had a leisurely stroll around it, then practically ran upa very steep path to a point overlooking the lake. I dont get it- where did the little man get the energy to get upthere so fast?! lol. The walk back down to the village between peoples farms and crops was quite nice, as was goingthrough little streets and alleys to the hostel. We left the guide to have a sleep lol, and had a rest ourselvesfor a couple of hours, before venturing out to see some of the village wed missed in the pre-dawn darkness. Anotherrest followed lunch (all this walking- very tiring!) and we went out to find some of the lesser known places. Thereis a fountain at the mouth of the river, which is supposedly a fountain of youth... unfortunately, the river hadbeen irrigated for the farms above the fountain so there was only a trickle of youth getting thru... good thing wedidnt need it ;) We were also on the search for a restored temple above the village, and lots of kind villagerspointed us in the right direction, some even escorted us there! It wasnt quite restored... quite a few left-over bricks lol... We also just had a wander thru the streets, saying hello to people (so much nicer than all this "Hello, Miss, where are you going?" rubbish in Jogja, its very nice and civilised when people greet you with a good afternoon or good evening! Some kids followed us quite a way down the road, and jess even got a marriageproposal! We did a bit of a loop and snuck int he back way to the arjuna complex, a group of 5 hindu temples almost fully restored (none of this paying 20000 Rupiah "tourist toll") and then back out thru some cabbage crops..a really nice afternoon and weekend, very slow and relaxing, I read an entire book, and enjoyed the weather :) coming back down thru the mountains the next morning was like coming out of the clouds, there was that much mistand low-lying cloud. Definitely worth a visit, if only for the fresh air and opportunity to really stretch yourlegs (oh and enjoy the semi-constant call from the many mosques!)

Bye Dieng... a beautiful, very peaceful town of potato, cabbage and bean farmers, where the temperature drops below 15 degrees... bit random!

The most beautiful mosque...

One of about 8 in Dieng village (a village with a population about the size of... Oakdowns!) Mild overkill, but it seems that up into the mountains, there are mosques everywhere and although very pretty... they were competing for attention, there were always a couple playing their calls and prayers at the same time!

An ancient catchment on the Dieng river... they say its a fountain of youth

Pity they'd put in irrigation above the catchment so there was only a trickle of youth-sustaining water!

Evidence of all our trekking... :)

Me with some girls we chatted with at the temples... they were really cute, practising their english as we went by

Someone lost the plans... where do all the bricks go?!

The Arjuna complex of temples

This area was once inhabited by priests, and they say there were about 400 Hindu temples... these 5, part of the Arjuna Complex, are pretty central and theres a few others scattered around, and lots of foundations and random bricks, I think theyre constantly finding more and rebuilding

them.

Telaga Warna, the coloured sulphur lake, from yet another hilly lookout (oh sore legs!)

They say it brings good luck if you want around the temple (anticlockwise) seven times... so we gave it a try :)

Candi Bima

An old Hindu-animist temple from the 8th century... older than even Prambanan and Borobudur (if that means anything!)

Dieng is a huge geothermal electricity area, pipes everywhere

Sulphur crater... :O bit scary!

Sembungan, the highest village on Java (2300m I think)

After walking down a huge hill to see a waterfall, we were very buggered... so naturally flagged down a kind farmer to take us back up in his truck!

Me infront of Mount Merapi (doesnt everyone look great at 530am after trekking for an hour and a half?!)

Really nice above the clouds... Bit cold tho! Its good we got up before dawn tho, because the clouds and mist came in pretty quickly and covered everything

Bit worried when our guide showed up in a snow-jacket and beanie for the morning walk...

Steep trek back down the mountain

The elusive Mount Merapi

Supposedly overlooking Jogja from the other side, this is the first time we'd actually seen it... too much pollution and smog to see it from the city!

Bu Jono's hostel, pretty nice inside

Plus it had (gasp) hot water! A basin! Blankets! Luxury....

Welcome to the Dieng Plateau...

Life in Jogja

Dont have much news at the moment so Ive just added some pics, stuff thats around every day so you know what its like... Pls note I left out the crazy-dangerous street crossings, countless "Hello, Miss" walking down street, sweltering heat, very unknowledgeable taxi drivers, and numerous conversations that cant possibly have been in Indonesian (my indo isnt that bad, they mustve been talking Javanese.... this local dialect/national language thing is really getting me!)

Take care to not eat, drink, smoke, have sex, go to the beach, go shopping, make noise during Ramadan...

Ok not quite that strict... these signs are everywhere, i think it just means to go with Ramadan and i also think (just guessing) that there have been 1428 fasting periods already (different calendar to ours so different years....)

Random little farm in the next street

Sad looking kids soccer field in the suburbs

Maccas showing some subtly during fasting... (curtains)

???

Dunno... I knew they were watching the white people!

Demonstrasi

Jess K and I ran into a demostration at Malioboro this morning... Im not sure what it was about, probably something about morals during ramadan... took a quick pic and ran away, its very illegal for foreign students to be within a hundred meters of a demonstration! Lol

My new friend...

Shoe shopping...?

No... this is just what all the classrooms at uni/ restaurants/ some shops, look like! The joys of muslim culture :)

New Austrindonesian recipe...

Heres my contribution to international cuisine... vegemite with pandan toast :) look a little green? yup... pandan bread is green! And a bit sweet... I feel this might not take off in the culinary world lol

Ah so true... ;)

Weekend in Solo

{Samuel and Andrea, our tour guides of Solo; the view from Andrea's front door, rice fields, so peaceful!}

Had a great weekend in Solo! Very exciting :) and very interesting. I could never learn that much in class! A friend we made at uni, Andrea, invited a few of us to stay at her place in Solo for the weekend, and was really excited to show us around... thank god! It was great, she must know everything about the city! We met up with her early afternoon and caught the train to Solo from Jogja, only about an hour, which was pretty nice. Some pretty scenery, the train was pretty empty, and it was cool, you can turn the seats around so theyre all facing forwards or so you can face another seat. There were three of us and we stayed at Andreas, which is the sweetest little house! She lives by herself in this little one bedroom place and its so cosy! She gave us her bed and so the first night we all squished into a queen-sized bed but the next night I slept on a mat on the floor, which was much more comfortable! She was so welcoming, it was amazing! Ive never met someone so kind and enthusiastic, shed do anything for us, made her home "our home" :) She's studying Japanese at uni and used to work in a museum and study archeology so she knows everything there is to know about the area- and willing to talk about it! Fascinating... her boyfriend had a car so he was a bit of a chauffeur for the weekend. They also had lots of connections- we had a beautiful dinner at his parents street stall, and baked corn from his brother-in-laws stand... so much good food! lol. Andrea gave us a real taste of Solo, cos each city has its specialities, and it was so good! Might have to go back just for the food ;) We went to a museum, an antiques market, batik factory and the princes palace... so many beautiful things! The vibe is quite different to Jogja too, its so much less hectic and less motorbikes. I feel so much safer when theres lots of cars round, motorbikes are so unpredictable! It was really nice, more spread out and easier to get around. Andrea and her boyfriend dropped us back to Jogja this afternoon, i think they were a bit worried wed miss the Jogja stop on the train! But it was nice, really lovely people. Andrea lives in Solo, so she gets the train into Jogja and back every day... thats dedication! A nice trip tho, pretty peaceful :)

Ramadam and unplanned bus trips

Had an intersting day so far... I went to the gym this morning and for a swim... I was up early and out of bread so i was planning to have breakfast at one of the warungs open (one that seems to cater for the christians in ourarea) but for some reason it was closed today... so i just kept walking and went to the gym, searching for food on the way. Its so hard! Nothing was open, I ended up buying a little banana-cheese pastry from Circle K, a 24 convenience store. So i snuck a few bites of that in the changerooms at the gym then the rest by the pool when noone was around. Im sure they appreciate that were foreigners, but i just feel mean eating infront of people fasting! im sure ill have figured it out by the end of the four weeks... something to look forward to!Yesterday afternoon, I caught the bus home from uni after our dance class (very hard, i feel so ungraceful!) and it wound thru the streets around uni, I was so surprised- the area was packed with people and food stalls everywhere!cos the last prayer is at 530 or 540, the muslims can close fast and they have all this special food and its likea whole celebration. I felt a bit left out, cos it was such a feeling of community, like success that theyd donethe first day of fast. And it felt really normal. Like this was just how they go about their day. I guess its hardfor western people to sort of accept the fasting, it seems strange to us, but Im really interested, maybe get involved. I live near a mosque and was walking back from a friends house last night about 8 and they had the streetblocked off cos they were having some massive sermon in the street! So i had to do a bit of a detour, and wandereddown some backstreets with a whole lot of kids and people in jilbabs and hats. Its kind of nice, theres such a feelingof community, Ive never felt safer walking around. Theres just this aura of... not sure, community and kindness. I know people cant really associate that with muslims (damn mass media) until you experience it for yourself. Theyreally are lovely people. After the gym this morning i decided to just get one of the buses in the opposite direction, towards uni not my house,so i could see how it gets to uni... turns out it didnt go to uni, but sort of continued in the other direction. I hadsome time to kill, so i went for a nice trip out to the bus terminal and back... I dont really mind, cos its good to see outside my area and orientate myself a bit better. The buses just do a loop anyway and I knew it came back viathe same route so i just enjoyed it and had a look around. Got talking to a guy who offered to be my indonesian pacar, but i kindly turned him down. He asked if i was doing puasa, the fasting, too. I was so tempted ot say yes, just tosee what he said... its all a laugh tho, you get chatting to random people, where are you from, what do you study, ilove you... they seem to know only a few key sentences in english: "hello miss!" "hello mister!" "where are you going?""where you from?" "ohhhh, australia!" "youre beautiful!" "i love you!"... its hilarious. Im very tempted to teachthem the aussie way to say hello tho, none of this "halo", we need some more "hellow!"s around!I met up with a friend of mine, she was my volunteer helper person when we arrived but we just meet for coffee andstuff... and we went out for lunch. It was so good! Shes studying at Sanata Dharma, which is a Katholic uni, and we went to a little place near there. It was so nice, everyone was there eating and noisy, and it felt really normalcos everything was open lol... yummy lotek, a veg and peanut sauce dish with prawn crackers... her sisters dog justhad puppies so we went round there for a while, it was nice :) she has 3 chououas and the puppies were so tiny! Herson was cute, he was about five and so shy! A lot of the kids are shy cos they dont see a lot of white people... ohthe celebrity... :S she was telling me at his school, a kindergarten, they learn english and mandarin as well asindonesian. they start young... its just so big here, english is a future for them. Mei and her sister were great,fed me some traditional snacks and stuff and explained how they were made, really interesting. Im so full! lol. Idlike to see them again, it was really nice. Spent ages drawing castles for her son to colour in lol. I also hada chat with some of the girls from my kos when i got back. Theyre really sweet :) Im a bit shy tho, Ill have to force myslef to be more outgoing and organise to go out for dinner or something.I think Im getting brown! People keep commenting on my tan... :)Off to Solo this arvo, yay! I love the people here, its great!

UGM Choir singing aussie songs... never heard them sung so beautifully!

Traditional Javanese dancers

Finally seeing results with the symposium :)

The International Symposium, Yogyakarta 12 Sept 2007: Revisiting the Developing Spriritualism of Youth in Indonesiaand Australia: Towards Greater Cooperation. Big title, not such a big event... We all had to be there at 7am for a 9am start... oh it was a pain! We all sat round for ages, it was quite unorganised, but it was ok. Got all dressedup in our traditional skirts and waited... not many people showed up so we waited some more and postponed the starttil 10am. I think in the end, they sold about 40 tickets, which is a shame cos the auditorium couldve seated almost300... they did a prayer for the success of the day and i wished so had for success for them, for the student councilwho put so much in and had such high hopes for the day. The first speaker, a lecturer from Deakin or somewhere whod wwritten a paper on why australian youth werent involved in religious groups or something, and whod inspired thewhole day, started off the morning. It made me so mad! He went on about religion and basically just paintedAustralia as this god-less awful uncaring country! It was just crap, he made us sound awful, which of course were not. It might ahve been alright cos i think people know australia isnt that bad, but to present that to an audiencewho believe so strongly in religion adn the part it has to play in life, was just awful. The next speaker was a guytalking about muslim stuff, and what followed was a debate and question time about their speaches and differingpoints of view. It just annoyed me, what was supposed to be a symposium or conference on SPIRITUALISM outside of religion, turned completely into a discussion on religion and how australians have none, which pretty much meanswe have no beliefs or morals. Very frustrating, cos in the lead up to this, we discussed for hours and hours on endhow spiritualism didnt mean religion, and then we go in and it really is all about that. It was intersting sometimestho, i ended up leaving early to go to yoga. Much more productive. Tho i did get a nice sketch of the dancers costumes, and got my grammar homework done. Oh and the choir was great too. They sung Home Among the Gumtrees, andwatzing matilda in these beautiful harmonies, it was beautiful! lol.

Yoga and avocadoes...

Yesterday I went to a yoga class, it was great! I had to find my way thru these little alleys and streets and i was expecting to come out an archway into some little oasis.... The yoga place was up these sweet little winding stairs and it was really charming. There were about 15 people in the class and it was nice. Really quiet and peaceful there, they had soft music (not loud music to hide the noise, like at the gym!) and the instructor was really good. It was slow and we did heaps of really hard stretching... feels good tho, i feel more flexible already! Definitely will go back, its nice to do some exercise that doesnt kill you in this heat!
For dinner we went to a new place, called Steak & Shake... interesting. Really fast too. I had an avocado juice with my dinner, sounds wierd but it was delicious! I dont eat avocadoes (i wonder if its spelt like tomatoes and potatoes, looks wierd) at home but it was yum, cos theyre kind of nutty so with some chocolate syrup it was great! yum... might go back there just for the juice...
Ramadan, puasa, fasting started today... Its hard to know, what you can do thats respectful and not. Its apublic holiday today so almost everything (food related anyway) is closed, and i feel a bit wierd even walking thru the food section of the supermarket. Going to be fun later, finding somewhere for lunch! Mmmm... might have to be maccas!

Earthquake in Sumatra 13th Sept

Just so you know- the earthquake in Indonesia last night was nowhere near me! Im living on Java island, it happened off the coast of Sumatra, near Padang, so it wasnt even felt here. It was a 7.8 tho so a tsunami warning was issued for all coastal areas (including in Oz i noticed!), but Im nowhere near the coast either... so if you were tempted to worry about me, dont!