Yogyakarta. Your face is like from Indiaaaa

I think that Yogyakarta is in its awkward teenage phase of development. You can see traces of Javanese culture, and countryside or small town mannerisms, but it’s also packed with people, buildings, cars, bikes and a bit of city grime that makes it rough around the edges to say the least. I think that it takes a few days to get used to, especially after experiencing the openness and innocence of Bali. Luckily we were there just long enough to grow fond of it despite the intense stares and “Hallooo lady! Yes! You have boyfriend?” calls we frequently heard.



Everything in Yogya (Pronounced Jogja) is much cheaper than in Bali. The exchange rate is about 9000 rupiah to the dollar, which makes you a millionaire if you have a little over 100 US dollars. When we booked our internal flights in Indonesia, we cringed as the automatic voice announced in a very Dr. Evil way that our tickets cost “one…… MILLION … four… hundred… rupiah.” It makes it very hard to tip people, because you feel generous giving someone 5000 rupiah… but then remember it’s only about 50 cents.



We arrived around noon on the 30th and asked our cab driver to take us to Losmen Setia Kawan in the Sosrowijayan area, and luckily he understood us despite our horrible pronunciation. The way you actually say “sosrowijayan” is really amazing. They force it into something that sounds like a two or three syllable word but still uses all the letters. This is the one hostel that I couldn’t figure out how to book online, so I had called from Skype and talked to a man on the phone who could barely understand me. Not only did he say my name very strangely, but I was unsure about whether or not he understood what day we were arriving on, and he didn’t ask me for any spellings or contact information. We decided we’d just cross our fingers, show up, and hope that he had written something down. When our cab stopped, there was a very excited little man waiting at the mouth of a narrow alleyway, who asked if we were staying at Setia Kawan. He led us down the long narrow alley, past little Laundry places and Batik shops to the hostel. Impressively enough, they did actually have a record that “Amoe” was coming today. We decided to live it up a little and upgraded to a room with AC AND hot water for about 25 dollars a night.



The part we stayed in is the newly built extension of an older hostel. Even though it is crammed in a tiny space in a tiny alley, it’s very peaceful and pleasant. It has a center courtyard with plants, flowers, a large fan palm, and a fake rock wall that has a fountain on it. Facing in towards the courtyard are all the rooms, which are each hand painted with crazy, colorful hippie looking pictures of large hands, faces, moons, suns etc. Our room was very clean and new looking. It did seem, however, that they had left out a few important things in order to accommodate their artistic touches. The only pieces of furniture in the room were the two beds, each with a very thin shawl like blanket on it to serve as the only form of covering. I also feel as though I’ve always taken nightstands for granted. Not having one turned out to be much more inconvenient than I ever would have thought. The bathroom had a very stylish bowl sink and pretty tiles, but there was literally nothing in the whole room to hang anything on. This makes hand washing clothes especially hard. They had also put in three, very pretty and modern light fixtures on the ceilings. They were the kinds that you see in restaurants for “mood lighting” or maybe in rows in houses for more dramatic point lighting. Tara and I would probably have preferred to be able to see at night to having roman tic lighting, though, so they were kind of wasted on us. All in all it was very clean and pretty, even featuring a very nice umbrella displayed in the corner painted with lizards.



The day we arrived, we set up a tour to see the famous sights (Prambanan and Borobudur) the next day, and decided to take a stroll to see what the city was all about. There are not many sidewalks around, so after dodging a few motorbikes and large busses, we got to the end of our street and found the entrance to a market. The market was jam packed with locals, and after an hour or so, we were feeling very overwhelmed by the shoving, yelling, and creepy noises that men were making at us even though we were wearing jeans and big T shirts. It is in times like these that it’s very comforting to run into something familiar, which is maybe a good excuse we can use for heading straight into a Pizza Hut for dinner. Sometimes it’s worth indulging in over-priced American food.



The next day, our tour left at 5 am, so we had to get up and ready at some ridiculous hour of the night. A driver picked us up, along with a couple from Canada. By six we were at Borobudur, which is a stunning Hindu turned Buddhist temple/monument from around the 9th century AD. It was rediscovered by Raffles when he was doing his whole SE Asia/British rule gig. Since then they’ve restored it really nicely. It’s made up of multiple levels of stone bas reliefs depicting scenes from Hindu stories and sitting Buddha sculptures that lead up to a large stupa at the very top. After that, we checked out a smaller temple, and then Prambanan. Prambanan is a site also from around the 9th century with multiple Hindu temple structures, each dedicated to a different manifestation of God. They were tall, stone, somewhat circular structures that came to a point at the top, much like many of the temples I saw earlier at Angkor. They were very impressive, but definitely a bit less intricately carved and carefully designed than the ones at Angkor. There was also a Buddhist temple structure nearby and a random park with pretty, spotted deer roaming around in it. It was nice to see how much these structures are still valued and taken care of despite the fact that Indonesia is now predominantly Muslim.



We were very hot and wiped out after that so we took a long nap and then had a delicious Indonesian dinner of eggplant curry and spiced chicken. Taking advantage of our second wind, we decided to go to a Javanese dance performance of the Ramayana. It was very classy and well done, with very talented dancers and tasteful costumes. Javanese dance is very different from the dance we saw in Bali. It was much slower and smoother and easier to follow the story (I guess it’s unfair because we already knew the story too).



The next day we hired a little pedi cab to take us to Kraton, the old part of the city. The pedi cabs are very interesting in Jogja. Instead of having a bike with a seat area trailing behind, the seat area is in the front, right above the front wheel. The driver sits on a high bike seat so that he can just see over your head and pedals in an almost standing posture. This is a little unnerving, given the traffic patterns there, and seeing as how you would be the padding for your driver if he were to be hit by something. Our driver was very nice though, and distracted us by talking the whole time in English that we mostly couldn’t understand. We did catch words here and then like “blah blah blah... swimming pool!... blah blah..kraton.. blah.. palace!” We mostly smiled and nodded and hoped that we wouldn’t get slammed by a huge bus of Japanese tourists. First we checked out the palace, where the current sultan lives. An English speaking guide took us around, showing us the little museums and pictures of the sultan, where they have big parties, and where he keeps his wine for guests. Since we were asking about the royal Batik, she took us back into a private area where women were making it by hand. They were really sweet and showed us how it was done and how to tie it on as a sarong. It was right next to the sultan’s garage, which housed his daughter’s tricked out Celica. After that, we went to the Sultan’s swimming pool. Apparently the current sultan is number 10 and the pool was deserted after sultan number 3. They recently restored it for tourism. It was built by sultan number 1 as a little escape for him, his wives, and his children. It consisted of three swimming pools: one private one for him, one for his wives, and one for his daughters. I guess his sons also had one but it was further off and has since been destroyed. The sultan’s private pool was separated from the others by a three storey building. Apparently back in the day, the sultan sometimes had around 40 wives. He would go up to the third storey, watch his wives swim for a while, and then pick one to come join him in his private pool. Sounds like kind of a creepster to me. As you can guess, the sultans have had many children through the years, and the ones that are not set up to be the next sultan are, at some point, ejected into society. Our guide at the palace told us she was descended from the third sultan. It sounds like many people in Jogja are descended from some sultan, or from some palace worker. Unfortunately, descendants beyond the grandchildren of the current sultan are not considered part of the royal family.



Everywhere we went, people were confused about our nationality. They’d say “Where you from??” and we’d say “America” and then they would chuckle and give us a “yeah right” look followed by the declaration that my face “is like from Japan” and Tara’s “is like from India!” She got it a lot more though, with random people stopping her on the street, staring intensely, and then saying “Your FACE!... is like from INDIAAAAA.” She also got a few people thinking she looked Javanese which was cool. By the time we left, most of the men who sat along our alley chatting and lounging in the shade knew us and would make fun of us for walking back and forth so much. We’d leave our hostel to a chorus of “Hallooooo!!!s and every now and then an “Amoeee!” with enthusiastic waves. We learned to walk through quickly to avoid getting taught how batik is made for the 40th time. We also discovered these really yummy cookie pastries stuffed with pineapple paste at a nearby store. After a few tries with the crusty, fake Tim Tam cookies they sold next door, we defaulted to the pineapple cookies as a sugar source.



Today is a whole, long day of travel for us. We had to wake up at 4 am to make a 6 am flight to Jakarta, followed by a flight to Singapore, where we’re now waiting for 5 hours for our final flight to Hong Kong. Our flight to Singapore was packed with hordes of small school children, all dressed the same and making loud noises. They all screeched when the plane landed, which was kind of startling.


I will definitely miss Indonesia. I’m glad we got to see two very different parts of it. There is still so much to see – hopefully someday I can dedicate like a month to visiting all the islands. I’m not gonna lie though, I’m ridiculously excited for Hong Kong and Beijing. The next two weeks should be a blast.



Sorry this is so long again, but I figure if anyone is still reading at this point then they must be used to it . As always, comments make me happy and so do update emails. Later gaters.