Yogyakarta Farewell

Other things that one could do – a batik class! In Chiang Mai I thought about taking a cooking class or a massage class – I did kind of have an extra day there, but I did other things with it. Same thing here – I could have done a batik class, but I did other things around Yogyakarta. First, I went to an ethnographic and cultural history museum – Java man again, but also lots more – puppets, furniture, statues; Indonesia really has an interesting mix of cultures and influences.

Then it was off to the Sultan’s Palace (it’s good to be the sultan) for a concert – I hadn’t done any cultural performances yet on the trip! The gamelan is a traditional orchestra with 60 to 80 musical instruments, consisting of a large percussion section – which includes bronze kettle drums, xylophones, and gongs – accompanied by spike fiddles and bamboo flutes. At least that’s how Lonely Planet describes it. The book also says that the sound produced by a gamelan can range from harmonious to eerie (but always hypnotic), with the tempo and intensity of sound undulating on a regular basis. After hearing that haunting music at the temple, I wanted to see a concert for myself. The music was accompanied by (or accompanied, depending on how you look at it) a puppet show. That part was okay; I enjoyed the music more and used it to accompany postcard-writing. I also walked around the Sultan’s collections again – turns out I had been a bit crazed the first time.




I had the becak take me to some more batik and wayang places and to the main shopping area where I had been headed on my birthday before I realized I would rather be in the pool. And once again I decided I would rather be in the pool! My timing was good – it started to rain, which was no problem as long as I was in the pool. I had paid for an extra half-day so I could enjoy the hotel some more before leaving. One more satay and a delicious fried banana snack, and then I boarded an evening flight for Bali (and lost an hour while getting there).

Borobudur, a Buddhist Temple

I liked Prambanan but I loved Borobudur. One of the highlights of the trip – and it was a trip filled with highlights. It’s the biggest Buddhist temple in the world. It’s the largest monument in the Southern Hemisphere! Built in the ninth century, over 100 feet tall and over 300 x 300 feet wide, it consists of ten levels. Each level has amazing friezes and carvings, and there are sitting Buddhas and stupas on the walls throughout. The way to see it is to walk clockwise around each level. The lowest levels represent everyday base instincts and sins (or the Buddhist equivalent) and the carvings are of debauchery and the like. As you ascend, the carvings depict things ever more pure, until at the top, you are close to enlightenment, and there are only stupas, each with a Buddha inside. I was told this would take a couple of hours; many of the Indonesian tourists took the staircase straight to the top, but I chose to walk around each level, a total of about 5K (I did forego the experience of seeing it at sunrise, however). I was close to the top when I heard the midday call to prayer, which added to the spiritual feeling. It was a clear day (since it was the rainy season – if that makes sense) so I also had a great view of Mt. Merapi.







I saw a couple of other temples on the way back. For those not as into temples, there are other things to do in the Yogyakarta area (here I am, marketing) – you can climb Mt. Merapi, go to the Dieng Plateau (which has sulfurous lakes and craters), see the ocean (the beach town has hot springs and a meditation cave), visit cemeteries (you have to wear traditional garb to visit!), or travel to nearby Surakarta (nicknamed Solo – seems like a smaller Yogya with its own things to see and do) – not to mention other parts of Java; Yogya is pretty centrally located. I didn’t have enough day (or days) for any of those, but when I got back I had the becak take me to the nearby suburb of Kota Gede, which is known for silver, especially filagree. Again, I returned to the charming Yogya Village Inn early – I had received a slew of birthday emails and wanted to respond. And I had had some tossing and turning after making the Hawaii reservations (anxiety about my return, perhaps?) so I was tired – I just decided to plan the bulk of the U.S. portion after I got to the mainland, and then I was much calmer.

More than person I encountered in Indonesia asked me why more Americans don’t visit – is there a State Department warning? I told them no (both before and after I looked it up. There isn’t). I told them that it was far and that people didn’t know that much about it but that with Obama having lived there, maybe more people will be interested in going. But I also thought, “Indonesia needs more marketing!” Job opportunity? More up my alley than teaching English, I think. Of course, I could also help market Morocco…. but I digress. Oh, and by the way, there were major pro-Palestine demonstrations in Jakarta right after I left – not that I would have been anywhere near them – and the Thailand demonstrations escalated right after I left – and in addition to the major earthquake in Papua, there had been a minor one on Sumatra, the next island over, a day or two earlier. Maybe it’s best not to look at the news while on vacation!

Prambanan, a Hindu Temple

Near Yogyakarta there are two UNESCO World Heritage Sites – one in one direction, one in the other. One Buddhist, one Hindu. They are both wonderful – and very different from each other, so you do need to see both – and I had never heard of either one. Marketing! (Or UNESCO!). I chose to go to Prambanan first, in part because my friend Martin lives near there. I’ve known him for years but we’d never met. We’re both on a listserv called Princeton-writing. In my early days on this listserv, I was more active, and one of the things I did was look at a manuscript that he wrote – so we communicated off-list every so often. I switched to web delivery a while ago (the writers wrote so much that I couldn’t keep up with the emails!) but have maintained correspondence with some of the people I got to know early on (we’re also both on the Princetoniana committee – which also has a lot of emails). He was free to meet me that day and Prambanan was a great place to meet! From there we also had great views of nearby Mt. Merapi, the third-most active volcano in the world.


Prambanan, begun in 832 AD, has one impressive main complex and several smaller temples – the Hindu styles are quite ornate.


UNESCO entirely reconstructed them; they had been piles of stones.


Prambanan had experienced a major earthquake in 2006; some of the structures are being rebuilt, some are off-limits because they are unstable, some parts were left as is.


Martin hadn’t been there since the earthquake so it was interesting for him as well. It was interesting to see everything but what made it special was the company. It’s true – when alums of Princeton gather anywhere, there’s a place they think of, longing to be there, etc. We talked about Princeton, writing, and other things. I mentioned that I was going to have a layover in Japan and he introduced me to his classmate, the person who spent the day showing me around. So I guess the New Year marked not only the shift from one country to another but also from seeing Peace Corps friends of friends to seeing Princeton friends of friends. I now have two strong networks to draw on!


After we parted, I stopped at another temple and heard some haunting music. I almost bought the CD then and there. It turned out to be one of the more popular recordings of Sundanese, a kind of Indonesian music, and fortunately I found it again and bought a CD. I wish I could link to a sample but a) I don’t see a way to do it and b) that might violate some copyright. I had bought some Moroccan music before I left, too – it’s a nice souvenir of a place (and doesn’t take up much room). I had heard some Thai music, but not a lot, and there was nothing I felt compelled to buy. I think in Thailand there is much more of a Western/rock-and-roll influence, at least in terms of what’s popular now, whereas here there was a unique sound. Part of that comes from the unique instruments – more on that later.


I had time after I returned to see more of Yogya. I realized the day before that if I tried to walk, I would be hounded every few feet by a becak driver trying to show me around – but if I hired a driver, everyone else would leave me alone. I found (or was found by) one who was low-sell but persistent, and also nice. This picture of me on in the driver's seat is just so you can see what it looked like - the rest of the time I was in the passenger seat!


It’s not so bad traveling around while someone behind you does all the pedaling! We went to the Sultan’s Water Castle (it’s good to be the sultan) – there was one pool for the kids and one for the wives. The Sultan would stand on the balcony and throw a flower down to the wives; whichever one caught it would swim with the Sultan in his private pool, on the other side of the wall.


We also went to a mosque - it had some familiar elements to it. And in this country, I could go in!


I saw some more Wayang (I had seen a Wayang tiger in the Sultan’s collections, so I went on a quest for that – I don’t need any more tigers, but a Wayang one would have been cool. I didn’t find one, but I got wooden puppets for my nieces; I hadn’t seen those yet) and some batik. Before I came, I equated batik with tie-dye – something I did once as a craft project. Well, true batiks – centered in Yogyakarta, though other parts of Indonesia have other claims to batik – are elegant and beautiful textiles. They are hand-painted or made with stamps, and the process is elaborate – waxing what you don’t want dyed and then dyeing one color at a time. Yoyga batiks are in indigo, brown and white. I might have gotten a few items…as I have said before, when you see how something is made, you appreciate the work that goes into it. We went to a few different places, but I made sure I had time to take advantage of the hotel pool, poolside restaurant and internet, including making some more reservations (Hawaii sticker shock!).

Happy Birthday to Me

I realize now that I’m posting this almost exactly six months after the fact; it’s taking me longer to write up the trip than the trip itself took! When I was in Morocco I said that what I wanted to bring back with me, lifestyle-wise, was more writing and more reading and more cooking with fresh ingredients; so far I’ve done two out of three (I’ve been eating with fresh ingredients but not cooking a lot). The question at the time was, and the question still is, can I do it while working? And can I be less involved and active in other things so that I have more time for the reading and writing and cooking? In Morocco there weren’t that many other things to do – no baseball games, few museums, no concerts, no places to go out to dinner. So far I’ve had a good balance here in Southampton, but that’s because there aren’t that many other things to do here either – there are just enough. And, of course, I haven’t been working! I hope to continue to write – it is good for my soul – but there’s also the possibility that when I’m working I won’t have as many interesting things to write about! Well, I’ll likely travel now and then, and therefore may always have things to add to this blog. And I have some other ideas. And maybe writing will be a component of my work and I will get some soul satisfaction then. Too much contemplation? I guess a birthday is a good time to take stock, and even though I didn’t do it that day, I can take stock while writing about the day!

The trip was in part a post-service trip, but it was also a birthday trip. I don’t want to say which birthday it was (nor do I want to see mention of it in the comment section), but it was a milestone. I didn’t feel I had to be anywhere or do anything special on the exact day, since the whole trip was a birthday trip, but I did have a happy day when all was said and done.

I flew to Yogyakarta and immediately fell under the spell of Indonesia. Jakarta is a big city; Yogyakarta (nicknamed Jogja) is much more manageable. I happened to stay in my favorite hotel of the trip, the Yogya Village Inn – meant to replicate an Indonesian Village, it had two floors of rooms around a central courtyard that had a garden, pool, massage hut and open-air dining area. I put my things down in my cozy boutique room and took off for the Sultan’s Palace, which closes early on Sundays – otherwise I wouldn’t have rushed out; caught the tail end of a dance and then toured the grounds and saw the sultan’s collections – it’s good to be the sultan! He had all sorts of valuable things – but what I found notable were what seemed to be ordinary cooking utensils!




I walked around the neighborhood and went into a Wayang puppet-maker’s studio; Yogyakarta is the center of culture on Java. Wayang is an ancient art, handed down from generations – both the puppet-making and, the story-telling. It’s always the same story – the Ramayana – and all the characters are well-known. I ended up buying some for myself, even though I have no practical use for them. They’re special! Up until then I had bought gifts for others and for myself just a few clothes, jewelry or other things that I could see a use for. Then again, the puppets I bought bring love and protection, and I could use those!


I went through the bird market, too (no avian flu in Indonesia – I think; I didn’t get it, at any rate) and then I had to find an ATM and I had to get something to eat – I was running low on both money and energy. I started towards the market area to look for batik when I was hit by the irresistible urge to go back to the hotel, sit by the pool, swim, and relax, so I had a bicycle becak take me back there. There were mosques in every direction from the hotel, and the call to prayer resounding all around was magical – I tried to be in the garden and/or pool for at least one call every day. Then, I finally had some satay! It’s my favorite Indonesian dish, but I hadn’t had any in Jakarta. The open-air poolside restaurant had wi-fi, too. And since it was my birthday and it had been about a week since my last massage, I had a traditional Javanese massage, followed by a body scrub and a bucket bath. All in all, a great day!

Jakarta Exploration

The hotel where I was staying had a buffet breakfast every day (in addition to having a concierge – but it still wasn’t expensive). The buffet had a combination of Indonesian and Western food. I had always wondered about the buffets at luxury hotels in America, where the Japanese breakfast looked like dinner. Now that I know there’s no breakfast food per se in Asia, I had noodles every morning. Well, fruit too. Good way to start the day!



Friday was my Jakarta Day. First, I walked around the old Dutch quarter of Kota, which had colonial buildings dating to the 1600s. There were several museums around the main square. I went to the Wayang Museum, where I saw the elaborate carved-out-of-buffalo-hide flat puppets that are used for shadow plays. When my father lived in St. Maarten, there was an Indonesian restaurant called The Wayang Doll, and we always went there for a rijstaffel. So I had to buy Wayang dolls for my sister and for myself a Tree of Life, which had all sorts of wonderful symbols. On to the Fine Art Museum – some interesting ancient ceramics and even more interesting paintings by Indonesian artists – lots of rich, dark colors. Then to the History Museum, where I saw prehistoric Java relics (after all, Java Man was one of the first hominids) as well as furniture from the colonial period.



Then I walked to the harbor, also an important part of the history of Jakarta. A guide came up to me and offered me a tour – it was good to be with a guide, because I got a lot of stares. We walked past old ships that are still in use and got rowed across the harbor to a fishing village that was fascinating to walk around. A good tour, and it ended right near my hotel!




I wondered if anyone could tell me where Obama lived when he lived in Jakarta, and when I went down to the front desk to ask, a guest who was checking out said that she grew up right in that neighborhood and knew the place (although she didn’t know him). I had a driver take me there – both he and the people nearby thought it was amusing that I wanted to go there, but it was clear that I wasn’t the first person to do so (and I won’t be the last). Thus, the Obama Stalker Tour that ended at the White House began! It’s a modest house but I felt filled with pride that someone with a multi-cultural background (and an Illinois and Princeton connection as well!) was now the President.


Going to Obama’s house gave me the opportunity to see more of the city, too, and I had the driver stop at the center, where I saw the big mosque and the big cathedral and a big park and more Dutch buildings. There are some other museums too that looked interesting, but they were already closed. Then it was back to the Café Batavia and getting ready for an early airport pickup the next day.



The Canadian fellow I had shared the taxi with was the head of a school and he told me there was a lot of money to be made teaching English in Indonesia; everyone wants to learn it. I told him I didn’t know how to teach (I was glad nobody had asked me to teach in Morocco) and he said, “you speak English, you breathe, you can teach English.” Something to keep in mind, I suppose.

Art Deco and a Volcano

Another day, another day trip. This one involved a lot of driving (and a lot of traffic – Jakarta is known for bad traffic, and the fact that they made a four-day weekend out of the holiday might have made it worse), but that gave me time to read up on Indonesia. The official language, Bahasa Indonesia, is an attempt to give a common language to a country with something like 500 languages and 350 ethnic groups (or is it the other way around?). Indonesia has over 13,000 islands and is spread over 3000 miles and three time zones (there was a big earthquake while I was there, but it was as far away from where I was as California is to New York). I think that over half of the population lives on Java, and Jakarta, the capital, is a city with thirteen million residents. It was hard to get used to the exchange rate - $50 was about 500,000 rupiah – it wasn’t hard to divide, but just hard to think in the millions. Until the late nineteenth century, when the Dutch subsumed most of the islands as the Dutch East Indies, the archipelago was a series of unrelated kingdoms and sultanates. I wasn’t sure if the locals harbored resentment towards the Dutch – my father always said the Dutch were the nicest people in the world, but I guess they weren’t the nicest colonial masters – so I did mention that my father had lived there but at first I left it at that. As I got less shy, I learned that many of the tourists are Dutch and they are welcomed. Still, I got lots of mileage out of saying “I’m American – Obama” and that I had been in Morocco (like me, the Indonesians were interested in comparing Muslim countries!).


I had read in Marilee’s Indonesia Footprint book that there are three cities in the world with Tropical Art Deco architecture (I didn’t even realize it was a category!) – Miami Beach, Bandung, Indonesia, and somewhere in New Zealand. So of course I wanted to see Bandung! It’s the third-largest city on Java, elevated and therefore cooler than Jakarta, surrounded by rice and coffee plantations (coffee isn’t nicknamed “Java” for nothing!). There wasn’t quite as much tropical art deco architecture as there is in Miami Beach (in fact, maybe there were five buildings), but what there was, was fun to see.


The main tourist attraction of Bandung, and another rationale for the day trip, is the nearby Tangkbuhan Prahu volcano. There was a lot of traffic, and I found myself questioning the wisdom of continuing on vs. just going back, but when we got to the crater it was worth it. A big, steaming crater! Had there been less traffic (or fewer people!) there might have been time for the two-hour hike around the crater, but it’s just as well – fog was rolling in and it would have been a challenge. Indonesia has a lot of volcanoes and had I had the trekking gear that I didn’t have in Thailand either, I might have climbed one. But for most of the climbs that I read about, you had to leave at 10:00 pm and hike all night – and sleeping in a bed seemed a much better option!

Bogor Botanical

When I got to my hotel in the wee small hours, I had already decided that Jakarta was my least favorite place on the trip. That was a little unfair! It was based not only on the ride in from the airport, and often rides from airports don’t show off the best side of cities, and also the reading I did on the way, which said that Jakarta is a sprawl with no real center, no easy way to get around, and not a whole lot to do. My plan was to use it as a base and take day trips, since I couldn’t get around easily with the big green suitcase.


The museums of Jakarta weren’t open on New Year’s Day, so when I finally got out of bed at around 9:00 am, I had a day trip in mind, to the Bogor Botanical Gardens. The hotel concierge insisted on getting a driver for me; I’m still not sure if he did that for safety reasons, to offer good service, or because he got a portion of the proceedings (that immigration officer made me wonder), but I couldn’t persuade him that I wanted to take public transportation, and in the end it wasn’t so bad to have a driver.


Much of the population of Jakarta must also have decided to take the one-hour trip to Bogor for the day, but that was fine. I might have been the only tourist there! A group of students wanted to practice English with me, which was fun. The botanical garden is well-known, with a lot of exotic trees and plants, but nothing looked that out-of-the-ordinary to me, and I basically had a nice long walk in a lovely park setting, which was a fine way to spend the day.


When it was time for the driver to pick me up, I realized that all the cars looked alike. How was I going to find him? And then I realized he would find me – I looked different from everyone else! I was very interested in comparing this, the largest Muslim country in terms of population (Indonesia has the fourth-largest population, period, in the world), with Morocco. There weren’t as many women in head scarves, there were more couples, there was a similar lack of personal space (compared to my own, anyway). I had missed the call to prayer while on the mainland– it was good to hear it again. But it seemed odd to hear it in Arabic in a non-Arabic-speaking country.


My hotel was in the old Dutch section of town – it wasn’t near the center (turns out there is a center of sorts, no matter what the book says) but since one of the main reasons for coming to Indonesia was that my father had lived there and my father was Dutch, it seemed the place to stay. I went for a little walk and found the one restaurant in the area, Café Batavia – good food (though not Indonesian), and it had wi-fi. So after dinner I went back to the hotel and got my computer and went back to the café and bought my ticket out of the country. I’ll admit, the neighborhood was a little desolate (and my book said it was iffy), but I walked back and forth every night that I was there and, although I did have heightened alertness, I never felt unsafe.