Getting around (trains and boats and planes, plus bikes, becaks and buses!)

Plenty of transport options in Central Java. There are comfortable and regular train services.










 There are punts to cross the rivers on when you're cycling in the countryside.













There are lots of airlines plying the many routes between and within the islands of the enormous Indonesian archipelago, and they don't crash nearly as often as they used to.







Within cities you often rely on the ojek (motorbike taxi). I was unsure of the best pillion passenger etiquette. Do you hold on behind the seat, in front of you, or do you hold on to the driver? So I had a good look at what others around me were doing, and the truth is, hardly anyone holds on at all!

Or you can use a becak (bicycle trishaw - some of them now motorised with a little motor). I forgot to mention real taxis too. Plenty of them around too, though I don't seem to have a picture.














The odds are though that you'll do a lot of your land travel using buses. There are lots and lots of buses, going anywhere and everywhere. Traditionally if people stand on the roadside anywhere for more than a few seconds, buses will compete to screech to a halt alongside them, anxious to lure them aboard, whether or not they want to go where the
bus goes, and regardless of how much luggage they're going to lug aboard with them. Buses tend to be relatively clean and smart on the outside, but a bit the worse for wear inside. The ride can be exhausting. They're driven by maniacs who think nothing of tailgating and roaring past trucks and other buses on blind corners, only to screech to a halt seconds later when they see another potential passenger on the side of the road. Often, impecunious wandering minstrels get on for a few minutes at a time, and play ukuleles and sing tunelessly. Most passengers meekly pay them with a small donation - This is the country's social security system at work.

This sort of bus 'service' has usually applied to both city and intercity bus systems. So I was very pleasantly surprised to come across Yogyakarta's new city bus service. Would you believe there's a well organised network of air-conditioned city buses, with route maps and timetables even? There are designated bus stops - comfortable shelters on raised platforms, each with an attendant. You pay the attendant and are let through the turnstyle, and when the bus comes along it pulls up at the right spot for easy ingress and egress. The bus conductor, whose job is just to announce the stops to the passengers and to open the doors, then welcomes you aboard, and off you go to the next stop.

A day at the beach

Swimming's banned, and people don't take off their clothes the way they do here, but they still have lots of fun.

I spent a pleasant few hours in the beach resort of Parangtritis, 27km south of Jogja, in Central Java. There's dark, volcanic sand, and there's quite a big surf. In Australia it probably wouldn't be considered a particularly dangerous beach, but in Australia most people can swim.

There are other ways of having fun at the beach though, like riding around on horse carts, being covered by cool wet sand, or lunching on excellent seafood dishes for a dollar or so.









Or you could take selfies with your extra long selfie stick.

Sacrifice

Well well, what's going on here then?

It's the day before the Idul Adha (as the Indonesians call the Muslim Day of Sacrifice) festival, and I'm walking the streets of Yogyakarta, and here are these rather reluctant looking cattle being coaxed off the back of a truck.

It's right outside a mosque, there are crowds of festive people in the grounds, and the imam's in full flow on the speaker system.

At this point I need to issue a

VIOLENT CONTENT WARNING!

If you don't want to see images of animals being ritually slaughtered, don't scroll down any further.
























I was curious to see it all though. I eat meat after all. Animals have to be killed for that. If you can't watch it, maybe you shouldn't eat it. And if they're still alive and conscious while being bled to death, halal style, is that really much more cruel than whatever goes on in an industrial scale Australian abattoir?


What struck me most of all was what a friendly, festive atmosphere there was. It was quite a community event. There were specialist slaughterers (who stroked and comforted the animals even as they worked on them). There were butchers, smallgoods specialists, labellers and documenters. There were refreshments distributors, photographers, and mosque officials. And there were lots of welcoming people, anxious to explain it all to me and make me feel at home.













I was told about the origins of the festival - it's to celebrate Abraham being tested by God when he asked him to sacrifice his only son. It was explained to me why it had to be 23 beasts that were to be sacrificed (the number of prayers made over the 5 day period, I think it was). I was posed for photos with people, and I posed some of them for photos. At morning tea time I was even given one of the prepacked morning refreshment kits provided for the volunteer workers.

Sincere thanks to them all for sharing this experience with me. A good time was had by all (except the cattle, admittedly).

Rebuilding Prambanan - a job for life?

And Prambanan does need a bit of rebuilding, as you can see in this shot of the Candi Sewu complex, a kilometre to the north of the 'main' Prambanan complex.

Candi Sewu was a Buddhist complex, as opposed to the main complex, which was Hindu. Both were built in the ninth century, and they have been abandoned, rediscovered, demolished by earthquakes (with the last big one in 2006), and rebuilt several times. Here's the link to the Wikipedia piece, for a much better description and history of it all than I could do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prambanan

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. On a previous trip to Indonesia nearly 30 years ago I made the effort to visit Borobudur, the other great temple complex in the Yogyakarta region. That's a Buddhist one, and quite an impressive edifice it is. I somehow wasn't as motivated that time to get out to Prambanan, even though it's actually very close and convenient to the city.

On this last trip I rectified that, and was rewarded with a very pleasant day out.

The main upstanding structures are beautiful things. But I was very struck by how big a job they still have in front of them. Candi Sewu consisted of a main central temple, plus 240 'guard temples' all around it. Very few of these guard temples are still standing. The rebuilding effort seems rather slow and half-hearted, and looks like it could keep the handful of construction crews busy for centuries, rather than decades.

Prambanan's about 17km north east of Jogja, right alongside the main Solo road, and I got there easily and comfortably on an air-conditioned  Jogja city bus.

Dioramas of Independence

I'm a bit partial to the odd history lesson, at least if it's given in a simple enough, pictorial way, and with maybe a touch of partisanship and passion. So when I turned up at the old Dutch fort in Yogyakarta, and discovered it had been turned into a museum of Indonesian independence (independence from the Dutch, that is), I thought I'd take a look.

Most of it consists of big rooms which house about 40 dioramas which tell the story.



The first diorama features the early independence hero, Prince Diponegoro. He was a member of Jogja's royal family and was a major figure in the Java War of the 1820s. He was invited to peace talks, but when he showed up he was just arrested and exiled, we're told. The Jogja royal family played a pivotal role later on in supporting the independence movement, and the city generally was a hotbed of it.

We're then led through the setting up of local cultural and educational organisations, and then independence organisations and political parties. Things changed rapidly during World War 2 though, with the Japanese occupation. There was intensive activity aimed at getting ready to take over from them as soon as they left, and two days after the Japanese surrender on 15 August 1945, independence was declared, by leaders Sukarno, Hatta, and Soebardjo.

It might have been declared then, but the victorious British had other ideas. The British had been fighting not only the Japanese, but also the Indonesian nationalists (and managed to bomb and set fire to the buildings either side of one of the nationalist radio stations).

So in early 1946 those Dutchmen came marching back in to rain on the independence parade. It was nearly four more years before they saw the light and got out again, due to the pressures of armed resistance, international support for independence, and a lack of will and funds among the Dutch people themselves.

Indonesia's recent history has continued to be complicated, colourful, and painful. I was reminded of one chapter of it while walking back to my hotel that afternoon. All the flags were at half mast. I asked somebody why, and it turned out it was the annual commemoration of the events of 30 September, 1965. That was the start of a coup attempt, which was blamed on the Communist Party. This became the excuse for the right wing coup of General Suharto, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and ended democracy for quite some time.

Super markets and slow markets

As ever on my Indonesian visits, the markets provided lots of colourful imagery. Whenever appropriate I ask for permission to photograph people, and they're almost always extremely happy to oblige.





At the place where my Lonely Planet said Jogja's bird market was to be found, was this conventional old

style produce market, with photogenic scenes featuring eggs, chickens, coconuts etc, and their equally photogenic vendors. Someone told me the bird market itself had moved a couple of kilometres away. (Wonder if that was during the bird flu epidemic a few years back?)

I also came across several air conditioned western style shopping centres (complete with McDonalds), and even one such four-storey centre packed entirely with computer and mobile phone shops. Things are changing in Indonesia.

A rather big part of the Yogyarkarta market scene is the kilometre long section of the main drag, Jalan Malioboro, which is packed end to end with souvenir stalls: T-shirts, batik clothing, music, trinkets of all kinds. Peak tourist season is July and August (European summer holidays), so when I was there, some of the
Malioboro stall attendants weren't quite able to give it their all any more, what with their long shifts and little trade.

Batik - Now THAT'S a batik!

It's such a mistake to over plan your holidays. If you plan every detail in advance, you miss out on all the delicious serendipitous discoveries that are everywhere to be made when you wander the streets a little aimlessly sometimes.

So on 2 October I was wandering down towards Jogja's main Kraton (royal palace), completely oblivious to it being National Batik Day, when what did I stumble upon but this. It was a three kilometre long piece of fabric, looped backwards and forwards on the northern alun alun (main square), with about 3000 people sat in front of it. They were preparing to enter the record books, by creating the world's biggest batik!

It was a festive occasion, as are all these multitudinous Indonesian community events. There was music, there were dignitaries galore, lots of people were taking photos, including the media. There was even a long line of line dancers to provide the warm up entertainment.

Then they were off and running. The big collection of amateur and professional batik artisans set to work with their canting (wax pen devices), applying the wax to the traditional flora and fauna patterns that had been drawn for them. Officials from the Indonesia World Records Museum roamed the aisles, checking and recording names, and it was all go for a while.

A couple of hours later the square was emptying, the world record certificate had been presented, and the enormous cloth was being collected up, ready for dyeing and conversion into a giant kimono, for reasons which weren't spelled out to me (to do with promoting Japanese tourism perhaps?)

Reception room? Now THAT'S a reception room!

In the other room at home here in Sydney, they're watching that rather sad little English TV show, Escape to the Country. The funny little houses they try (and usually fail) to sell all seem to have 'reception rooms' these days.

When I grew up in England we had a living room, and a front room for special occasions, maybe for when you were receiving visitors. They were both pretty small. Now they have 'reception rooms', courtesy of the real estate agents. And they're often just as small.

When I was in Solo and Jogja the other week, I saw what real reception rooms looked like. What the sultans of those ancient Javanese royal families used when they had visitors to entertain. They probably still use them sometimes - there are still sultans living there, and in at least the case of the Jogja one, they're still very well respected and influential.

The top picture is of one of the (many) reception rooms in the royal palace in Solo (Surakarta), and the next two are in Jogja's main palace

To complicate matters, each city has a second royal palace where a lesser strand of royalty has set up home. I didn't visit these lesser palaces, to keep it all a bit simpler for me. And tonight, reading up on Wikipedia (so it must be right), I find that it's become even more complicated in the last few years. The Solo sultan who died in 2004 left no wife but lots of mistresses and dozens of potential heirs, who were fighting in the streets for their inheritence and possession of the palace! Here's one journalist's take on it:

SOLO, Indonesia — Pop quiz: How many kings are there now in the ancient sultanate of Surakarta?

Justin Mott for The New York Times

Answer: There is no correct answer.
When King Pakubuwono XII died four years ago, he left six mistresses with 35 children, but no wife, no heir and no instructions about the succession here in this city in central Java.
He might have guessed what would happen. Two half brothers each claimed the ancient crown, and the family split into two bitterly feuding factions.
The oldest half brother and his nine full siblings took control of the palace, a fortresslike complex called a kraton. He barred his 25 half siblings — the children of the other five consorts — and evicted those who had made their homes within its walls.
Except for one shouting match when the expelled half siblings stormed the palace and had to be removed by the police, the two factions have not spoken since.
Now people are asking what will become of the centuries-old Sultanate of Surakarta. Also known as the Sultanate of Solo, it has had no political power outside of the thick, whitewashed ramparts of the palace since the Republic of Indonesia stripped all royal families of power in 1946.
But the kraton here sees itself as a keeper of Javanese tradition — of purity, refinement and cosmic spirituality — and has continued to perform court rituals and to hold regal processions through the city.
Its royal family, meanwhile, continues to behave as royal families so often do.
“Palaces have many intrigues, you know,” said one of the evicted princes.

Meanwhile in Jogja I think it's all holding together a bit better. They certainly do a good palace tour for tourists like me. I paid about $1, and got entry to large areas of the place, an interesting museum, and several reception rooms. I was assigned my own personal guide (a dear old lady who could hardly walk and who had been on the Sultan's staff for maybe all of her 82 years). I also got to watch an excellent little concert, yes, in one of the grand reception rooms, featuring a gamelan band and a traditional palace dancer.

Solo pursuits 1: bicycles & cottage industries

Central Java's Solo City, known also as Surakarta, competes with Jogja, known also as Yogyakarta, as the pre-eminent centre of Javanese culture. Jogja is better known and much more heavily touristed, but Solo, with half a million people, is actually slightly bigger, and it's a more relaxing place to be.

What does a visitor to Solo do? There are temples and palaces to visit, dances and puppet shows to watch, and then there's the famous bicycle tours to do.

The best known bicycle tour is organised through the Warung Baru homestay, and involves cycling through the padi fields of the nearby countryside, and visiting several interesting little establishments.

There's a bakery, an arak (rice spirit) distillery, a rice cracker factory, and the inevitable batik fabric establishment. But the most spectacular of the photo-op stops was the blacksmith's workshop, the 'gamelan factory', where the huge gamelan gongs are forged and beaten into shape in a dark shed among sparks and flames by barefoot craftsmen with only plywood and palm leaves for eye protection. A gamelan gong machine consists of many different sized gongs, and this workshop's target is one complete instrument per day.

 At the end of our ride, our guide, the very entrepreneurial but highly personable Dodi, took us to the best gado-gado stall in Solo for lunch. The lady took our various orders (varying degrees of chilli hot, eggs or not, which vegetables). She then ground the peanuts with mortar and pestle to make our individualised sauces, and dished up the lot within minutes. And it was indeed delicious. (As was just about all the street food I sampled during my trip.)