Car-free Bukittinggi back on its bike!

It was Car-Free Sunday in Bukittinggi! Turns out it's only car-free for a couple of hours or so, and I suspect it was only applied in a small central area of the city.

It's a great idea though, and I gather it's happening in many Indonesian cities most Sunday mornings.






It took me a while though to work out what all the bikes were about. There were dignitaries by the dozen making speeches, and a lot of the starters looked extremely fit and mean. I thought a high level  bike race was about to break out.  The Tour de Sumatra maybe?






 
But no, when the starting siren eventually sounded, it was a rather slow and wobbly procession that gradually warmed up and headed off down the road for a gentle little circuit or two. In hindsight I realised the front row was probably the police and military contingent, and most of those behind seemed to have hardly ever ridden a bike in their lives.

And they're off!

Anyway, long live the car free Sunday!

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.)

Wanna see my slides? - I've been to Java too!

And what a trip it was. I went to Central Java, specifically Solo City, the Dieng Plateau, and Yogyakarta (Jogja), to fill in a missing link in my Indonesia travels.

There were sultans' palaces, bicycle tours of the padi fields, a gamelan foundry, bird markets and countless other market scenes. There were the ancient Hindu temples at Prambanan, volcanic bubbling lakes, brightly painted mosques galore, and joyous festivals, marches, and gatherings of all kinds.

There was a world record giant batik production event. There was my night ascent of the 2911m Mt Merapi volcano. There were happy crowds of weekend domestic tourists on the beach and elsewhere. And there was the 'Idul Adha' Muslim Day of Sacrifice festival, where I was welcomed warmly.

Most of all there were friendly souls everywhere. What a wonderful place. What wonderful people. We probably don't deserve such good neighbours

 

I'll write up a few of my adventures in more detail over the next few posts.