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?)