Our last full day in Yogyakarta was an educational one. First, we went to the Benten Vredeburg museum in the downtown. This is an old Dutch fort that was converted to a history museum of Indonesian independence and early national struggles. I really enjoyed the dioramas, which were high quality and probably took someone a long time to make. The stories they depicted bore a heavy stamp of “official history”, but as I was unfamiliar with a lot of the history and appreciated any education, this did not bother me all that much. It is amusing, though, how many were devoted to meetings, a dry subject when taken without the gloss of myth making.
Of course, for the many high-school history students there, we were part of the attraction. We starred in a lot of cell phone photos and made friends with their teacher.
We then got lost for a bit attempting to find the bus to Kaliurang. But eventually, we boarded a scrofulous foam-entrailed minibus which took us to the right village, and we chatted with an pleasant small scale businessman on the way. From Kaliurang, we attempted to board another minibus to the Ullen Sentalu museum. It was going there, but we were going to have to wait another hour for its regularly scheduled departure. Instead, we gave the driver an equivalent $3 to drive there right away.
I really liked Ullen Sentalu. It was up the slopes of the volcano, so the weather was cool. It has beautiful buildings on beautiful grounds, and is a gracious and personal museum of four sultan families of central Java, created and kept by one of those families. Especially charming was the room with many letters to a princess, encouraging her to keep up her strength and happy nature after her parents denied her marriage to her beau. They all had poetic phrases and photos of the sender; the girl’s parents eventually relented.
There is also a great collection of portraits both painted and photographed, an in-depth look at batik, and other quiet treasures. You have to have a museum guide to tour Ullen Sentalu, and ours, Tammy, was a real pleasure to talk to.
Afterward, we caught a cab home and went out for jackfruit curry. I liked the curry just fine, and the fruity pressed tofu quite a lot, but I couldn’t handle the solid fist of organ meat that came with it. Oh well, I just got more tofu.
On the following day, we flew to Singapore. I really like the Yogyakarta airport, which
is a startlingly good place to buy souvenirs. It was much better than Jakarta, where we had a layover.
Singapore began for us with meeting up with our friend Life Is Too Short, who we’d met in Luang Prabang. It was 8:30 pm by the time we were settled and ready for action, so we walked to the nearest hawker stall food court, the Lavender Street one about a block away. I ordered dumpling soup with greens, a plate of bao, and a juice from a fruit I had never heard of before. I sat down with The Professor and our friend, took a bite, and fell in love with Singapore. The fastest way to my heart really is through my stomach, I guess.
– The Private Eye
The Professor and the Private Eye: Adventures Abroad 