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Yogyakarta, Day 4

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

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Posted by theprofessorandtheprivateeye on February 22, 2013 in art, cities, culture, Indonesia, Java, Uncategorized, Yogyakarta

Yogyakarta and Indonesian Independence

20 Feb

Dear reader, I must be honest with you. I’ve been a bit deceptive in my descriptions of Yogyakarta, relying on the imagination rather than fact. When I wrote that Yogyakarta is unique in Indonesia in that it still has a monarch, a sultan, and that the city centers around his palace complex, called the kraton, I wrote the truth. But when I read those words, I imagine something from myth: gilded domes, brightly painted pillars, courtyards and steps of marble, and a dignified man sitting on a rug, sipping tea, with bodyguards and the smell of exotic spices. The reality is a bit less interesting: a wall, painted white, some streets, mostly western style buildings, and a thin, older gentleman whose father really liked photography. So much more similar to the king of Thailand than what at least my imagination conjures.

Much like the King of Thailand, the Sultan of Yogyakarta is loved by his people. Yogyakarta remains a monarchy because, when Indonesia sought independence in 1948-9, and different regions began to discuss the idea of forming one nation, the Sultan of Yogyakarta was strongly supportive and wanted to join the effort. Yogyakarta was the capital for a short period of time. Because the sultanate was so instrumental to the formation of the nascent nation, it received special dispensation to remain a monarchy. Recently the region had democratic elections, as part of a slow process of modernization: the people elected the sultan with an overwhelming majority,

In the United States, our war for independence was hundreds of years ago. The country has evolved and grown since, but the moment of national birth was before the industrial revolution. For Indonesia, however, this moment was just over sixty years ago, when politicians engaged with other countries, such as the U.S., and students took to the streets to fight the British and Dutch. Indonesia’s war of independence when my father was 9 years old – it still exists in living memory.

One wrinkle to this very recent birth and slow formation of a national character is how geographically and culturally diverse the country is. It is 70,000 islands, from Sumatra in the west to Papua in the east. It encompasses the funeral culture of Tana Toraja, the animistic Hinduism of Bali, the Dani of Papua who first met white people in 1938, and the bustling metropolis of Jakarta. Forging a national identity out of this patchwork of hundreds of previously independent cultural groups is a challenge – the closest analogy I can think of is India, except imagine if India’s regions were islands, and consider the greater isolation that brings.

Our next destination, Singapore, provides an interesting contrast to the path of building a national identity. Singapore was originally part of Malaysia. While there were significant cultural, religious, and political differences between it and the rest of the country, the belief was that seeking individual independence wasn’t feasible for political and economic reasons. But irreconcilable differences emerged very quickly, especially on questions of preferentially treating certain ethnic and racial groups. And so, more like China and less like Indonesia, Malaysia pursued a national identity in part defined along ethnic lines, leading Singapore and the rest of the country to part ways.

But unlike the tenor this idea takes in Europe and the U.S., where discriminatory policies are typically conservative (seeking to maintain the status quo), in Malaysia they are intended to change the status quo and build a Malaysian middle class to stand along side the wealthy other ethnic groups (e.g., Chinese). So more similar to some of the policies in Latin America.

These thoughts are jumbled and incoherent, mostly because I need to read more – these are based on impressions and observations whose supporting facts might be incomplete or incorrect. The world is more stable than it was just after World War II, but many nations are still figuring out a place and identity since their birth and creation, whether it be Indonesia, India, or Israel. An example I should look at is Italy and Garibaldi – something which I will most definitely do when visiting The Medieval Scholar in Siena this June.

— The Professor

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Posted by theprofessorandtheprivateeye on February 20, 2013 in history, Indonesia, politics, Uncategorized, Yogyakarta

Yogyakarta, day 3

19 Feb

It was important to me that we come to Yogyakarta because it is the first place I have been where I felt that I was really in Indonesia – not vacationland like the Gilis, and not a place whose identity is so distinct (Bali) that you don’t really feel like you have been to the bigger nation. Not coming here would have felt like I had gone to Hawaii and then claimed I had seen America.

But Yogyakarta is also a vacation place, only it is a place for vacationing Indonesians. As far as I can tell, it is like coming to Philadelphia and viewing The Liberty Bell, other historical sights and the art museums. Families, the women with sensible headwraps and skinny jeans, ride in the horse carriages to the museums. (These carriages are bigger than they were in the Gilis, seating up to six or 8 people, and some of them are drawn by tall horses rather than dainty ponies.) Couples and singles ride in the becak, bicycle carriages with the driver in the rear of the vehicle. Like us, they visit the sultan’s palace, watch the traditional dancing (similar yet different than the Balinese), and visit the museums and the sights.

Of course, there are people who live here, and lots and lots of university students.

So yesterday, we got in a white Landrover type vehicle with a driver, and headed to Borobudur for the sunrise. Borobudur is a ruin whose shining moment was brief – built in the 700s or 800s AD as a great Buddhist center, it was basically abandoned after a local regime change both political and spiritual. Now, unearthed from volcanic ash and restored, it is a tourist attraction for both foreigners and Indonesians.

It is magnificent. We booked the “real sunrise tour” at our losmen (hotel), which meant that our tour guide paid a hotel located on the grounds of the monument to let us in before the 6 am official opening hour. We arrived at 5 and were each given a sarong and a flashlight, and went in a group of about 30 people, in the dark, to the walls of the giant stone structure. We were walked a few levels of stairs up, shown the best sunrise-viewing site, and left to our own devices.

Borobudur is like a giant stone wedding cake, albeit with the bottom levels square and the three upper tiers circular. At the top rests a giant stone onion (stupa), surrounded by smaller such shapes on the penultimate tiers. The entire thing is covered in astonishingly detailed stone carving, most depicting the life of the Buddha, but some showing what look like scenes of regular life – the books tell me that some of these show carnal desires to be overcome and others depict doctrine, but I don’t know enough about that to write intelligently on it.

We quickly figured out that there would be no golden dawn for us, as it was overcast. Instead, the Professor and I started wandering the narrow walkways of the monument clockwise bottom to top. We were almost always alone, and this was why we’d paid the extra money for the “real sunrise tour”. It was glorious, and even more so after we saw that the monument’s airspace is home to dozens of swallows on the wing. I don’t get tired of these birds ever.

Afterwards, I was pressed into buying some postcards, but as I had wanted to anyway this was no big deal. We walked through the grounds and then ate breakfast in the early-entry hotel, and then it was off to Mendut temple for a quick visit, and then on to Prabanan. On the way though a beautiful country of rice fields and misty mountains, I told our driver that we had never eaten bakso, a food remembered fondly by President Obama. We decided to get some lunch after Prabanan.

Prabanan is the Hindu sibling of Borobudur, built roughly contemporaneously and likewise abandoned swiftly after a similar regime change, both spiritual and political. Instead of one large building, though, it is a temple complex with separate structures for Shiva, Brahma, Vishnu, etc. We could go inside most of the temples, though we had to wear a hard hat for one of them, as they are working on structural repairs following the 2006 earthquake. The carvings are amazing and as you would expect a lot more fun than the Buddhist ones – multi-armed Kali, monster mouth doorways and mustachioed men abound.

It is as good a point as any to mention that I have found the mode of dress and presentation among the Javanese to be singularly sexually dimorphic, more so than other places we have been. Women (whom I tower over with a few rare exceptions) seem very … womanly, with small hands, small feet, a neatness and cleanness about themselves. Oh, and headscarves sometimes. Men have shirts cut close to the body, mustaches, white eyes and teeth, and handsome faces full of confidence. They roll their r’s here.

Anyway, we toured the temples for about an hour and a half, and then we and our driver drove to a bakso joint on our way home. Turns out that bakso is meatball soup with noodles. It was, like a lot of Indonesian food that we have tried so far, homey and satisfying rather than spectacular. I like the food here a lot and have never sickened on it, but it is not exciting the way Thai food is.

Despite our early rising, we got a second wind on our way back and so went to the Affandi museum, which we had been to the day before but found it closed. This time, we got a delightful (free with admission!) tour of the artist’s work, which is housed in his own home compound. The buildings are all a shade of robin’s egg blue with curved walls and a roof/ceiling style reminiscent of a banana leaf. He apparently felt that being covered with banana leaves had protected him in early life, and had used them to protect his paintings when he was a poor student.

I had wanted to see this museum because Affandi is recognized as one of Indonesia’s great modern painters, and his style clearly has left it’s mark on the local scene – at least judging from the paintings we saw in our hotel (which is run by an artist) and also in Bali. But I was most glad that we saw his work after we had visited Borobudur when we got to the third gallery. There, among the sketches, was one of his wife napping at Borobudur’s lovely grounds. Other sketches showed details of Prabanan’s carvings. I loved seeing the evidence of his family’s gentle visits to these monuments, as it made me feel connected somehow to this foreign artist who is no longer with us, and in a grander sense, connected to the world.

We finally went home and napped for three hours, then ate, foraged for middle eastern pastry for dessert, and then returned to bed. It was a happy day.

– the private eye

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Posted by theprofessorandtheprivateeye on February 19, 2013 in cities, Indonesia, Java, Uncategorized, Yogyakarta

Yogyakarta – Days 1 and 2

17 Feb

Oh, the batik salesmen of Yogyakarta. They seem so friendly, so hospitable. “My friend! What is your name? Where are you from? When did you arrive? Where from? For how long will you be in Yogya?” But once such pleasantries have wound down, they cast their line. “Oh, you arrived today? You are lucky, it is the last day of the student art exhibition, which has a lot of batik!” Because, you see, their eyes and posture tell you it is so sad, a veritable tragedy, how poor the batik is in your country, and so it’s really your duty to bring some home.

We’ve been trying to come up with a fun way to respond, to play along and pull their chain once it’s clear they’re trying to cheat you. The one I want to try involves reading up a lot about the art and then telling the person I’m a connoisseur, in fact a professor at a prestigious American university, an art professor who studies batik and so yes, can truly appreciate and discern a fine piece of batik. Of course, they might see this as raising the stakes – if I’m that, yet so clueless to talk to them, maybe they can make a HUGE sale… We will see. Either that, or be completely clueless on what batik is and then tell them that I don’t understand why you’d ever want cloth with patterns on it.

Our first day was a mix of reading in the guest house lobby waiting for our room to be ready, then venturing out to Jl. Malioboro (named after the Duke of Marlboro) to see the market.It had a lot of batik, of course, front and center. But in the back, there were also spice and food merchants, huge bags of cinnamon and turmeric, bins of star anise, cloves, and cardamom, all filling the rain-humid air with such wonderful smells. And, of course, head scarves:

The Private Eye commented that she’d like a guide: some of the foods, such as dried, thin disks of some starch that were everywhere, were foreign to us. And as she finished her first durian juice, her prayer was answered. A man named Aldi started chatting us up. He is a spice merchant, and started telling us about Sultan’s Tea, also called garbage drink, but not for its flavor, rather that when prepared the many spices floating in the tea make it look like flotsam and jetsam. As we walked back to his stall, we asked him about the different foods and he answered all of our questions. He then sold us two packets with which to prepare Sultan’s Tea, which include ginger, bay leaves, cinnamon, and a half dozen other spices. They were about 90c each; even if a total rip-off, I’d gladly have paid $2 for the time talking with him. We tried Sultan’s Tea tonight at dinner and it was great, sweet and spicy, so we will have to break open one of the packages sometime soon.

Today, we went to the kraton, the large walled complex that encompasses the Sultan’s palace. We also ventured to the silversmithing village/neighborhood a few kilometers away. At the kraton,we encountered a first, something which we’ve experienced at every tourist destination in Yogyakarta: we are one of the attractions! Teenagers, generally school groups, ask if they can have a picture with us. We usuallu say yes, except when there are so many (and have so many cameras they need to switch between so everyone gets a picture) that we don’t seem to be seeing the sights anymore. Sometimes we ask if we can have a picture too:

Yogyakarta 022

In all honesty, though, today was more about the transportation than the destinations. We rode in a becak, a two-person seat pushed by a bicycle, in our case ridden by old, gnarled and wiry men who could read the traffic so well that they never used brakes yet were always completely safe.

I liked the idea of transportation infrastructure that puts its providers in good shape. We rode the bus and, with the help of a man from Holland who used to live here but now just visits, figured out a transfer – no matter that our destination, the Affandi museum, was closed. Then the rain began, and we hid under a tiny tarp with three teenagers running a coffee cart, where we had two cups of coffee, two small bundles of rice and chicken, three egg rolls, and a few other fried goods, for R12,000 – around $1.50.

It’s hard to say much about Yogya just yet – while there is tourism here, it seems much more a working city, and so the culture is not as on display. It also means the division between tourist and local is much thinner, such as sitting in a donut shop that is a Starbucks clone, surrounded by Indonesian couples and friends chatting. Tomorrow we wake at 3:45 to go see Prambanan and Borobudur, enormous, beautiful Hindu and Buddhist temples. We have booked a flight Wednesday afternoon to Singapore, where hopefully we will connect with Life Is Too Short, as well as the Singaporean man we met on the bus to Chiang Rai from Tha Ton.

— The Professor

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Posted by theprofessorandtheprivateeye on February 17, 2013 in batik, cities, Indonesia, Java, Uncategorized, Yogyakarta

Next Steps

13 Feb

We have decided on our next destination: Yogyakarta on the island of Java, with Kuta in Bali as a one night stopover on our way back to Denpasar airport. Our flight is Saturday at 6:05 AM – at that time, we could get two tickets, with meals of our choice, for $130. So we will take a boat to Kuta on Friday, maybe try finding some dancing there on Friday night, then wake up dreadfully early to fly to Java.

Yogyakarta sounds a lot like the Chiang Mai of Indonesia: university town, lots of arts, some fantastic religious sites. But unlike Chiang Mai, it has a sultan.

So we are here on Gili Trawagnan for two more nights. We considered a day trip to Komodo, but once you add everything up it’s a bit expensive. We also considered climbing Rinjani on Lombok or Gunung Agung on Bali, but since it’s the rainy season floods, landslides and such make them questionable endeavors. So we’ve decided to head back west. After Yogyakarta, we hope to go to a bustling metropolis (either Singapore or Kuala Lumpur), then we will have time for one more destination before we start our endgame with Angkor Wat. Until then, we’ll do a bit more snorkeling: