I'm sure you've all been waiting for our latest update! We've been in Yogya/Jogja for about 3 days now. We took the train over from Jakarta and the minute we stepped out of the station began being touted by all sorts of people. The entire area caters much more to tourists and most people speak some basic English. This can get a little annoying as you walk around the streets and constantly hear: "Hello? Where you going?" "Transport?" and "Becak! Becak!" which is their form of rickshaw.
Despite the constant semi-harassment it is much easier to get around when people speak some English. We've been staying in the Monica Hostel which is very clean and has very good service. All for $8.50 a night!
Our first day in the city we went to the local Sultan palace known as Kraton. There they had a traditional music form known as gamelan. It consists of about 20 people and many different types of percussive instruments. While we watched for a few minutes it seemed half of the people were sleeping and the rest were smoking. Further inside the palace our guide kept throwing dates out at us and we saw some relics of past Sultan's hobbies such as photography and cooking. We also saw gifts from many different countries that were given to the Sultan.
Our next day we arranged a tour bus to take us to Borobodur, the Buddhist temple complex. I've studied it in my South East Asian Art History class and was especially excited to see it. It is massive and covered in bas-reliefs and Buddhist statues. There are many levels which represent the ascension from the mortal domain to enlightenment. Closer to the top there are different statues enclosed in stupas. The sheer number of statues, reliefs, and stupas was pretty overwhelming.
That night we went to a waying kulit show. This is a traditional form of Javanese shadow puppetry. They allow you to walk around the production during the show to see it from the shadow side or the performance side. It was cool to see, but the singing and gamelan performance were in Javanese. We quickly lost track of the epic Ramayana tale that they were performing.
Today we rented bicycles from a local shop and rode through the city to the Hindu temple Complex of Prambanan, which is about 8-10 miles away. Thanks to the guidebook we used a path that followed a canal so we had to deal with much less traffic and saw a little of the countryside. The Prambanan complex consists of multiple towers that enclose different Hindu gods. These towers have a very distinct style that I actually found more impressive than Borobodur. Sadly, an 5.6-5.9 earthquake that struck exactly 3 years ago has damaged many of the temples. This meant that we could not go in and see the statues inside many of the temples. However, it was still a very enjoyable visit and being able to bike there meant we could come and go on our own schedule.
Tomorrow morning we take a 10 hour van ride up into the mountains to Gunung Bromo. This crater area is supposed to have some great scenery and fun hikes. We'll probably stay there for about 2-3 days and then head over to Bali.
I tried posting pictures but our internet connection is a little too slow! I'll throw some up when we are a in a location with a better connection.
