After the overnight bus journey from Bali, we arrived in the town of Yogyakarta on the island of Java. Our
hotel in “Yogya,” Venezia Homestay,
was about $17/night for a double including breakfast, making it our cheapest
place yet. It wasn’t as nice as our
prior hotels, but was a really good value. We used a shared bathroom with a cold-water shower, and the
room, though it had a floor fan, was ungodly hot – especially on the top bunk,
where I slept. The family running
the hotel, though, was very nice, and they even let us check in at 6:30am – and
gave us a welcome drink!
To be honest, coming from Bali, Yogya itself was a bit
underwhelming. It was a pretty big
town, seemed to be largely industrial, and lacked Bali’s interesting
architecture and general beauty.
Like parts of Bali, it had Pizza Hut, KFC, McDonald’s, and Dunkin’
Donuts – I’m not sure when seeing places like that is going to stop being
really strange to me. As usual, we
skipped the American chains, but we did indulge in frozen yogurt at J. CO, the Indonesian equivalent of Bourbon (though J CO. wins, hands down). It was about $2.20 for a cup of yogurt
with strawberries and chocolate chips, and was definitely as good as PinkBerry! On
our first night in Yogya, we had dinner at one of the cheapest restaurants I’ve
ever eaten at – I paid about $1.10 for a dish of vegetables and rice with
peanut sauce, and it was delicious!
Yogya’s main attractions are the temples of Borobudur and Prambanan, both UNESCO World Heritage sites, which we visited, along with the
smaller temple of Mendut. We left town at about 5:00am, to get to
the temples before it got too hot (most days this time of year are in the
high-90s) and crowded. Borobudur,
Indonesia’s single most-visited tourist attraction, dates from the ninth
century. The world’s largest
Buddhist structure, it is huge – essentially a nine-story building – with the
six square stories topped by three round ones. Indonesian Buddhists still use Borobudur for pilgrimages and
for celebrating the holiday of Vesak, which commemorates the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and death. Prambanan, which also dates from the
ninth century, is one of the largest Hindu temples in Southeast Asia. It is actually a compound of numerous
smaller temples, originally a total 240.
Today, the sixteen main structures have been reconstructed, but only two
of the original 224 smaller temples are still standing. Mendut is another Buddhist temple, also
built around the ninth century. It
is known primarily for its three large stone statues of Buddha – one each to
liberate devotees from bodily karma, from karma of speech, and from karma of
thought. Like Borobudur, Buddhists
in Indonesia visit Mendut during celebrations of Vesak.
We also attended a dance performance in Yogya – a ballet,
technically, though not a ballet in the Western sense. Accompanied by traditional gamelan music, the Ramayana Ballet is a dance-drama based on the
Sanskrit epic Ramayana, believed
to have been written around the fourth century B.C. The performance was similar to the one we saw in Bali,
focusing on slow, deliberate movements and featuring incredibly elaborate
costumes and make-up.
The following day, we boarded a second-class train to the
Indonesian capital of Jakarta. The train ride took about eight hours
and cost $20. Trains on Java have
three classes, known as economy, business, and executive. We ruled out economy class, having
heard horror stories about the number of people that get crammed on each seat,
and settled on business, since executive was nearly twice the price. I guess most foreigners spring for
executive, though, as everyone else on the train except one Dutch couple seemed
to be Indonesian. The ride was
pretty enjoyable, and the train was much cleaner, less crowded (actually,
probably about half the seats were empty), and more comfortable than
expected. Business class doesn’t
have air-conditioning, but there was a fan and, with the windows open, it was
very comfortable. People came by
every few minutes selling food, drinks, and other random goods including paper
fans, flip-flops, and moist towelettes, and also renting pillows to
passengers. Vendors would flood
into the aisles at certain stops, stay on the train selling things for a bit, then
get off a few stops later.
Sometimes, they would set things down on the tray next to a passenger’s
seat, leave it there while they continued to the next car – I guess hoping the
passenger would eventually be tempted to buy it – and come back for it a few
minutes later.
Unlike the seemingly never-ending sprawl of city we passed
on the bus in East Java, the train took us through beautiful rural areas of
Central Java. We passed small
towns and villages and rice fields, and saw banana and palm trees right by the
tracks and mountains in the distance.
Perhaps another difference between business and executive, our train
stopped a lot, often staying stopped for
quite awhile. At some stops,
children stood on the platforms of the station begging, and I saw one
Indonesian throw a coin through the window onto the ground as his train was
pulling away. The children noticed
us, of course, but most of them left more or less immediately after I shook my
head.
Late in the afternoon, we arrived in Jakarta, a mega-city of
about ten million people. The
urban poverty was visible from our seat on the train, as we saw small shacks,
with children playing and women cooking and doing laundry, mere feet from the
tracks. It was also fairly dirty,
which I suppose it to be expected in a place housing that many people, with
lots of trash on the ground and floating in the waterways.
Our hostel in Jakarta, Six Degrees, was the first place we stayed in
a dorm. As Jakarta is apparently
relatively expensive, even compared to Bali, it was $13/night per bed. Other than not having a hot water
shower (which, again, was not needed), Six Degrees felt very much like a
European hostel. It was
air-conditioned, immaculately clean, and included sheets, a blanket, and a
towel; and, each bed had its own lamp and outlet. We shared our room with two German guys, a Swiss guy, and an
American girl – not only the first American we’d met, but also a Returned Peace
Corps Volunteer from Paraguay!
The food in Jakarta was as
excellent as it had been everywhere else.
For dinner, I had a particularly delicious gado-gado, a dish of raw vegetables covered
in peanut sauce that had become my favorite Indonesian meal, for about $3. The breakfast at our hostel was equally
great, and not only included very legitimate toast, but also had peanut butter!
We only had a few hours in Jakarta
before our flight to Bangkok, and we spent it wandering around, trying to see
what there was to see. The traffic
was as crazy as any huge developing city, with lots and lots of motorcycles and
tuk-tuks, and
there were carts and stalls of street food everywhere we looked. I also have to note that Jakarta has
McDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, and Domino’s, as well as, believe it or
not, The Cheesecake Factory (five
of them, actually). After an
hour-long bus ride from the city to Jakarta’s main airport, it was time to
leave Indonesia for a brief stop in Thailand en-route to Cambodia!
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