We felt that we could not really claim to have seen Indonesia without going to at least one island other than Bali. As the most populous Muslim nation on the planet, we knew we had to get off the country's only Hindu island to experience and form an opinion of Muslim Indonesia. The place we chose to do this was in Yogyakarta, on the island of Java. This ticked another box, as Remy and Liz are both big fans of coffee, and how could we not visit an island whose name is synonymous with the stuff?
Yogyakarta is known as the cultural capital of Indonesia, with a still-sitting sultan in a still-working palace who doubles as the region's governor. That was the draw that took us there. There was a definite change in feel between the beautiful, modern airport at Denpasar and the drab, rundown facility in Surakarta (AKA Solo) where we first arrived in Java. That continued on the cab ride to Yogyakarta - gone were the beautifully manicured rice terraces and elaborate architecture that we had become accustomed to in Bali, and we were back in South East Asia, with bad roads, pollution and rundown buildings.
We installed ourselves in a nice guest house whose proprietors had lived for a long time in Minnesota (he was an academic working at a university). We had a pool and a decent room, and the owner apologized for the fact that he had a couple of groups of national tourists staying there who would likely be making a lot of noise. After a year in this part of the world, we know how to live with the locals and assured him of such.
As much as we pined for the beauty of Bali, we still made a real tour of Yogyakarta, as the pictures below will show. We did a great bike tour through the nearby countryside, haggled a lot with
becak operators, and managed to find some good food.
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| Our first stop on the bike tour. Believe it or not, this is a commercial kitchen! We are glad we don't eat the snacks produced here. |
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| Examining a roadside fish farm, whose catfish will be fried up and served at a nearby restaurant soon. |
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| Another view of the cassava chip factory we had to break and enter because it was a holiday. |
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| Here we are at the allergenic Indonesian farmers "bank". When a family gets ahead a little bit, they invest in a large animal (usually a cow) which they house at this cooperative farm and hope to be able to sell it at a profit to some rich city slicker as a sacrifice just before the beginning of ramadan. |
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| Bowen and our tour guide in the countryside. She was completely covered, not out of Muslim modesty but for Asian vanity - she was attempting to keep her skin as lightly coloured as possible. It must have been hot. |
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| Bowen and a young brahma. The animals are very well fed and cared for, getting regular baths at the well or in the nearby irrigation canal. |
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| Trucking through a small village. Liz had one of the more modern bikes in our group. |
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| Checking out the rice husks. Like the Inuits and snow, South East Asians have four different names for rice depending on what stage of processing it is at. |
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| The family that cycles together, has sore butts together! We are now a group of paddie whackers. |
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| It was nice to be out of the hustle and bustle of Yogya (as it is known to the locals) and to see village life. |
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| We stopped in at a rice threshing bee and all took turns separating the rice seeds from the stalks. |
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| Here is a good view of the threshing machine, which is homemade from a couple of bike parts and some long spikes. We were painfully slow at this compared to the women in the photo. It was a bit scary, since if you lost your balance while pedalling the machine with one leg it was possible to pitch forward onto the whirling spike drum that you see in the foreground. That being said, we had seen other people threshing completely by hand, whacking small bundles of rice stalks against a small pallet stood on edge. This terrifying machine speeds up the process greatly. |
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| We stopped for some snacks at a roadside loafing shelter, which gave us an opportunity to ask our guide about her life as a young woman living in Indonesia. The sweet rice snacks were delicious. |
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| We said, "Flock it!" and stopped to visit with some sheep. |
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| It was livestock washing day, and here some of the locals have their pride and joy in the irrigation canal for a good scrub. Yes, the same canal that provides water to grow crops. You definitely come out of South East Asia with a robust immune system, if you do make it out. |
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| We stopped at a brick factory. This fellow makes mud bricks by hand, about five hundred per day. Once they are fired, that many bricks will earn him about $30. It is hard work, but he makes it look easy. |
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| Liz and our guide getting their hands dirty. |
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| We got to mark the bricks we made, which actually serves a practical purpose. The grooves in the bricks help the mortar cement the bricks together when they are piled to build a wall. The middle row of bricks were made by the Dutch couple that came on the tour with us. |
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| Another commercial kitchen we visited, where they were making tempeh. The woman that ran this kitchen had won awards for her cooking, and had trophies on the shelf to prove it. |
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| A welcome surprise - they served us cendol, which only Remy could really enjoy. Everyone else was turned off by the colour, and the slimy, worm-like texture of the rice noodles. |
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| This is the assembly line where small portions of cooked and stomped soy beans are folded into banana leaf packets. Naturally occurring yeasts ferment the beans inside the packages, which creates tempeh. Like many other "simple" foods of South East Asia (rice included), tempeh takes a phenomenal amount of labour to get it to an edible state. Bowen would argue that it still is not edible. |
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| It is monotonous, back-breaking work, but someone has to do it. |
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| Our tour group in the tempeh kitchen, making our best Asian photo. |
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| A more natural image of our bike tour group. |
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| Here we are making our best Western photo. |
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| We're not sure who is guarding whom, but both are about equally effective. |
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| When you need a licence plate for your scooter, you go to this guy and tell him what letters and numbers you need. He goes out back of this booth, hammers them into a piece of aluminum by hand, then paints them. He made a series of vanity plates for us that we used for gifts and to memorialize our trip. |
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| There was a street fair in front of our guest house the day before we left. This is a traditional dance group from elsewhere on the island, a member of which became possessed by a visiting god and had to be restrained by some of the street marshals. This was not very Muslim, and our guest house owner let us know how he disapproved of this. |
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| This is considered to be a very macho form of dress, but Remy thinks it makes them look pretty. The pointy Spock ears are a sign of wisdom. |
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| The training shoes don't go well with the rest of the ensemble. |
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| While other businesses had stages with gaudy fashion shows or bad rock and roll cover bands singing at top volume for the street festival, our favourite restaurant had this totally charming, traditional duet singing for us during dinner. |
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| Our hosts were open to suggestions about how to make the stay for Westerners more comfortable, and Liz suggested a book swap. Within hours, they had this bookshelf installed in the common area, seeded with a few novels and a number of academic texts. It was a very nice gesture, and Liz has left her mark on Yogyakarta. |
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| Waiting to catch our 7:00 AM flight at the Yogya airport. Bowen was becoming very ill at this time, and would only get worse in Singapore. Bummer!
After a week in Yogya, we had accomplished our aim of developing a bit of a fe el for other parts of Indonesia as a counterpoint to our experience in Bali. We know that with 1,700 islands and 350 million people, with thousands of dialects and their associated cultures, the rest of Indonesia is different from this one little area of Java, but we feel we have earned the right to sew that Indonesia patch onto our packs. It provided us with one final, small dose of the grittiness and economical living that characterizes South East Asia as a send off before we begin our Western inoculation in Singapore.
~Remy
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