Welcome to Indonesia!

On the second day of my visit I went to the square in front of the presidential palace in Jakarta. There is a large national monument there along with a few other statues and sculptures. The population of Indonesia is largely muslim and most of the people I saw in Jakarta were muslim including the school girls in the picture above. As I walked into the park a few girls approached me and asked for group pictures. As they took turns taking pictures with their camera phones they asked me all kinds of questions in English. I guess English is a part of their formal education. Once a few pictures were taken they all needed one. They were very happy to meet me!

I started in Jakarta and made my way east on the train and by plain to Lombok Island. I stayed mostly on Java and spent a full week in the city of Yogyakarta in the hills. During my one month stay there I learned a lot about the semi-industrialized nation where Barack Obama went to school for three years. Most of the people there are poor and many make less than $2 a day. Chicken and rice are the staples of many foods. There are many creative dishes utilizing these two ingredients such as chicken soup, fried rice and shredded chicken, and fried chicken with white rice. Seafood and sometimes beef are available. Meals are cheap costing less than $5 for breakfast lunch or dinner. The servings are smaller however.

There are all kinds of people that want your money like cab drivers, bechan drivers (bicycle driven cart that you sit in), and souvenir vendors. On the first day after leaving the airport I was immediately approached by several men that wanted money. Initially I ignored them. It took me a minute to figure out what was going on. It turned out that the man who followed me to the information booth and the phone booths was actually a nice guy and knew where to take me. After admitting to myself that this guy knew better than me, I got in the taxi and rode for over an hour to the hotel in central Jakarta. On the way he gave me a lot of valuable information about where I was staying and what to expect. This was a good start to my trip.

Indonesia is a tropical country sitting just below the equator in Southeast Asia. Monsoon season starts in October and runs through February. The rest of the year it's dry and sunny. The temperature is in the eighties all year round.

The Streets of Java

This man drives the bechan, a bicycle driven cart that you sit in.  Walking around in the heat can be very painful and even five minutes in the sun can result in a burn.  I got light sunburn on one side of my face one day on a ten minute walk down the street.  I learned my lesson and started riding in the bechan regularly.  It only costs 10.000Rp to go a few kilometres.  Taxi is about twice the price.  There are men waiting to give rides all along the main roads in the cities. I guess there's no permit needed,  just a bicycle cart and a set of legs.  Most of the men speak English and some are able to give advice on places to go and things to do.  In Yogyakarta, a city on mainland Java known for arts of various kinds, many of them will pressure you to buy things from dealers they know.  If you barter with them you can get a better deal and even better prices if you buy in bulk.  The most popular form of art here is batik, which are acrylic paintings on thin cotton canvases.  Prices vary depending on the artist.  The process of making a batik painting takes three weeks or so.  Many tourists and art dealers from Europe are there just to buy batik paintings which can be resold for higher prices elsewhere.  There are major batik exhibits in Belgium and Holland.

Borobudur Temple

The largest Buddhist temple in the world is located in central Java, Indonesia.  Borobudur temple was built in the ninth century and still stands today although it has been picked away at by thieves looters and junior high school students.  Many of the buddha statues have been defaced, their heads taken off.  Although there is much damage to the structure, it is an amazing sight to behold.  I spend two hours taking pictures and meeting the locals.  There were many school students there and it reminded me of my own high school trip to the statue of liberty.  The kids had seen this monument many times before and were more concerned with socializing. 

At the top of the temple are many bell statues with buddha figures inside of them.  I'm not Buddhist so I'm not sure of the significance but it was pretty cool to see.  I ended up sitting on the edges of the large stone bells along with the rest of the tourists but something tells me I should have shown more respect. 

This man was selling traditional puppets in the park leading up to Borobudur temple.  These puppets are used for puppet shows and are crafted of wood or buffalo skin and painted with bright colors.  Initially I thought they were hindu puppets, but one of the craftsmen at a shop in Solo explained to me they are not deities but rather representations of human ideals such as creativity, wisdom, love, protection, etc.  I didn't buy any of the puppets because frankly they are very strange.

The Gili Islands

Here is a view from the bushes on Gili Trawangan.  In the distance is the coast of the small island Gili Meno.  I spent two days on this island before moving on.  The beach is beautiful but the sun is so hot there that you have to stay in the shade most of the day.  The mid day heat can really hurt you.  One day on Gili Meno I went snorkelling for an hour and burned my back.  I have a pretty nice tan line where my shorts are.

While on the island I met people from all over the world.  Many people from Europe travel there, especially the Dutch.  The Netherlands claimed the islands in the 16th century looking for spices such as sugar, cloves, nutmeg and the like.  I met people from California, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, the UK and Australia not to mention the rest of Indonesia while I was there. 

There is a strong connection with nature on these islands and everywhere you go there is some sort of wildlife popping up, whether it be the colorful gamefowl that are kept for both food and for fighting or something else.  One morning I woke up to my alarm around 7:30 but decided to lay back down.  Half an hour later I was awakened by the squawking of a gecko in my room.  Indeed it was the largest gecko I've ever seen and it was making a loud noise like a bird. That made me get out of bed.  I saw other large lizards lounging about in the shade around my hotel.  I think they were a kind of monitor.  On the beach there are little pink shell crabs.  If you wait long enough they will run into each other and fight, trying to pull the other out of its shell.

Snorkelling on the islands is a great experience although it can be dangerous.  As I walked the beach there were quite a few people wearing bandages from being cut on the coral.  Before I got the hang of it I made an attempt to fight the tide by grabbing onto a big piece of coral.  I cut my hand there and then later cut my foot trying to get out to the reef during low tide.  At least I didn't really bite it.  Once I got out into the reef there were many beautiful fish and colorful coral.  There are many schools of neon tropical fish .  The tide can be a bit dangerous and there is a steep dropoff into deeper water at one end of the reef.  If you're not careful you can get sucked down the shelf with the undertow, who knows how far.  There are divers that do it on purpose with scuba gear but I'm not interested.  Nearby the islands there is a Japanese shipwreck from WWII.  I was told there are large sea turtles in that area along with other large fish including sharks.  It was my first time snorkelling so I passed on the deeper water.  One guy I met from California was a serious diver. During the day he would go diving with the local school and in the evening he drank at the bar.

While on the Island of Lombok I climbed Mt Rinjani with a tour group.  It was a fairly strenuous two day hike.  The mountain is not always open for climbing because in the center of the crater lake inside the outer mountain is an active volcano.  The mountain was actually closed from April to August of this year.

 

Here is a view of Gunung Baru or "new mountain" from inside the crater.  A lake has formed there and all of the bottled water on the island comes from here.  On the morning after the hike up the outer rim four of us decided to hike down the inner mountain to the lake for a swim and some pictures.  Sally and Roger, a British couple on their honeymoon are in the lower left of the photo above.  Olif, a German with a really nice digital camera is to the right.  The volcano gives off a loud noise like a jet engine in the distance and there is always smoke coming from  various holes in the exterior which spill out lava.  At night time you can see the red lava oozing down the mountain like molasses.