Off-Topic General Discussion - Page 5070

Introduction (Not Worth Reading)

It occurs to me as I begin this correspondence that I've never examined why Googles write email button is labeled "compose". It's a far more artistic word choice than what I would label the majority of my emails, and I do believe that Google has assumed an average level of sophistication that I do not posses. However, I am flattered at the concept that my travel discourse could be labeled as a composition, and hope that I will live up to Googles (as well as your own) expectations. Google certainly and on routine basis lives up to mine. In any event, this paragraph has served as a perfectly pretentious way to postpone writing this log a bit further, but now I must begin it in earnest.

The better question is, where should I begin. This particular venture of mine, though it is only two weeks in the making, has something of a long history. I believe most, possibly all, of my readers are already somewhat familiar with it, so I will not trouble you too much with the details of the backstory. I applied to the Peace Corps. The application took two years, and I did not get in. So I did this instead. While that could be, and has been on many tellings, an impressively long tale in and of itself, full of ups and downs, injustices and sighed acceptance, its importance in relevance to the current adventure is to stress the concept that I have been preparing for life outside the United States for quite a long time. I am prepared, or at least I feel very prepared.

It is also worth noting, although again I feel the entirety of my readership already knows this, that I have done this sort of thing before. When I last visited Asia in 2012, it was my second trip to the continent, and I recall myself on the first day, travelling the streets of Saigon in southern Vietnam, perfectly elated with the idea that I was, in fact, in Vietnam and not in America. The euphoria of travel is one that I have known and loved for many years, and it never truly becomes old, or at least I hope not, we will have to see.

However, my level of elation is somewhat dulled on this trip. Possibly because I have been preparing for so long, possibly because I am still sour from previous injustices at the hands of the Peace Corps, and possibly because, simply put, I have done this before. I am used to it at this point. I feel comfortable adventuring, maybe more comfortable than I do at home. This is perhaps less exciting in a way, but is also for the better, because I ended up running into trouble from the very first day of the journey. It is good to be comfortable when you are solving problems, that is the best way to go about them.

Arriving in Indonesia

I arrived early in the morning on a Wednesday, following twenty nine hours of planes and airports. My spirits were high, despite my bunkmates on the plane doing their best to lower them. You see, I was going to Bali. Why was I going to Bali? Well, that is more part of the Peace Corps story than this one, so lets just stick to the facts and say that I was going, and am enrolled in a program to teach English as a volunteer here. What's more important is that I have a certain bias against Bali, one that I have held for many years. You see, I don't like "touristy" destinations. When I go to a place, I want to mingle with the locals, see things I've never heard of before, be surprised, get dirty and exhausted, and be completely out of my comfort zone. That sort of thing. I don't want to spend my time drinking and laying about with people who speak the same language I do. I can do that at home, and even there I often don't.

Bali is, in my mind, the reigning king of this sort of destination. People go to Bali because they want to experience Asia, Hinduism, Yoga, whatever, without actually experiencing it. Bali in particular has a sort of double bias for me, as I used to live in India, and have in my lifetime obtained a university degree in subjects such as Hinduism, Buddhism and eastern philosophy and religion. And I am very used to hippies in San Francisco, fedora deep in some off brand of coffee, extolling to me the virtues of some facet of Hinduism that they heard about on the internet that is blatantly and completely without merit. It's not that I judge these sorts of people (who am I kidding, of course I do), it is more that I do not want to be thought of by my peers as being similar to them. It's a narcissistic desire, but it is there all the same.

It is this sort of person that I expected to find in Bali, and my suspicion appeared to be confirmed by the people I spoke to on the plane. The first was an American couple (complete with the afformentioned fedora) who upon review were only going to Bali for three days, and didn't know what they were going to do there because their agent had planned the whole thing. The second was a middle aged South African surfer, who exclaimed that Bali, or at least Denpasar, is more like part of Australia than Indonesia, and Australians are a bunch of "drunk cunts" who have ruined the place he had been visiting for decades previous to them showing up. The good news is that, while I have run into some of this sort of thing so far, Indonesia has by and large exceeded my expectations and been a wonderful trip. I hope that does its job of setting a proper tone for this story.

I mentioned in the introduction you hopefully did not read that I ran into trouble after getting off the plane. A member of the program where I will be teaching was supposed to pick me up, as I had packed for an 8 month journey and had a laptop and some luggage that needed to be moved somewhere secure. But my ride was not at the airport. Not a big problem. After waiting for an hour or so, I purchased an overpriced taxi ticket to the address I had been given in Ubud, a town north of the big city of Denpasar, that is also extremely touristy. The drive went fine.

I noticed immediately (and am continuing to notice) how much like India Indonesia is in general, and Bali in particular. (There will be a lot of comparisons between Indonesia and India in this story, so do be prepared for them.) There are big statues of Hindu gods and goddesses, characters from the Ramayana and Mahabharata. There are temples all over the place, although Balinese temples are more down to earth and familial than the grand, high ceilings of Indian fare. But I suppose what's more like India is just the decor and the general attitude. Buildings are all in some state of disrepair, and yet they have a habit of working just fine for their intended purpose. There is trash everywhere, and it stinks, and yet it doesn't seem to bother anyone. You may or may not have hot water, electricity or plumbing at any given moment regardless of assurances and expectations, but there will always be somebody ready and willing to sell you tea no matter where you are or what time of day it is. Somehow Denpasar could be categorized as an urban city and a forest at the same time. It's hot. Indonesia is possibly hotter than India, although my phone consistently tells me otherwise. Everybody has something that they are doing, but at the same time they are perfectly willing to stop that and do anything else when a friend or a tourist walks by. You can buy absolutely anything with enough money, and you have enough money because you're white, and everybody knows it, including yourself. Being sick is a fact of life, and every trip to the bathroom is a new experience. Nobody speaks English, but everybody speaks English at the same time, and so on.

I feel very comfortable here.

When I arrived at the location in Ubud, I was dismayed to be told by the proprieter of the hotel (homestays, they call them) that it was no longer associated with Travel to Teach because there had been some problem, and he did not know where I was supposed to go. Emails to my contacts at the organization went unanswered. Not a big deal. I had brought with me a smartphone that, after some detailed research, I was sure would work in Indonesia, so within an hour I had acquired a SIM card for it and contacted my coordinator over the phone. A misunderstanding, they had forgot I was coming today. They would send someone to pick me up. The smartphone is a new addition to my collection of travel gadgets by the way, and I love it. I could write an exhaustive email just on how useful it has been, but I shall refrain. I'm sure tidbits on this topic will pop up here and there, not entirely by accident.

A man named Hendra came and got me. He was the sort who seemed very westernized, drove a nice car. He also taught for the program, although he was not a volunteer. We went and had lunch, and he was a little surprised and pleased when I refused silverware and ate with my hands. I can and will go on about the food in detail a little later in the story, I know many people are interested in that topic, but it would be out of sorts to go on and on about it in this part of the narrative. Lets just say it was not spicy enough for me. We drove to the town of Klungkung where I would be living and teaching, which is only a twenty minute drive from Ubud, but is to my delight completely separated from the touristy part of Bali. For comparison, you can drive the entire length of the island in about 4 hours from its widest point, but basically all of the tourists congregate around Denpasar and the surrounding areas. By the time we arrived at the house, it was already dark.

I am living with the program coordinators wifes brothers family. They seem fairly well to do in comparison to the rest of the town, and there are three generations living in the house, a total of 6 people not including myself, with guests coming and going almost constantly. I will describe them at length later on however, as whats important here is that, the following morning, I was off to Java, for two weeks of sightseeing prior to the beginning of my teaching in Bali. I slept, and the next morning I got on a bus.

Buses in Indonesia are always late. It's been explained to me that, if they do not have enough passengers to pay for the gas, they will not leave. I suppose the government does not subsidize them. So it is normal to arrive on time, buy the ticket, get on the bus, and then wait for two hours before it leaves. It is hot on the bus, and while you are sitting there people get on and try to sell you things. Mostly food, although I've seen belts, watches, that sort of thing. The white person is more expected than most to buy these things, and this white person never does (maybe a water here and there). What's more fun though is people come with guitars and serenade the bus, and the singing is folksy and actually usually pretty good. Those people I gave money to. Most of the people on the bus give them a few rupiah it seems. Much like India, it is easy to get by on almost nothing, because food is so cheap, but at the same time it is also easy to spend a ton of money, so while I can't characterize the donations to the guitar player as being a good income, I get the impression that it is good enough.

The bus went on for hours. Driving in Indonesia is similar to much of Asia, in that it makes driving in America look like the easiest thing in the world. Nearly all streets are only one lane in each direction, and many cars are old or so full that they cannot go even half as fast as the rest of the traffic. So drivers are consistently moving into the lane with oncoming traffic to pass one, two, three, I've seen as many as five vehicles passed in one instance. The oncoming traffic will get between cars, or jump onto the sidewalk, slow down if necessary, anything but stop. When you first see it it looks hilariously dangerous (not that it isn't) and I doubt my mother would be able to handle it, but let me defend it for just a little bit. First, everyone is going much more slowly, the standard "highway" speed is maybe only 40 MPH. Second, all the cars are smaller and there aren't as many vehicles on the road. But most importantly, in Asia probably 75% of the drivers on the road minimum are professional drivers. This is their job, they do it every day, and have been doing it for years and years. As such, the average driver in Asia is a much better driver than the average driver in Europe or America, so the result is that they can all work together to get away with things that in California would by design lead to horrible accidents. I've never seen a car accident in Asia, although I'm told they happen.

After a few hours our bus arrived at a ferry on the western corner of the Island. We were ferried from Bali to Java and stopped in Banyuwangi. Suddenly there were no more tourists, and also few Hindus. I was now in a Muslim country, which was a technical first for me, although I have spent time previously in Muslim majority cities in India. I changed buses without English and without incident, and went on to Bondowoso, where with the help of an enthusiastic bus station worker I found a hotel, although not before he took me to his home and introduced me to his wife and children. It was at this time about 9 PM, and aside from the brief rest in Klungkung, I felt like I had been travelling constantly for about three days and still had not ation.

Kawah Ijen

The hotel in Bondowoso was a welcome thing, though I didn't get to stay there till the following night. By pure coincidence, the owner just happened to be the guy who ran the Panda Express at UCLA while I was a student there. He spoke perfect English, and I had likely met him before in LA, although we had no memory of each other. We were fast friends, we laughed and regailed each other with tails and interests. He helped to set me up with a driver and an itinerary for visiting Ijen, and I purchased a room at the hotel for the following night. By now it was around 11 PM.

Ijen translates to the Lonely Mountain, and while there are no dragons there and I was not guided by a thrush, it was still one of the cooler places in the world that I've visited. It is, as its name implies, a solitary volcano in the middle of a jungle. Indonesia has a lot of volcanoes, I believe it has more active volcanoes than any other nation. And even among active volcanoes, Ijen is special for two reasons. It is a sulfur volcano, of which I'm told there are only two in the world, Ijen and a much less active one in Alaska. There is continually a cloud of toxic sulfur gas billowing up from it, and the locals mine big chunks of the stinky yellow rock from the crater. What's special about Ijen over the crater in Alaska is that it's hot enough here in Indonesia that the sulfur cloud actually ignites, and at the bottom of the crater you can see eerie, ghostlike blue flames coming up out of the ground. However, these flames are only visible at night, so you have to go when it's dark. This is why I went there immediately, without sleeping. The second reason to visit Ijen, possibly just as interesting, is that there is a huge lake inside of the crater, and it is quite beautiful. The hotel owner explained it like this; while other, larger volcanoes in Indonesia might be as pretty as large chunks of jade, Ijen is more like a diamond.

It was a 2 hour ride on the back of a scooter up the mountain. I had been told by the two other volunteers that I did not need a jacket for my backpacking in Indonesia. They were wrong. It was midnight, it was high altitude, I was on a bike going 50-60 KPH, and it was windy. I was cold. It was excrutiatingly cold. But I kept telling myself that I would not die, and it was only two hours, and this turned out to be good advice. We arrived at the very small town at the lip of the mountain, which services the miners and occasional tourist. While Indonesia is getting more touristy every year, Ijen is still relatively benign.

There were two other tourists there, a German girl and Malaysian guy, who had met in Bali and decided to travel together. They were a rather humorous pair. The Malaysian guy was in nursing school in Singapore, and was obviously quite taken with the German girl, who seemed reluctant or apprehensive at this situation and acted like she wanted to get out of it somehow. I enjoyed their company. We hiked up the mountain together, about two hours to the crater lip and another hour down to the bottom where we could see the fire. It was a fairly easy walk up to the lip, but the walk down the crater was actually fairly difficult. The Malaysian guys sandles broke, and to repair this predicament I gave him my socks, so I was wearing shoes with no socks and he was wearing socks with no shoes. Following that I tripped and pulled a muscle, but I happened to have a Malaysian nurse with me, who helped me stretch my leg for five minutes or so till I could walk again. We got down to the mountain.

The blue fire was pretty cool. You had to wear masks, most people just had little paper masks, but I had been given a proper gas mask by the hotel, so I didn't have too much trouble with the gas cloud, although it bothered my companions. The cloud did often obscure the fire, but we sat there for over an hour, with miners and a few other tourists (mostly Indonesian tourists) who showed up after us. The flames were eerie and fun, and did little to light up the place so it was for the most part quite dark, making the flames stand out more in the background. It looked like there were ghosts coming up out of the ground. Eventually the wind shifted and pushed the gas cloud right in our faces, and we decided to leave. Another hour back up the mountain, then a second hour to the very top of the crater lip, so we could watch the sunrise. It was a good sunrise, and included a packed breakfast of fried rice. We marveled at the lake, which was a bright green color due to the sulfur and very picturesque. Marvelling was also done at the clouds, which scurried up the mountain only to stop halfway, making us feel like we were standing in the heavens, or some other unspeakably Asian place. Reluctantly, we walked back down the mountain. By the time we got to town, my socks were ruined. I bought new socks, and we had lunch.

The other site in the area to see was the "green waterfall", a small waterfall from the Ijen lake that is bright green like a Sprite bottle, due to the sulfur content in the water. It was also about an hour from town, and by now it was getting hot. I was, at this point, exhausted, sore and, having forgotten sunscreen, increasingly toasted. I bade my friends adieu and wearily returned to town, where my driver took me on a two hour trip back down to Bondowoso and the hotel room. The ride back down, in the daylight, was gorgeous, because we were going through either rainforest or coffee plantations the whole way. Indonesia is famous for its coffee I have learned, it is where the word Java comes from. But I was possibly too tired and sore to enjoy it. There will be more forests in the story, don't fret. When we returned to Bondowoso, I was staggering so much the hotel staff asked if I was injured as I got back to my room. I slept for 6 hours, woke up for a brief dinner, and then slept another ten hours.

The following morning I had another discussion with my new friend from UCLA, mostly revolving around the local food, which I wanted to learn as much about as possible. Indonesian food has been a mixed bag for me. I was expecting curry like I've had in India and Thailand, and since Indonesia is the famed spice islands of the colonial period. There's no curry. Standard Indonesian fare seems to be some form of nasi goreng (fried rice) or mie goreng (fried noodles) or soto (soup), with toppings. Nasi goreng ayam for example is fried rice with chicken, while soto mie bakso is noodle soup with meatballs, and so on. It's not bad, but it's neither what I was expecting, nor much to write home about. I did later in the trip find a few specialty regional dishes that I like quite a lot, and I'll get to those in due time.

What is amazing about Indonesia is the tea. It's simple standard Asian tea, but in Indonesia there are many varieties of tea, which basically means they've put other stuff in it. I've had sultan tea which is very reminiscent of Persian tea, mint tea which is iced and includes peppermint (amazing), lime tea (not my favorite). My favorite I found in Jakarta, which is called tea poce. They give you a small pot of hot tea, and a glass that includes big chunks of rock sugar, like ice cubes. You pour the tea in and then drink it without stirring, so the heat of the drink gradually dissolves the rocks of sugar, but the sugar does not mix evenly in the glass. The result is that the top of the glass of tea contains no sugar, while the bottom becomes extremely sweet. It's fun to drink.

Enough about food, for now. I paid for the room, thanked my host, and took a walk around Bondowoso. It doesn't have much going for it other than being an access point to Kawah Ijen, and was really not too much to write home about. I was still extremely sore however, my legs were not pleased with me. I arrived at the bus station early to ensure I got on the bus before it left, having forgotten how buses work in Indonesia, and ended up waiting for several hours. My smartphone is however my friend, and I was able to successfully annoy people in America and browse the depths of the internet. Over the next two weeks I would spend more hours than expected surfing the internet on my phone, and the external battery pack I had brought did a magnificent job of keeping the Nexus 5 alive through 20 hour bus rides. Reddit is blomong other things. It's a pity.

The bus did eventually leave, and I was on the way to my next volcano.

Gunung Bromo

On the way to Bromo there was an extended stop in the city of Probollingo, which is a fairly uninteresting city that just so happens to be a hub for many central and eastern Javanese towns and attractions. There are a lot of stores and a lot of buses. I transferred from one of the larger buses to a "minibus" (basically a large van) that would take us to the town of Cemoro Lawang, a smallish mountain town close to Bromo. Here I met a German couple, who turned out to also be very sociable and fun. I liked these two. They had met when they both happened to be sightseeing in India, and later moved in together when they returned home from Germany, after as they put it, a romantic first kiss under the stars in the desert of Rajasthan. Definitely straight out of a Bollywood movie, these two. They were experienced backpackers and we enjoyed each others company.

The van ride up the mountain to Bromo was nothing short of gorgeous. While Ijen was thick jungle, complete with trees intersecting the road and monkeys frolicking about, Bromo was only partially forested, allowing amazing views of the hills and mountains as we approached the volcano. Small towns dotted the landscape, and terraced farmland was abundant. I tried, in vain, to get pictures from the moving vehicle. I got maybe one that's worth playing with, so sad. I did get some good experience on using the Shutter Priority setting on my camera though, that's a plus. Throughout this trip I've been telling people that I am a professional photographer. This is technically the truth, as the majority of my job for the insurance company is photography, but it gives an implication to other tourists that is altogether dishonest, and I am well aware of this. Still, I enjoy the attention it brings, and I feel like if I told them I was a NEET, they wouldn't get it. I guess I'm technically not a NEET anyway, at least not anymore.

Bromo is more touristy than Ijen, and when we got to Cemoro Lawang there were many overpriced homestays eager to support us. They promised hot water, although we obviously didn't get it. This is I imagine a good time to explain Indonesian hotels. More than any other country I've been to in Asia, with India a close second, Indonesian hotels are by design a gamble. You may or may not have a bathroom at all, and if you do, it may or may not contain any of the following; A toilet, a sink, toilet paper, a shower head, a mirror or a towel, and it will not have hot water. You may get a tiled area the size of a closet with a hole in the middle and a bucket of water for you to wash yourself with. The room itself may or may not have electricity, fans, electrical outlets, sheets, pillows, a trash bin, breakfast, and so on. Every room I had in Java (with one glorious exception) was some variety of the worst thing I'd ever seen, and Cemoro Lawang was no exception. It didn't matter, we had another sunrise to see, so we weren't going to do much sleeping. We went out for dinner, and as I was with Germans now we tried the Indonesian beer, Bintang. It's okay.

They did at least have a jacket for me to rent, which was appreciated when we woke up at 3 AM to climb another mountain, right after coffee. I don't normally drink coffee, but as I was still tired and sore from Ijen I felt some caffeine would do me good. However, as luck would have it this hike was significantly easier than the Ijen hike, since for much of the way the road was paved. You don't actually climb Bromo, which is in actuality a group of volcanoes all right next to each other, surrounded by a huge valley that looks so much like the surface of the moon it gets used as such by Hollywood. Instead you climb a neighboring mountain that affords you an excellent view of the entire spectacle. It was close to three hours to the top, and at the top there were tourists. You see, most of the tourists don't come to Cemoro Lawang and walk to the top. The other side of the mountain can be accessed by car, so the boring tourists hire cars and come from other parts of Java the easy way. It was actually pretty funny, we were just the three of us climbing a mountain in the dark, and then turned a corner and suddenly a road, jeeps and about a thousand people. Bromo was gorgeous. I could describe it, but here's a picture. We had been worried about the view, because the previous day in Cemoro Lawang had been foggy and it was difficult to see anything. But the following morning was clear and wonderful. It was actually doubly awesome because you can see Bromo from Cemoro Lawang on a clear day, but as it was not clear, our first view of the volcano at all was from the top of the site as the sun came up.

After a couple hours of picture taking, we meandered back down the mountain to an area where there was not a thousand people, and had lunch. It was a buffet and we were actually pretty pleased with it, we had chosen a good location, called cafe lava. Everybody ate several plates of food. At this point I had to say goodbye to my new travel companions, as we were going in different directions. I actually liked these two quite a bit, and I would have liked to continue my journey with them. But that so rarely works out I've found.

The bus ride to my next location was horribly long. I had the van ride down the picturesque countryside, just as good as it was on the way up, then had to change buses again in Probolingo. This was funny because when I asked for the bus to Solo, it had just left. But this isn't a problem you see. A bus station attendant got me on his motorbike, sped down the road, caught up to the bus, made it stop and then put me on. They ended up charging me extra for this, but it wasn't much and I was happy to pay. I took that bus to Surakarta, and there had to change again in order to get to Solo. I arrived at Solo close to midnight, but was feeling pretty good, although I was indeed quite tired.

Surakarta (Solo)

Solo is supposed to be the least westernized city in Indonesia, and I'm not sure if it lives up to its name, as I still saw McDonalds and KFCs amongst the Indonesian markets and restaurants. Its other reputation is that of being laid back and relaxing in comparison to its neighbor and rival, the city of Yogyakarta. It was this. I stayed for two nights, as I was ready for a bit of a break by now.

I mentioned in my hotel diatribe before that there was one glorious exception to my Indonesian homestays. It was here in Solo. The homestay in Solo was so good it would have passed muster in America. The bed was huge, I had air conditioning, multiple power outlets, a full bathroom with everything you'd expect in one, a closet, good internet. I even had a hot water heater for the shower, although it struggled to produce lukewarm water. I was very very happy with the lukewarm water. The staff did my laundry for me and brought me breakfast each morning which was actually quite good, gave me a good map of the city and didn't charge me when I lost my key. For these reasons I spent about half the next day in the room, although part of that is also because it was Monday (Sunday in America), so it was time to break out my tablet and pirate the new Game of Thrones episode. Even 13 time zones and a countrywide internet filter that blocks nudity won't keep me away from Game of Thrones.

The sightseeing in Solo during the day was limited, as it was a day of rest. Solo has two royal palaces, although they were a little disappointing. The first was very much in disarray, and the second I was not able to get all the way into. Solo's royal family still lives there, so the place requires a mandatory guide. However, at the ticket office they said there were no guides. Eventually they let me in without a guide, and then halfway into the palace I was stopped by staff who told me I had to have a guide. When I told them there were no guides they said I had to wait until there were guides. I asked them how long I would have to wait, and they said they did not know. I left.

I did find two things I enjoyed considerably though. The first was the specialty food of Solo, Nasi Liwet, which is rice cooked in coconut milk instead of water, with some sort of topping of course. It's very sweet, and very good. The second and more impressive thing was the Batik museum.

Batik is, as I understand it, one of the prides of the Javanese people. The way I'd describe it to a westerner is that Batik produces the fanciest and most amazing Hawaiian shirts you will ever see. Indonesia is truly the reigning champion of the Hawaiian shirt, and Solo (or Yogya depending on who you talk to) is the champion of Batik. Batik is made the same way you make wax-resist easter eggs. Wax is applied to whole cloth in a pattern on both sides, which is then dipped in a bucket of natural dye. The dye soaks into the fabric where the wax is not, but stays off the wax. You then boil the outfit in water to melt off the wax, then reapply for a new color coat. I was told in real Batik each color is dyed on fourty separate times, and the garment is dried in perfect darkness between each dipping. The designs are hand made by Batik artists, and a proper Batik cloth takes at minimum one month to make, with the good, well detailed stuff taking over a year. The difference in time depends on how much detail there is in the pattern and how many colors are used. Traditionally Batik is only made by women, because according to tradition the male gender is not patient enough for this process. In modern times both men and women are allowed to make Batik.

The result is a garment that has incredibly bright, vibrant colors, with a design on it that is literally one of a kind. You are wearing somebodies artwork. Further, the colors in the fabric are so soaked in, that the museum boasted that a Batik shirt can be machine washed every single day for thirty years and will not fade. They did say it will fade in the sun though just like any other cloth, so you can't just leave it outside or something. Batik is also very expensive. A real Batik shirt on the cheap end will run you about 40-50$ US, while the expensive ones can be upwards of 300$. This may not sound like a lot compared to designer clothing in the west, but realize that in Indonesia, this is a LOT of money. My restaurant bills here are typically only about 2-3$, and my hotel bills are only 10-15$. Men wear Batik here in similar fashion to how they wear suits in America. The more well to do may wear Batik every day, but for most people it's only brought out for weddings and other special occasions.

There is also a lot of fake Batik that looks like the real stuff but is actually machine made, and is sold to tourists. Upscale stores often make their employees wear this fake Batik so everyone looks good, but is wearing the same outfit. The museums guide, a rather attractive woman in a bright pink, fashionable hijab, taught me how to differentiate between the two should I choose to go shopping later. I did choose to go shopping later, although not in Solo.

Later in the evening I went to a theater for a cultural performance that the hotel had told me about. It started off with a band playing Indonesian music in kind of Elvis style, with slicked back hair and bright white western suits. That was sort of fun. Following that was the main event, a Wayang Orang performance, which is sort of described as Indonesian opera. They do stories from Hinduism, typically some part of the Ramayana or Mahabharata, with impossibly well dressed dancers performing and an orchestra singing the speaking parts for them. If you don't understand the story I can imagine it would be quite boring, but my university degree ended up serving me well here. I knew the story being presented even though I did not know the language it was presented in, and I had a great time.

I spent a second night in my wonderful, wonderful hotel room (its like was not seen again), and left early in the morning to go to Yogyakarta. But on the way I would see the largest Hindu temple in Indonesia, Prambanan.

Yogyakarta (Yogya) and Prambanan

Prambanan is halfway between Solo and Yogya, and has a few secondary sites that are smattered around the countryside. I wanted to get there very early and I wanted to see everything, so I hired my own car. One thing I've noticed on this trip is that I'm no longer a poor twenty something who is forced to travel as cheaply as possible. I'm still doing things pretty much on the cheap to be sure, but I have a reasonable budget now, and when I want to do something like hire my own car for the day, I just do it. I suppose that's one of the advantages of getting older and having a job. The downside is losing my hair. I'd rather have my hair back. But I digress.

The temples were amazing. Prambanan is huge, and is supposedly the second largest Hindu temple in Asia, seconded to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, which I have already been to. Angkor is a certain sort of special, it is easily the most amazing historical ruin I have seen in my entire life, and is probably the most amazing one in the entire world. Comparing other things with Angkor is strictly unfair. As such, Prambanan is pretty majestic all on its own. It has three major temples, to Brahma, Vishnu, and a larger central one to Shiva. It is then surrounded by lesser temples filled with all of the things. Reliefs on the walls depict the Ramayana in its entirety. Indonesia is pretty obsessed with the Ramayana. I visited each temple at length, and then went to the secondary sites, which consisted of a couple smaller Hindu temples, a smattering of Buddhist temples, and a local museum, which was not very interesting except for a hilarious video that talked at length about how westernization was destroying nature and if we just go back to the virtues of Hinduism we would save the world. There's a side of that that's hard to argue with, but the video was a pretty impressive bit of historiography and was obviously designed to cater to the typical Bali tourist who flies to Yogya to see Prambanan for a day and then flies back to Bali where they can get drunk between yoga classes.

The next destination was Yogyakarta, which is a good city, possibly my favorite of the bunch. The room I got was not, and never will be a Surakarta room, but compared to others it was adequate and reasonably priced. It was however in a neat little area called Soroswijayan, which is an alley close to the train station that has become Yogyas backpacker central. In this tiny little alley basically everybody is white, and every building is either a hotel or a restaurant servicing said hotel. Then as soon as you turn the corner you're out of tourist land and into the thick of it. It was a good mix between tourism and a local atmosphere, not too much of either, and I was fond of it. There was a lot to see in Yogya and the surrounding area, I spent four nights here.

After relaxing a bit and eating fried cobra (delicious), I bought a ticket for the Ramayana Ballet. It turned out an Italian girl also wanted to go to the ballet. She was a photography enthusiast with a good camera, and I lucked out and actually knew more about photography than she did, so I was able to give her some advice and we showed each other our pictures, had dinner together, and really had a pretty great time. For an impromptu travel date, of which I have had many, this was probably one of the best. Eventually we went and saw the Ballet, which was amazing.

The Ramayana Ballet is a super serious, highly professional Wayang Orang performance that is done at night, at the actual Prambanan temple. They do two different performances. Two nights a week they do an abridged version of the Ramayana that lasts something between two and three hours, this is what we saw. Then two nights a week they do what they call the "Ramayana Story Performance" where they play one scene from the complete, unabridged version of the Ramayana. Each year they complete the unabridged version once, and it takes them eight months. It was spectacular. There was a huge cast, glittering golden costumes, the man who played Hanuman could breakdance and do backflips while holding flaming torches, and in one part set part of the set on fire. This is all done on the actual Prambanan site, so you are literally looking at the Shiva temple during the entire performance. Afterwords apparently the custom is that the audience floods the stage and everybody takes pictures of and with the cast, so of course my date and I had a field day with our cameras. It made up for the fact that I'm going to miss Anime Expo this year, but only a little bid.

Unfortunately the Italian girl departed the next morning, so I did not get to see any more of her, but it was a good evening. The following day I went to see sites in Yogya, mostly the palace and surrounding grounds. There was a traditional Muslim market which was pretty neat, full of stalls that sold everything a few times over. The palace was a royal palace. The style of palaces in Java largely reminds me the style of palaces in Vietnam over anything else, which is not much of an advertisement. Big wooden buildings with slanty roofs. I also went to the main mosque, but I was not allowed inside, which is unfortunately fairly common for that sort of thing. I am very visibly not a Muslim.

I ended up taking the wrong exit out of the palace, and found myself wandering around a densely populated and fairly dilapidated part of the city. I ended up getting some of my best pictures here, as it was very local and relaxed. The few stall vendors didn't even bug me about buying anything, the houses were rustic and photogenic, there were adorable cats hanging out, etcetera. I eventually found a coffee shop that dealt in Kopi Luwak, which Indonesians say is the most expensive coffee in the world. I have since looked this up on wikipedia, it is the second most expensive coffee in the world. It's made from the poop of what looks like a very large squirrel that only eats coffee beans. The logic is the animal only picks the best beans to eat, so obviously its poop is the best coffee, right? Apparently coffee experts are in agreement that it's actually pretty shitty (ha!) coffee and only around for the novelty value. I don't drink coffee and it was very expensive even when compared to Starbucks prices, so I refrained and just chatted with them instead. They were very nice and eventually gave me a spoonful of the stuff in a shot glass just to taste. It was okay.

It was here that I met Gillem, who has become my friend in Yogyakarta. Gillem is a middle aged man who is all about Batik. He makes it himself, has his own Batik studio, and runs classes where he teaches westerners how to make Batik. He's also just super friendly and an awesome guy. He took me to a couple Batik galleries, where they sold both outfits and also Batik cloth put on frames and sold as paintings. He also took me to the site I was trying to get to in the first place, the Water Palace, which was probably at one point really amazing, but in modern times is run down and ugly. The local atmosphere in the alleys was much more interesting. Gillem and I had dinner, and made arrangements to meet again in a couple days to go to Imogiri, more on that later.

When I got back to Soroswijayan I attempted to convince the other tourists to go to Dieng with me the next day. You see, there were two sites I wanted to see, Borobodur (popular and touristy) and Dieng (neither of the two), and they were both quite far away from each other, so the only way to do it was to charter a car for the whole day. This was rather expensive, so I attempted to find somebody who would split the cost with me. Nobody wanted to go to Dieng, and I ended up doing it all on my own, starting at three AM the next morning. It rained that evening, and I ended up spending the night on the internet, chatting with a friend who gave me an impromptu education in Kpop bands. Good times.

Borobodur, Dieng and back to Yogya

Borobodur is kinda the thing in Indonesia that I wanted to see. Prior to the planning stages of this trip, it is the only site that I actually knew about. It is the largest Buddhist monument in the world, and the second largest religious site in the world, but again, comparing Angkor with other temples is like comparing League of Legends with other MOBAs. I was excited. I was doubly excited with Dieng, which after learning about it I had a suspicion would actually be cooler than Borobodur. Dieng is a set of five temples for the heroes of the Mahabharata, suitably named the Arjuna Complex, on top of a big mountain north of Yogya. They are the oldest temples in Indonesia, and some of the oldest Hindu temples outside India. Lonely Planet describes them as "of great archaeological importance, but underwhelming for non-experts". When I read this line I pretty much had to go.

Borobodur ended up being a bit of a let down. The tour started on a hilltop overlooking the site at sunrise, my third and thankfully final sunrise in the span of a week. It was foggy and the temple was only visible for a couple minutes. It also happened to be a holiday weekend, and so when I got to the actual site, every single Indonesian in the region appeared to be there. Apparently on school holidays the schools hold field trips to historical sites instead of not having school here, so there were more 14 year olds than I think I've ever seen in my life there today, all in uniform, and all wanting my picture. This is an Asian thing, taking pictures of white tourists, and I'm not un-used to it. However, Indonesians are into this about ten times as much as the other countries I've been to in Asia, and the kids are into it more than the adults. I think I had my picture taken at minimum a hundred times at Borobodur. It didn't ruin the site for me, I still had fun climbing around majestic stupas and hanging out with statues of the Buddha, who is and will always be my bro. But it wasn't quite the transcendent experience I had hoped for.

Dieng made up for this in spades.

The road to Dieng was very similar to the road to Bromo, and equally majestic. Little villages, thick forests, terraced farmland for days. All of the things you'd want to see, only this time I was in my own car with my own driver, and could tell him to stop while I took pictures. When we got to the mountain, we first visited a sulfur lake. This lake is apparently a famous spot in Indonesia, because the sulfur is in the lake in such a way that different parts of the lake are different colors. Photography happened, and it was good.

But the temples at Dieng, oh man the temples at Dieng. I was nearly the only person there and I had a field day. There were a few Indonesian tourists, and I was told this was basically because of the holiday, but it wasn't so bad. I pranced around on the temples, tried to identify obscure reliefs, and after using my phone to double check a picture on my flickr account realized that I had seen this style of temple before. I did some impromptu smartphone research about the Pallava kingdoms and some temples I'd seen in southern India that resembled these, and whether or not the architectural style at Dieng could have come from the Pallava dynasties. In fact, they did. As it turns out, the relationship between the Pallavas and the temples at Dieng was only discovered in 2011. Suck on that UT Austin. Kind of fun.

I had dinner in the local village, which consisted of sausage and french fries. Lots of potato farms in Dieng, but these fries were not American fries, so sad. The drive back was just as great as the drive there, and I ended the day with a trip to a rather fun Buddhist Monastery between Borobodur and Dieng.

The next day in Yogya, I was still elated with Dieng, and in general was feeling pretty good and pretty comfortable with Indonesia in general. I didn't have too much specifically to see, so I decided to just take a walk. I left the hotel and made a checklist. Smartphone? Check. Earbuds? Check. Travel music? Crap, Love Today isn't on my phone. Okay Google, youtube Love Today for me. Time for a walk. About 15 miles later I'd found my way to the Muslim market that was next to my hotel. I decided that since impromptu folk music is such a big thing in Indonesia I'd make a pass at it. I walked through the market whistling Death on a Snowfield. I got applause. It was pretty fun. That night I went to a Wayang Kulit performance, or a puppet show. The kind where they have a screen with a light behind it so the puppets are shadows. Another Ramayana performance. Less awesome than the Ramayana Ballet, but still pretty cultural and fun. I had invited a group of Danish girls to go to the puppet show with me, and they said they wanted to, but we kept getting waylayed and missed each other at the hotel. For the next day or so we ended up writing notes and putting them under each others doors talking about how much we wanted to see each other and how sorry we were to have missed X for Y reason. To be honest, this impromptu game of note tag was probably more fun than actually hanging out with them would have been.

My final day in Yogya I spent with Gillem, my Batik friend from the palace alleys. We went around the exterior of Yogya, had some local food, chatted and laughed, and also visited Imogiri, a Muslim pilgrimage site that I'd wanted to see. It is the burial grounds for the old sultans, and is supposed to draw pilgrims from all over Indonesia. The inside with the actual tombs was closed for the holidays unfortunately, but I got to see the exterior, and Gillem having been there before told me all about it. Another good day. I'm honestly pretty happy with missing something I had wanted to see, because I've learned from repeated travels that if I want to see something and do not, I end up longing to see it after I return home, and the concept of going to that country again remains an interesting travel opportunity and leads to fun daydreams. Not that I would miss something on purpose, but more that if it is just one thing, I can still be satisfied.

I talked about Batik with Gillem a lot, and he wanted to take me out another day and help me buy some, but I had already gotten a bus ticket to go to Jakarta that evening. I had however planned on having a couple extra days in case of sickness or other emergency, so I told him on my way back to Bali instead of taking the overnight bus all the way, I would go to Yogya, spend one day with him Batik shopping, and then go from Yogya to Bali. Gillem approved.

I ended up leaving for Jakarta quite satisfied with the entirety of my Yogyakarta experience. It is a good city. This satisfaction was of course, immediately dashed by what ended up to be an incredibly uncomfortable bus ride. It left quite late. There was tons of traffic as everybody was going home for the holidays. The roads in Indonesia are impressively bad, and our bus hit a pothole that gave it a flat tire, and a mechanic had to be called from a local village. I had to get the bus to stop for an emergency appointment with the bathroom, which was difficult as the bus staff did not understand English, and the Indonesian word for bathroom (toilet) was obfuscated by my American accent. I ended up typing TOILET in big letters on my phone and showing it to them to get them to stop. All in all, the bus was supposed to arrive in Jakarta at 6 AM, and did not arrive till 1 PM, essentially costing me a sightseeing day. So my two extra days were now down to zero.

Jakarta

Many people leading up to Jakarta had told me that it was dirty, busy, urban, full of scams, and had an altogether toxic (video game community toxic, not the actual definition) atmosphere with nothing worth seeing. I soon realized that these were the opinions of people who have never lived in New Delhi. You see, Indonesia is, in general, like a smaller version of India. It's got all the same stuff, just a degree less of all of it. If you like India, you will like Indonesia, but if you like Indonesia India may still be too much for you. Jakarta is very much a smaller New Delhi. It's urban. It's busy. It's filthy. The people are dicks. But it's also got a lot of charm under the surface, and you just need to keep your horizons open and know where to look.

Jakarta was immediately recognized as the most Islamized of the cities I went to, although even this wasn't so much, I didn't get the impression that it was as religious as say Hyderabaad, which I also would not call especially religious. Indonesian people have the same attitude towards Islam as most southeast Asians have towards their religions. They take the parts they like, mix it with their local culture, and ignore the rest. Women are not required to cover their heads, but most of them do, usually with very brightly colored and decorated things rather than black hijabs, the sort of outfit that I'm told is getting more popular in the Arab world by the year. There are calls to prayer five times a day, but a lot of people do not pay any attention to them. The first one is at 4 AM though and wakes me up every single day, which is fine because as it turns out that's a good time to play video games with Americans or skype with my family. You can't get pork in Java, which is pretty funny because in Bali you can't get beef.

There are mosques absolutely everywhere, so that if you're in the area during prayer time you can run into one I suppose. Many large public buildings like airports, museums and palaces will have their own mosque inside the building for emergencies of that sort. I found it quite funny, because since Mosques require a room for washing your feet, they're usually right next to the public bathrooms, so the signs will say "TOILET, MOSQUE -->" as if they both refer to a similar sort of physical need in society. I tried to explain to a local how funny I thought this was, they didn't get it.

Jakarta also has the largest Mosque in Indonesia, as well as its largest Christian Cathedral, as the city was built by the Dutch. Funnily, the Mosque was also built by a Dutch Catholic. This Mosque they actually let me in, which was a delight because it's the first Mosque I've ever gotten to really explore the interior of. I'd taken classes in Islam in India in UCLA, and I suppose I was sort of prepared for the things I saw, but it was a fun experience all the same. The Cathedral was honestly cooler, because its ceiling was filled with bird feeders, and there were birds flying around the dome and everything. I'd never seen something like that before and it was very cool. Birds in Indonesia are sort of interesting, it's been explained to me that owning a pet bird is part of being a man in Indonesian culture. The logic is that if you cannot take care of a pet bird, you cannot take care of a woman. So every single house has caged birds in it, and there is birdsong everywhere you go. The more well to do the family, the more birds. The family I'm living with in Bali has ten. After the religious buildings I walked around a bit, found a few monuments and political buildings, and then came back for dinner.

In Jakarta I spoiled myself on food. I found close to my hotel a rather upscale restaurant near the city center, that I believe catered to the political class. There were a lot of men in military uniforms and western suits eating there at all times. It was the sort of place where they had dozens of attendants just standing around, and all you had to do was pick your head up and someone with impeccable English was at your table. Their menu was huge and had dishes from every island in Indonesia. It was expensive, almost rivaling American restaurant prices. But the food was amazing, the service was excellent, and the attendants were happy to stand around having conversations with me, explaining Indonesian cuisine and helping me to learn more about the food. I ended up eating here four times. This is where I learned about Tea Poce, as well as a dish I rather love called Beef Rendang, or "Caramelized Beef", which hails from Sumatra. These guys also went way out of their way to make the dishes appealing to look at, so I took lots of pictures of the food.

The next day I went to Taman Mini, which is an Indonesian version of Skansen in Stockholm. Basically an outdoor museum where they have buildings designed to be reminiscent of historical buildings from every part of Indonesia, all in one spot so you don't have to go everywhere. It had a lot of charm, although I must say I liked Skansen much more. Skansen is quite a bit higher up on the authenticity scale. It goes a little overboard you see, the grounds are actually shaped like Sweden, with the buildings in the part of the park that they would correspond to on an overhead map of the country. Furthermore, they're real historical buildings that have been picked up and moved from those regions, while in Taman Mini the buildings are replicas that were built at the museum site. It was still pretty cool, some of the buildings were very impressive, especially the exhibits from Sumatra, which made me happy because I really want to see Sumatra and probably will not have time during this journey. There were huge treehouses, big almost Viking style longhouses, houses on stilts to avoid flooding, museums, and so on.

One of the cooler things about Taman Mini is that in general each exhibit has a food stall that has food from that region of Indonesia. This would have been much more awesome if I could eat lunch at every exhibit, but alas I was only able to eat lunch twice, having a dumpling dish and a fish dish, both of which I enjoyed. They also had a pretty good cultural museum here, but the star attractions of the site were the reptile museum and the bird museum. The reptile museum was filled with poisonous snakes and interesting creatures, leading up to the main attraction, a live Komodo Dragon. You got to get about three feet away from him while he stuck his tongue out at the glass smelling you. He very much had that look in his eye of "I know there's glass between us, but if there was not I would eat you." He posed for quite a lot of pictures.

The bird museum was even better. There were swans, parrots, peacocks, colors and chirping, flapping and so on. They had two great domes, one for birds of eastern Indonesia, and one for birds of western Indonesia. The domes were open and you walked through them, with signs noting that some of these birds can be aggressive, so please do not antagonize them. None of the birds were aggressive. Taman Mini also had an insect museum and an Indonesian military museum, but these two were closed for renovations and I did not get to visit them, so sad.

Following this I went to the Anticommunism Museum, which was pretty great, and filled with more amusing historiography. Most of the historical museums in Indonesia focus purely on the last 100 years. They basically tell about how the Dutch were ruling the country, the Japanese "liberated" them in WWII, then were kicked out by an Indonesian uprising after the war. After the Japanese left the Dutch tried to retake the Island, and were beaten again by the Indonesians, with some economic support from America and parts of Europe. After this, there was a Communist rebellion from within the country, which was put down by good Indonesian Capitalists. The Anticommunism museum was about this last rebellion and talked at length about how evil Communism is and how it depraves individuals and teaches them to not care about others. It is rather startling however that in a period of about 15 years, Indonesia went through four separate wars in order to become what it is today. I can see why they want to talk about that time period so much.

The next day I went to the old Dutch part of town by the harbor, visiting a multitude of museums and old colonial buildings. Most of them were not kept up well, and I'm not sure there was all that much to talk about. The maritime museum was pretty cool, it had a lot of replicas of Indonesian boats from different islands, as well as an entire floor dedicated to aquatic myths from different countries and religions, including stuff like The Little Mermaid. Its pirate exhibit very heavily took its visuals from the Johnny Depp music, which I'm not gonna lie was pretty awesome.

What may have been more fun was that I had a good long walk on the way there, most of which was on an extremely busy street with no sidewalk, so I was walking alongside a four lane highway, pretty much walking with the traffic, which flew past me on both sides. There were big dilapidated high rises, garbage, cat calls from distant places, it was quite noisy, lively, very urban Asian. Most of the traffic in Jakarta is motorcycles, whizzing by loudly with turn signals and break lights painting red colored streaks as they move past. I needed music. I had just the thing.

It was around this time that my feet started to really bother me. I like to think of myself as an accomplished walker, and I know my friends will not challenge me on this assertion, but over two weeks of sightseeing and mountain climbing I had overdone it. My feet were riddled with blisters, and walking was becoming difficult. This was unfortunate, because I had the opportunity that night to go out clubbing. Apparently Jakarta is the best city in Asia for clubbing, or at least has the reputation of being as such. It was a Tuesday, and I was told that for some reason Tuesday is the best night of the week in Jakarta for meeting women at the clubs. This is not the sort of thing I usually enjoy when traveling, especially by myself, but here I was genuinely interested. However my feet were too sore, and I had also heard that Jakarta can be very dangerous for foreigners at night, so I was imagining the nightlife resembling something like this. I ended up not going.

I took it easy the last day, going to Jakartas National History Museum (actually quite good), hanging out in their central square a bit, having lunch in my beloved restaurant, before resting my feet in the hotel for several hours before an overnight train ride back to Yogyakarta to meet Gillem and go Batik shopping.

Back to Bali

I was tired and sore when I got back to Yogyakarta, but Soroswijayan was close to the train station, familiar, and brightened my spirits. I arrived at 4 AM, had a nap in the lobby of the hotel I had stayed at previously, which kind of surprised the staff when they woke up. If they didn't want me to squat on their sofa they should have locked their door, duh. I met up with Gillem, who took me to four separate Batik stores, as well as several art galleries. I ended up buying an authentic Batik shirt, royal blue with a bird of paradise motif, a pair of small paintings that I had removed from their frames and made into handkerchiefs (because that's awesome, tell me that's not awesome), and a painting as a present for my mother. Gillem then took me to the house of a Batik artist friend of his, and I actually got to help him a little with one of the paintings he was making. We relaxed, drank tea, chatted, and had a good time. One last dinner in Soroswijayan and I was on my way home.

I'd been convinced with a travel agent in Jakarta that it was a better idea to fly from Yogya to Bali than take the overnight bus. The bus is 25$ and takes 29 hours, while the plane is 45$ and only takes one hour. I was torn, I actually really like the tremendously long bus rides, because I feel like all the travel through the countryside and stops at varous roadside restaurants and attractions gives me a good glimpse of the people and their culture, while planes are altogether distanced from the reality of the country. However, I was sore and ended up deciding that I actually haven't taken an inter country flight before, at least not outside the United States, so I'd give one a try. It was similar to Ryanair, which is to say it was worth the price, but was not at all comfortable.

This time, the Travel to Teach people actually did pick me up at the airport, at around 11 PM on a Thursday. On the ride back to Klungkung I told Hendra about my journeys, about Gillem and how he wants me to come back to Yogya for a party at his house before I leave for Thailand. He seemed rather pleased with the things I had seen and learned. I arrived back at the house, was greeted by the family with tea, and spent much of the following weekend resting, aside from a brief trip to the other part of the island for a wedding the family was attending. But this is an email about Java, so I will leave the details of Bali for another day. My bags are unpacked, my laptop and my video games are lively and well, it is almost midnight and I start my teaching tomorrow.

It's time to go to bed.


Sincerely,
Ryan