The decapitated brides

Sinta arranged for a bunch of people to meet at the inculs drinks room, from there we were going to go watch a ceremony that was being held in memory of the first sultan of Jogja (I think) We all met up at 10:30 am, but for some reason (I blame jam karet) we didn’t end up leaving until 12:30… and just as we were leaving it started pouring! Haha, we could have left two hours earlier when it was still fine… anyway, I was a little worried, cause Ijo said his performance was on at 5:30, so it didn’t leave much time to get to where we had to be and watch this ceremony…

There was a parade down one of the streets with hundreds of people both in the parade and lining the streets to watch it, some playing instruments, some dressed as warriors, some carrying oggoh oggoh, and just my luck, my camera went dead after taking just one photo! … I should have checked it before I left… all this time it was still raining, so I was getting a lille wet. We moved on to another area where the actual ceremony was going to take place. We were told if we weren’t paying attention then we would be possessed by old spirits… lil spooky… and that as a part of the ceremony two brides would be decapitated… don’t ask the reasoning behind this, I have no idea… of course I immediately asked… and REAL people are no longer used for the ceremony, but they use dolls instead. We were waiting outside this fenced off area, but then for some reason we were allowed to enter (apparently because we’re bule… white people.. Haha) so we went in, they just told us to be careful cause at the end of the ceremony they throw fruit out to the crowd, who will go nuts for it… they weren’t wrong.. Haha… everyone was scrambling everywhere trying to get some of the fruit, adam was lucky enough to have one basically thrown right to him… haha… intentionally or not, I dunno.  Wait, I skipped a bit… the decapitation.. How could I forget.. Yeah… they used dolls, except they still had blood in them :S … so they cut the throats of these two bride dolls, and all this blood started pouring out over the alter. It was definitely interesting tho, even if a little strange.

By this time it was already 5:30 .. Seeing Ijo dance didn’t look promising… on the way out we were stopped by a couple of young Indo guys who wanted to interview us about what we thought of the ceremony… I managed to avoid the camera, so Adam got stuck doing the whole interview.. It was pretty funny.. They were asking him questions in Indonesian.. And I dunno if he realized or not.. But he was answering them all in english.. Haha.. The strangest interview ever.. I dunno if they had any idea what he was talking about.

A few kms and thousands of people away, we got  back to out bikes, It was now already 6 pm, everyone wanted to go for dinner, but I wanted to go watch Ijo dance (if it was anything like his rehearsal, then he wouldn’t start til about 6:30 anyway) but the thing was.. I had no idea where I was, or how to get to the dance place from there. So I just had to follow with the others. It wasn’t so bad, we went and ate at a warung, (oh, all this time it had been raining too, so I was cold and wet by this stage), Yodim looked like he was gonna get sick, we all ordered hot tea to get warm. After dinner it was definitely way too late to go see Ijo… So I missed it :( .. But he said he has another performance coming up… so maybe I can watch him then. Then there was the drive home…. Also in the rain… you know, I never thought I would be cold in Indonesia… but on a motorbike at night, its always cold, add rain to the mix and its freezing! The ice cold mandi in the morning isn’t something I look forward to either...lol… a hot afternoon on the other hand, just never want to stop pouring the water!

Knowing where to go

While I’m hear I want to learn about the culture as well as the language… So I’m taking a class in Gamelan at UGM, its a traditional Indonesian orchestra, anyway, I’m also interested in learning Javanese dance, so I mentioned it to Ijo, and he said I can probably start in the upcoming semester (out side of uni, so there’s not long to wait) he’s been learning for about a year and has a performance coming up, he invited me to come and watch him rehearse. We met at gramedia, and I just followed him there on my bike.. I think I’ve realized, the hardest thing about riding a motorbike (well… its really a scooter.. But here they say “automatic motorbike” haha) anyway… the hardest part is knowing where to go, so its lucky I had someone to follow.

There were a few other dancers practicing when we got there, it all looked really nice, I was looking forward to the actual performance. Ijo went on and did his thing, I took a bunch of photos and filmed a little, when I showed it to him he was so happy. He had never seen himself dance, he thought he was worse that he actually is.. Haha.. But it was good cause he could watch what he had just done and then see the areas he thought needed improvement. I hope I can dance as well as him after one year! 

(oh.. And sorry for all the delays with EVERYTHING! Haha… late posts.. Barely any photos… etc etc… well.. I’ve uploaded a heap of photos to my facebook, so If you’ve got it, go check em out there!! … but yeah, hopefully I will get around to uploading some soon…)

The other Anak ACICIS went out to some pizza place which was awesome apparently, but by the time we finished up at the dance place it was too late to meet them. So Ijo took me back to his place, which happens to be the same kos as Indra! So I had a quick chat to him before we went out for dinner at a near by warung. It had the nicest food, and the sambal! Gee was it hot! Haha.. You should have see Ijo! It was so funny, he finished off his sambal, sweating, sniffing and crying from the heat.. And then wanted mine! Haha.. Crazy… tho, after eating there, food in other places didn’t seem so hot anymore.

The journey home was also an interesting one. Ijo pointed me in the direction of Amplaz, and I should have been able to find my way home from there… but some how I missed the turn off, and ended up on the ring road, not only that, but it was night, and raining… aku kehujanan! I had no idea where I was going, so I stopped on the side of the road to ask a parkir.. I eventually found my way home, but it took about twice as long as it should have… see the hardest part really is knowing where to go.

I'm Vario.... How about you?

After getting home and telling my kos mate that I went looking for a bike, he got excited and wanted to take me again today. But first I had a soccer match to go to. Hee Jae, an inculs student from Korea, had booked lapangan pancasila (the UGM sports oval) and arranged for everyone to meet there for a game. I wasn’t feeling too good, so I just wore thongs to make sure I couldn’t get roped into playing.. Haha… but hopefully he runs another one so I can have a kick next time. It was still great to watch tho, some of the players are SOOO freaking good! But I guess they must have been playing since they were little. I hung around for a bit afterwards and met a bunch of people… its crazy how many people I’ve met since I’ve been here! There are just too many… I can’t remember them all… and I feel horrible when someone comes up to me, knows my name, and starts having a convo… and I’m just thinking “where the hell do I know this person from”… feels horrible, but its just so hard when you’re meeting between 5 and 15 people every day..

After soccer I went home and my kos mate took me out to look for a bike again… I actually really wanted to go with Ijo, because he knows a lot about this kind of thing, and also his english is MILES better, so it would have just made everything so much easier. Anyway, I ended up buying a motorbike from a Honda dealer… and I’m really happy with it… but there was a few difficulties with buying it, because it was new. So, to buy a new bike in Jogja, you need to be a local resident of Jogja… you gotta have a KTP (basically a Jogja ID) which I don’t have.. I was going to borrow my friends, but my kos mate was saying, you know, if I use his KTP then it will be in his name, and we didn’t know what kind of person he was etc etc… which I thought “fair enough… I’m gonna have to really trust whoever I borrow the KTP from” … and then five mins later, he’s telling me that I should just use the KTP of the guy who works at the store :S …  I really didn’t know what to do.. I ended up feeling a little pressured into buying it… anyway, I spoke to Ijo about it later and he said it wasn’t such a good move… and that I could have used HIS KTP!!!! …. Damn it! Why couldn’t I just go with Ijo?!?! He kind of freaked me out actually… he was saying unless I get the STNK after one month, the BPKB after three months and then a photo copy of this guys KTP… then basically the bike belongs to him! … its strange here tho… in australia, we can change the name of the owner of the vehicle, here, it costs too much money, so the buyer is always the owner, but when they decide to sell, they just hand over the STNK, BPKB and a copy of their KTP… once you have all of those, the bike is basically yours, its just in someone else’s name… yeah… it was really confusing at first… but thats why I wanted Ijo there… gah!

Anyway, Ijo said not to worry about it too much… and I should just wait and see if I get all the paperwork… so hopefully this guy is decent and I get all the papers / copy of his KTP… cause it will be hard to sell without them... but if im trying to be positive, at least I have a motorbike now…

Bikes, bola and babies

Woah… Long time no update! Heaps has been happening.. Well.. It feels like it anyway. So there’s gonna be about five different posts.. Haha.. I just finished lunch and it started pouring with rain… but luckily I brought my laptop, and now I have something to do! :P

Ok… so however long ago it was, we got an email from Phil saying that a bunch of expats from Jakarta were coming to Jogja to play a game of AFL and show the locals about an Australian sport… I didn’t plan on going, but after asking Ijo if he could help me to go searching for a motorbike and he wanted to meet at Lapangan Pancasila (where the game was)… I kinda had to go. It wasn’t so bad, I ended up just watching and taking photos. Although I’m an Aussie, I’m not a big fan of AFL… there were a few Indo kids who rocked up, except hearing “football” they thought they were turning up to a soccer match and were a little surprised to find people playing with an odd shaped ball.

Anyway, after the football match, Ijo told me that he actually had a few other plans, which was a little strange, cause I thought he must have been free.. But anyway, after the game, we went back to the acicis house and phil wanted us to do some shopping for him before the expats came back to his place. Its fun hanging out with Ijo anyway, so I didn’t mind at all. Ok… so the shopping was done.. Now he was free… for a while.. Haha.. He took me to a 2nd hand bike shop, there was an ok bike there, 2 years old, only done 5000km, but it was still 11.8 million rupiah… brand new that model is only 13.3 million… so it was then that I was pretty much set on buying new. Ijo took it for a test drive and we said we’d think about it and come back later. Ijo said he had to take some people somewhere, and so we were off again, when we got there I saw that it was a bunch of other ACICIS students. He said they were going to an orphanage to celebrate a little girls 5th birthday! So, of course, I went along too! 

We arrived at the orphanage, and as soon as we walked through to the play area, a little boy came up to me and started hugging my legs. I looked down at him, he was only just taller than my knees, and he reached up to me. He was so cute! I picked him up and he just started hugging me.. Then I realized why he wanted me to pick him up. Because I’m much taller than him, after I picked him up he could reach the tree in the middle of the play area, and could play with the leafs. I don’t know why, but all of the kids there seemed to love playing with leafs. They were all so young, I think the oldest was probably 6 or 7, but the majority were probably 4 and under. We spent so long there, just playing and spending time with the kids, all of whom loved to “main foto” … and if you let them at your camera, I hope you didn’t want it back, haha… it was kinda funny tho.. I found out about the trip to the orphanage at the last min, so I had nothing to do with it, but the others had organised a cake and some presents for the girl (I’ve forgotten her name… I tend to do that a lot with indonesian names :S ) she seemed so happy, so did all of the kids.. I had mixed feelings there tho, I was happy to be spending time with these kids, and it was great to see them all so happy, but at the same time, it was so sad to think they they had lost their parents or been abandoned.. I can’t describe it, being really happy, but so sad at the same time… it was still a really good experience, and one I definitely want to have again.

A day in Paris

Again… What a champion!! Mas Ijo!! On Thursday night a group of Anak ACICIS went to Bandung (I think) for the long weekend. So Ijo decided to organise a trip to the beach for those of us who stayed behind in Jogja! So we all met a Circle K again… its great meeting there cause its only a 10 min walk from my kos! :D Not a lot to tell today.. But it was still heaps of fun!! Haha.

First stop was a dam, but I forget the name of it! I really should remember these things! .. Anyway.. It was pretty nice, we decided to go on a boat ride around it, with 11 Bule, plus Ijo and two drivers the boat was almost underwater.. Haha… you could reach out and touch the water, it was so close. Everyone was freaking out, thinking that we were gonna sink, especially with the dodgy sounding motor and the slight leak in the bottom of the boat, but with most of the hull submerged, what do you expect? Haha… Mitch even went as far as taking off his army boots because he thought for sure we weren’t going to make it back to land and feared not being able to swim with them. Luckily no swimming was required. The drive out of the dam was a long one tho, the road just wound and wound around the mountain, it felt like forever, locals would stop and look as we passed them, I’m not sure if they were looking at the car, or the bule inside.. One young boy even ran up to tough the bus, without realizing he could get run over.

From the dam we went to Glagah beach for lunch.. And almost didn’t make it up one of the steepest slopes, it was pretty tense hearing everyone gasp at the same time as the driver changed down a gear and the bus stopped on this massive slope. I didn’t see much of Glagah tho, was too busy eating lunch, haha.. I was starving after skipping breakfast.

About half an hour away was Pantai Parangtritis (Parangtritis Beach) or Paris. It the first time I had seen black sand on a beach. I think it was made from volcanic rock. The beach was a little dirty, and too dangerous to swim at because of rips. But it was still pretty beautiful. Especially the mist floating near where the cliff face met the water. Ijo grabbed my camera and got snap happy.. Haha.. I’m yet to look at the photos, but I’m sure they’ll come out pretty good… It probably means I’m in some of them, instead of being behind the camera! Haha… thanks Ijo! Oh yeah.. Haha.. We also saw some goats halfway up the cliff and Katie decided to go up and grab it cause it had a leach… Apparently she gave it to some homeless guy near the abandoned hotel at the top.

The drive home seemed a lot quicker than the one there, I guess cause we didn’t go via the dam again.. Haha. Most people went around to Steph’s place that night, she made mie instan with tahu tempe. Nothing too special, but still tasty! Oh yeah, then I taught her roomie and his friend how to play speed! So much fun! Haven’t played it in ages! 

Ooo… and I think it was today... I met another teman kos. He lives out the front… I can’t remember his name tho.. Seems like a pretty cool bloke.. He just randomly came into our lounge room and introduced himself… haha.. So hopefully we see a lot more of him… I mean.. Don’t get me wrong, its good here, but we basically only see one of our teman kos, but hopefully that all changes once uni starts.

Prambanan, Taman Sari and the attempted Kraton

Clare has been in Bogor doing the ACICIS Journalism option for the last few weeks, but she’s just had a break and came to Jogja for a week. I caught up with her on Thursday and met with some of her other friends. It was heaps of fun, we hired a car and went to the Kraton.. Well… actually, I caught a becak and was going to meet them there… I was waiting at the Kraton for a while, but still couldn’t see them, but they said they were at the entrance too, so I asked, and apparently there was only one entrance… Clare rang and after a while I thought I knew where they were, so I went for a walk while trying to decide what to do… anyway, turns out they were at the building in front of the Kraton.. Haha.. Can’t remember what its called.. It was really interesting tho, seeing all of the traditional royal clothing and where the sultans family and he would relax and listen to gamelan. 

Then we went to a nearby carriage museum. It was pretty interesting to see all the different styles of carriages that were used, some of them are so extravagant. Taman Sari was next on the list, it’s where the sultan used to live, with all of his wives. He had this tower he would sit in, surrounded by pools, where all his wives would swim, he would look out over them all, choose whoever he thought was looking particularly good that day and invite them up into his tower...lol.

Finally we went to Prambanan, a group of Hindu temples. There used to be over 200 of them, but since a series of earthquakes had destroyed them, only several have been rebuilt, I don’t think they will ever all stand together again, which is a little sad. But with little funding, and some of the pieces being stolen, its a near impossible dream. It was amazing none the less.

I’ve come to realize, that sometimes the tourists at the tourist attractions are part of the attraction for the locals at the tourist attractions. I should have realized this after Borobudur, but what can I say, I’m a little slow :P haha.. I was stopped for photos with people I don’t even know about four times, haha… My friends were saying I should start charging 1000Rp per photo. Not a bad idea! I reckon so far I’d have about 30,000Rp! haha

On the way out from Prambanan, there was a small stall selling souvenirs, a few of Clare’s Indonesian friends were looking at them, the lady who owned the stall was saying “lima ribu… lima ribu” (meaning 5000Rp each) … I was standing right there when she was saying it.. Then, as I came over to look she said “10,000 for you” … hahahaha… I didn’t know how to react.. I thought it was hilarious! Ah, the joys of being a bule… it does come with occasional benefits tho… All of which seem to be slipping my mind at the moment.  haha

Indonesian Time

Today there was supposed to be a dance class on at 4pm… I thought I’d check it out with some friends, but 4pm came around and we were still at a lesehan eating lunch… so I asked what time the class was on… 4pm I was told again… “but its 4 now!” …. “oh, I mean 4 Indonesian time” … haha… I’m slowly learning this concept of Indonesian time… anyway, we got to the class (after being caught in the rain yet again) half an hour late… and it hadn’t started yet.. Haha.. It turned out that they were only going dances for the girls, so I just watched for a bit and then Nikken took me over to the back room where all the gamelan are, she introduced me to a guy there and he started telling me about all the gamelan. I sat down to have a play and before long there was about 10 others all in the gamelan room suddenly we were all playing gamelan music together! It was great! We were only doing simple stuff, and some of it was still difficult! Mainly because you can’t look at what your hands are doing, you have to constantly look at the music. And also your left hand must mimic your right, but its always one step behind… I dunno if this is making sense.. Haha.. But anyway, I’m taking it as a class at UGM, so it was kind of like a test drive… and I have to say, I loved it! Can’t wait to get started in the proper lessons!