Merapi

Indonesians love their holidays, and this Tuesday was no exception. Nyepi is a Balinese Hindu holiday where you do nothing and stay quiet for a day. Even though Indonesia's population is over 90% Muslim, they happily take this day off as well. So as uni was cancelled for the day, my friends and I decided to go see our local volcano, Gunung Merapi (firey mountain). Merapi, the volcano pictured at the top of my blog, actually erupted in rather a spectacular and tragic way in 2006.

Two of my kosmates, one of their cousins and his girlfriend and I left Yogya on Monday night to start our little liburan to Kaliurang, a small town at the base of Merapi. We drove around, sussing out the accommodation situation and eventually came to a little villa. We got a five person villa, which ended up costing a mere $5 each for the night, including the first hot water I've had in nearly two months. I was quite surprised because the cousin and his girlfriend stayed in the same room. Now, by my standards, that's pretty biasa - ordinary. However, over here an unmarried couple staying in the same room is rather frowned upon and very unusual. It's good to get the opportunity to see the diversity first hand in what many people believe to be a largely homogeneous country.

We woke relatively early the next morning, and drove to a small lookout to have a look at Merapi and two small neighbouring hills. Unfortunately, the day began with a cloudy theme which it stuck to almost the whole time we were there. The air was fresh, the gardens were pristine, but what would have been meditative quiet was in fact pierced by the dulcet tones of a Batman-painted train-mobile's siren.

Following that, we hopped back into the car and drove further up until we got to the base of one of the smaller mountains. After climbing a short while, we were faced with two choices: Goa Jepang or the lookout. Being young and energetic, we decided to do both: go up one, come back then go up the next.

Goa Jepang turned out to be about ten or so tunnels dug into the side of the mountain used as hideouts by Japanese soldiers during World War II. These tunnels were fairly creepy and very dark; I was kicking myself for having left my manually powered torch back at the kos. Even though I'm not a fan of tunnels in any way, these looked pretty cool, and lots of them connected at the back. There were also a couple of sniper tunnels, though I didn't seen any entrances; only the little box windows where the Japanese must have looked out.

After hanging around the Goa Jepang, and having the piece and quiet brutally interrupted by a red wave of martial arts students, barefoot and dressed in their robes, which washed over the area leaving them twitching and gasping behind. Anyway, the ambiance was dented, so we headed back to the crosspath and started making our way to the summit.

A snail I saw. No cool story, but its shell looks like it's been sawn in half.

On the way, we got to see a whole bunch of monkeys being fed by a fat man in a red jacket. The leader of the monkey group, and the recipient of the most food, seemed to have a lot in common with this man. Though, as to whether they both sported disproportionately large testicles, I will never know.

After another long bout of walking, and a little rain, we finally made it to the top of the little mountain to find that Merapi looked as though it had been erased from view by the clouds. We decided to wait a while, have some snacks, and I jumped about taking photos every time a cloud looked as though it might shift. However, on one such occasion I was standing on a damp rock, trying to capture the volcano after two of its edges had emerged, when I slipped off, hitting my ribs and winding myself. I fell pretty hard, and hurt myself enough to justify a trip to the hospital for an x-ray the following day (stay tuned for my next post).

The picture that was my downfall.

Anyway, so I was in a fairly bad mood and a reasonable amount of pain for the rest of the trip, which we spent at Kalikuning, the mountainside town worst affected by Merapi's 2006 eruption. Arriving at the town, the damage wasn't as obvious as I'd expected. There was a bit of a rocky, dusty hill.

Then after you climbed that, you could see where the lava flow had ploughed through the dam and down the side of the mountain.

There were a couple of skeletal looking buildings, but to be honest, a lot of poor Indonesian towns look rather run down. It wasn't until I went down to the tourist stalls and saw some before and after pictures that I really understood the damage that had been done to the town. Although a lot had been destroyed, the tourist industry certainly hadn't been. The place was positively overflowing with schoolchildren and families and old Japanese women, so all is not lost for the unlucky residents of Kalikuning. Merapi was still being coy, so again I didn't get any decent photos. Though this time I was much more careful about where I was standing.

So that's about it from me about my trip to Merapi, but a follow-up blog is on it's way about my mild hypochondria and my adventures with the Indonesian medical system.

Thanks for tuning in!

Krakal

I love everything about going to the beach. I love playing in the waves, sun-baking on the sand, climbing the cliffs, perusing the rock pools, making sandcastles and sand sculptures and scouring the beach for shells. I love the salt water, the fresh air, and I even love how sand gets everywhere so that for weeks afterwards you'll open your bag or the boot of your car and still have remnants of your trip in tiny granular form.

This weekend, ACICIS (the organisation I'm here with, the Australian Consortium for In-Country Indonesian Studies) organised a trip to Krakal beach for all the ACICIS students who wanted to come along. We left Saturday morning, stayed overnight before heading back late Sunday afternoon. There were about twenty of us, and we all piled into this bus which pretty much epitomised all buses in this country. Indonesian buses are an adventure in their own right. It takes two people to drive an Indonesian bus; the driver, and the guy who hangs out the doorway yelling (or in our case issuing one of the loudest, most high-pitched whistles I've ever heard) at anyone being overtaken. On public buses, this guy will take money, shout for potential passengers amongst pedestrians as the bus hurtles down the street, and instruct the driver when to start and stop. I'm not quite sure what else the guy was meant to be doing, but he seemed to do it with gusto. The bus also flew along with all the doors and windows open, which was a little unfortunate when it started to rain, which it tends to do a great deal here. With the windows open and the green countryside whirling past, the cramped seats and hot weather didn't seem so bad though.

The hotel we stayed at was, in my opinion, a pretty ingenious place. The whole 4-storey building was built into the side of a big hunk of cream-coloured volcanic rock, so every back wall of every room was this porous slab of rock. Apart from the odd one-legged cricket and various other specimens of wildlife, it was a fairly nice, clean room. Unfortunately though, the porous rock proved do be the undoing of one of my friends.

In Java, the main island of Indonesia and the one I'm living on, there is a legend about a goddess who lives in the South Seas. According to Wikipedia she's actually celebrated on April the 6th (my birthday) in a little town in West Java. I think that might almost be worth a trip. Anyway, Nyai Loro Kidul is said to be the Queen of the South Seas, and it is also said that she is angered by boys who wear green. Anyway, so my poor friend Matt went all the way to Bali last Thursday to pick up a new surfboard. He flew back with it on Friday, and brought it with him to the beach on Saturday. After an hour surfing, he came back to shore with a piece of his broken surfboard in each hand. Then, later that night while we were playing cards outside his room, someone went to use his bathroom and came running out seconds later saying there was a flood. It turns out that a waterpipe had burst right behind Matt's room, and the water had leaked through the porous volcanic rock right onto his bed and all his things. And what colour board shorts did poor Matt bring to the beach that weekend? Bright green.

Anyway, the rest of the trip was incredibly relaxing. I did all the things I mentioned above, as well as playing beach cricket and talking to some Indonesians who were holidaying on the next beach. I tried to get them to join in playing cricket, but they were content watching us and calling things out. I really enjoyed looking in all the rock pools. There were some very disturbing wildlife. Instead of boring you with joyful descriptions of their unusual physical characteristics, I'll put up a few photos.

Thanks for tuning in!

Shake This Hand in Marriage

I guess the reference to body parts in the titles of my blogs so far started out as a coincidence. Arms for the Poor, Handicrafts...etc. But I quite like it as an ongoing theme. So many people rely on their bodies for survival here in a way we just don't at home. Extending a hand out to beg, waving a lightstick to direct traffic, making art and craft and customised everything, handwashing, cooking. All the labourers I've seen here do all their work with a minimum of tools. I saw a group of workers pulling an electrical cable from the ground like it was a game of tug-o-war. In the middle of busy traffic. I saw a group of men paving the ground using string, chalk and pieces of wood. I saw another group sweep leaves and debri from the side of the road into a truck using a plank and a dustpan. Even hands themselves are significant. Handshakes, making sure you use your right hand (difficult for a couple of the lefthanded ACICIS students) when giving and accepting things. Even the traditional handshake here (which I am a huge fan of) where you clasp someone's hand between your own flat palms while they simultaneously do the same. I love it. No agression, dominance or assertion. Just mutual recognition.

Handshaking is something I did a lot of this last Sunday. My friend Heri, an orang Jawa asli (native Javanese person) I met at ANU doing Saman dance (a traditional Acehnese dance, using rhythmic hand clapping and singing...I've joined a group here, so I'll be sure to post all about that including photos and videos when we perform later), messaged me on Friday to tell me he was coming from Jakarta to Yogya for a wedding and that if I liked I could come along. Despite the fact I had never met the couple getting married in my life, it was perfectly acceptable for me to tag along, and the only condition was that I wear batik (see 2nd post "Handicrafts"). Easy. So, on Saturday, between Futsal tournaments (also a forthcoming post) I went shopping in Malioboro (i.e. tourist street, Yogya) for some batik. I didn't have much time, and I used most of that little time buying a pair of the coolest flats in the world. For all those who don't care, please skip to the next paragraph. Anyway, these purple shoes are complete with wooden buttons, cute peeptoe, and some sharp colourful flowers on them. Pretty much the coolest shoes I've ever owned, with the possible exception of my black Converse with rainbow hearts.

So, I pretty much picked the first dress I saw, which turned out to be an awesome, authentic batik number, about $24, tie around the waist. The only problem was that the sleeves were a bit...puffy...true to some current Indonesian fashion, and the hem could be hemmed a bit more. When I get around to it, I'll add it to my pile of things to be adjusted by a local tailor for some unfairly low price. Here's me wearing the dress after the wedding at a mushroom farm (attached to the mushroom restaurant Jejamuran Heri, his friends and I went to afterwards). I pinned the sleeves to avoid looking too early nineties. I'm also a bit nervous because mushroom farms are kind of gross, and I was very close to a lot of mushrooms growing out of plastic bags filled with decomposing compost adding to the exceptional heat and humidity of that particular day.

The wedding was pretty similar to the one I went to in Malaysia (if you missed that one, have a look) You came in, signed the guest book and received your present (a cool bottleopener printed with the details of the wedding), shook hands using the above methodology with about 16 different important guests including the parents of each of the newlyweds, shook hands with the newlyweds, took advantage of the awesome food and then got your photo taken with the newlyweds. I think this was just the reception, and all the traditional ceremonies that take about three days (according to Heri) get done beforehand. I think all that is meant to be really boring, and I think it's very considerate of a family to only invite people to the reception. I'll remember that for future reference.

So, the only other parts about the wedding that were interesting were the ice-statues (pretty, but a giant waste of time in a tropical climate), the stall-like buffet, and the fact that one of Heri's friends is actually one of my lecturers from Introduction to Peace Studies (and who, incidently, has decided that he is obligated, now he has met me, to take me under his wing; and unecessarily so, in my opinion). Which brings us to the time where we must let the photos speak for themselves!! Thanks for tuning in!!

Look! I'm not the only bule (white person)!!