The Sights, Smells, Tastes and Feel of Bandung

A couple of weekends ago, my old group of Indonesian friends from ANU invited me to come on a quick trip to Bandung, a big city not very far from Jakarta. I met this particular group of friends when I joined a Saman dance group back in ANU. Saman is a traditional Acehnese dance that involves rhythmic clapping and movements, all in sync, at increasing speeds, and sometimes requiring involvement with the people next to you. I did a lot of Saman in 2008, and a bit in 2009 (though all my friends had started to move back to Indonesia by that time, and I didn't feel as though I clicked as well with the new kids coming through). Heri told me that they would love it if I came along and also if I joined them in early July for a Saman performance in Jakarta for the Minister of Government Land (or something)'s son's wedding - to which Indonesia's President SBY is rumoured to be attending. Eep. Anyway, feeling a little like I've been a bit flaky and not particularly opportunistic as of late, I decided to go. I booked a train ticket, and when Friday rolled along I embarked on an 8 hour train trip from Jogja to Bandung.

I love train trips. I love looking out the window, I love listening to "train" music, I love reading, drawing, writing, and watching the other people on the train. On the way over I was sitting in the aisle, which was a bit unfortunate, and sitting next to a young guy who seemed pretty keen for chatting (which most Indonesians are when they see a young bule girl on her own...they are at the same time interested in our foreignness and pitying because we're all friendless and alone;nNobody here really ever considers the possibility a girl would choose to go anywhere on her own) which I wasn't particularly so keen on for eight hours solid. Thank you giant Sennheiser headphones once again. Another great thing about the train trip was the food service; I mean, the food wasn't great...but the fact that you could order lunch and have it brought to your seat was pretty cool.

Finally I arrived at Bandung, and met up with Heri, Nurul, Gusti, Wawan, Amri, Desta and another Samaner I'd never met, but at whose incredible house we stayed for both nights.

It was a pretty whirlwind trip. I didn't get into Bandung until after 6pm, and after that we had to navigate around the city, find the others, have dinner, catch up, and finally get to bed after midnight. But, of course, Indonesians being Indonesians, we still had to wake up at (what I consider) the crack of dawn the next morning.

A little side-note here. I am still not sure how most Indonesians manage to survive on so little sleep. I've met plenty who without any problem go to bed at midnight and are up before 5am, every day, without any kind of nap or anything. Now, in terms of getting the most out of each day...I guess it's quite a practical option. In terms of general comfort...I just don't understand it. That weekend I averaged about 5 hours sleep a night, then when I came back had to wake up early several times on little sleep...and after a few days, I was a wreck. As a lifestyle choice, I don't think I could pull it off. I need at least 7 hours a night to really be functioning.

So the next morning (and most of the next day) was spent getting to and from and hanging out at a place called Kawah Putih (White Crater). This volcanic lake (which is the creepy grey presence in the background of my photos) is at the top of a mountain range near Bandung, and was apparently "discovered" by a European scientist last century some time. Before his arrival, locals had allegedly kept away from the lake, fearing that it harboured evil spirits. When you get to the lake, you can begin to understand why they would think that. There is a very strong smell of sulphur which waxes and wanes in intensity, as well as thick, misty clouds that appear and disappear suddenly. In fact, if we hadn't arrived on a public holiday, meaning that the whole crater was full of thousands of young, shouting, photo-taking Indonesians in almost every direction you looked, the crater no doubt would have had quite a spooky, sinister air...and the dead, skeletal trees would only have added to the atmosphere.

Strangely, visiting Kawah Putih made me a little homesick. On the way up the mountain, there was quite a forest of gum trees, and surrounding the lake were bare, rocky cliffs, the barrenness of which made me think of Australian landscapes. I have to say, one thing I miss most about Australia is how easy it is to go somewhere other people aren't. How easy it is to get away. How much space there is.

Anyway, I digress.

The other major interesting thing was later that night once we got back into the city. Wawan suggested we go to this restaurant he knew of, so we all hopped in his car from Jane's and headed over. This particular restaurant was one the likes of which I had never heard of before. The way it worked was this: you enter the restaurant downstairs, order your meal, wait to be called, then you are led up some stairs in your group like a train with each persons hands on the shoulders of the one in front of them by a man in dark glasses. It gets darker and darker until you come to a black curtain, and once you go through, you're surrounded in complete darkness. The guide leads you to your seat, and once your drinks and meals are ready, waiting staff are there to put glasses in your hands and give you your cutlery and show you where your plates are. They used tiny, minuscule lights which made no discernible difference to our untrained eyes, but which surely helped them see where everything was.

There were two extremes to my experience in the restaurant. To begin with, I was very uncomfortable. I have a hearing condition called auditory figure ground discrimination. Interestingly, most people don't even notice I have a hearing problem. I have a few friends back home who swore I was making it up to cover for the fact that I'm just a bit dreamy. Which isn't an unfair assessment. I'm pretty dreamy. But I do have a hearing problem. Pretty much it means that while my ears are perfectly capable of picking up normal range of sounds, my brain sometimes has difficulty processing that sound into correct information when there are a lot of sounds going on. For example, if someone is trying to speak to me, and there's a TV in the background or a crowd or a noisy train or other people talking at the same time, I'll usually only hear bits and pieces of what they're saying, because everything gets distorted by the collective noise. Because it's hard for me to catch everything people say when it's noisy, I'm usually pretty quiet in group situations unless I've got something I really want to say, I always prefer reading information to listening to it and I have trouble in classes where students are noisy. I've noticed it a lot more here in Indonesia, where classes are not only noisier, but based more heavily on dictation than on the personal research and reading style we have back in Australia.

Anyway, I digress again.

So when I first walked into the room, I couldn't see a thing, and all I could hear was talking, screaming and laughing coming from what sounded like at least two groups of people who were already in the restaurant. Holding a conversation in Indonesian is challenging. Holding a conversation in Indonesian with screaming as background noise in complete darkness when I can't even half lip read like I sometimes do is impossible. My friends asked me why I was so quiet, and I tried to explain to them about my hearing. The first part of the dinner was quite stressful for me. I felt like I couldn't see OR hear, and I felt like I couldn't participate in any conversation. Finally though, our drinks came followed by our meals, and that gave me something to focus on until the noisy groups left. After that, I really enjoyed the experience. In a way, I understand why the other groups were so loud; being completely in the dark is quite confronting and being noisy is one way I guess to assure your friends and yourself you're still there and to try to cover up your discomfort.

A lot of people in Indonesia are scared of the dark. There are many girls in my kos who sleep with the lights on lest ghosts come. In fact, that night at the restaurant, one of my friends had to go downstairs because being in the dark was too much. I actually really liked it, once it was quiet. I liked listening to the music they were playing. I liked the challenge of eating my meal in the dark. And I liked the way my senses were invoked in ways that they wouldn't have been normally. For example, when I was eating my spaghetti, I started to notice that I'd rely on the weight of my fork or the resistance on my plate to tell where the pasta was, and whether it was in fact on course to my mouth. I have to say though, the whole experience I think would have been even better if I'd been on a date. Just me and one other person. Being completely in the dark, having only the sound of each other's voices, the sound of music playing, the taste of your meal, the feel of your cutlery and the touch of someone else's hand...that could be quite romantic.

Anyway, that was pretty much the end of my whirlwind trip to Bandung. The next morning I got up early enough to miss my train by only five minutes. Luckily my friend Heri got his negotiating on (which I suspect involved some payments he neglected to tell me about) and wangled me a seat on the train an hour afterwards. Eight hours later I was back in Yogya, feeling ready to do many more short trips next semester.

Thanks for tuning in!

Spirit Trees and Tandem Bikes

Indonesia is a pretty incredible tourist destination for foreigners. This country is brimming with life, culture and places of spectacular natural beauty. Another thing this country is brimming with is people; an increasingly mobilised, middle-class people. So, although there is a huge tourist industry for foreigners in Indonesia, there's also a comparable tourist industry for Indonesians looking to experience the wonders of their own country. Unfortunately, this local tourism industry often seems to miss the point a little, and throughout Java I've seen otherwise amazing places made to look unremarkable by the swarms of people selling kitchy toys and games and "souveniers", and young people who hang out in historically or naturally interesting places not because of the virtues of the place itself, but because it has become a cool place to hang out.

Where I went one Friday evening that I spent with a good friend of mine here, a couple of weeks ago, was no exception.

I was pretty miserable that night, having reluctantly ended a very important relationship to me, so Dim took it upon himself to cheer me up. First we went to a salsa night, where I mostly sat in awe watching him and other Indonesians dance incredible salsa. Afterwards though, Dim took me to a part of Jogja I've never been before.

The name of it escapes me now, but we went to the old palace the Sultan lived in during Dutch occupation. Apparently there was a whole section of the city that belonged to and was occupied solely by Jogja people, and where the Dutch didn't go.

So we got to the front of the palace, which consists of a large grassy field, ringed by a road, with two large "spirit trees" in the centre. Now, I've heard several Indonesians comment on this particular type of tree which is quite tall, with a thick trunk and long, flexible branches not unlike those of a weeping willow. Some of my friends think they harbour ghosts and spirits, and shy away from the thought of approaching one at night time. I'm sure I've heard one friend at least suggest that to do so could possibly result in such a spirit taking over your body. Apparently the trees were originally thought to help protect the palace from invaders. However, nowadays, they are the main attraction at this nongkrong (to hang out at night) spot. People don a blind fold, get a friend to spin them three times while they think very hard about a wish, then try to walk from the front of the palace and stop in the middle of the trees. Once in the middle, you have to try to turn and touch each tree through the middle of the gate protecting it. Now, although the first part of the actual walk is in a completely straight line, almost everyone for no discernible reason veers off dramatically before reaching the trees and ends up disoriented and quite a distance away. Plenty of friends contribute to this by shouting terus!! (keep going!!) encouragingly, no matter how close (or far away) from the trees you are. Apparently your success depends on how strongly you focus on your wish. After four tries and veering completely right, then left when I overcompensated, I finally stopped (barely) between the trees, and managed to touch each of them.

Afterwards, Dim and I had a turn on the palace's second most popular attraction - a huge collection of tandem (and three person) bicycles, decorated with flashing lights, that were for rent. After wandering around blindfolded, a few laps of the front of the palace on a tandem bike, and lots of talking with Dim, I was feeling much more settled.

Thanks Dim for showing me a fun little piece of Jogja, and for showing me that I can find my kind of people anywhere.

Mothers' Weekend

Hey kiddies, it's been a while since I've blogged I know. Special apologies to my biggest (and possibly only) fan, Nanny - I've been out collecting stories, and haven't quite found the time to write them. As it was mother's day on Sunday, my biggest blog fan is my grandmother, I think I'll stick with this theme and write on the fact that about three weekends ago, I was very lucky to have my mother, my grandmother AND my godmother (who is also my aunt) come visit me in the fair town of Yogya.

My family stayed for the whole long weekend and, considering I usually don't even bother attempting to do more than one thing a day in this country, we managed to fit quite a lot of activities. We had rooms at the Phoenix Hotel, my favourite thing about which was the abundance of real bread and hot water, and, of course, getting to play sleepover with my Mum.

Over the course of the weekend, we managed to fit in several shopping trips as well as several trips to the salon. On the first night I suggested Mum and Aunty Annie check out the salon, and we caught a taxi from the Phoenix up to my end of town in Jalan Kaliurang. I was directing the taxi driver, keeping an eye on the left of the road, but I couldn't for the life of me see the sign for the salon. After a while, I was sure we'd passed it, so I got the taxi driver to do a u-turn and try again. After the third time past, and several calls to my friend, we gave up and went to my kos to get some of my clothes. After that, we tried a couple more times, until finally, exasperated and still unable to find the great hulking pink sign that said Wulandari Salon, I got the taxi driver to pull over near where I thought the salon was. I took a quick walk, and sure enough, 50 metres down the road, I found the little side-street. I looked up, and the sign was gone. It turns out that I wasn't crazy, they'd just taken the sign down for maintenance, and Mum and Annie got their (mostly enjoyable, except for a casualty in the form of a pearl earring) trip to the salon.

The next day, we woke up bright and early to beat the crowds and the sun to visit the famous Buddhist temple Borobudur. Even though we arrived early, we were still swarmed by people trying to sell kitschy tourist things. After a largely successful stint of acting as Grandma's body guard, fending off people (in, proudly, my increasingly scathing Indonesian - for example, makin lama, makin nggak mau: meaning roughly in that context, the longer you try and sell me that, the more I don't want it) we made the crucial error of asking one poor guy about his fan/hat hybrids. It was already warming up, and Grandma didn't have a hat, so she pointed out him and asked me to check how much they were. Unfortunately, in Indonesian bargaining culture, once you express even mild interest in something the seller is pretty much convinced that the sale in the bag, and even if you decide against buying it, he or she will follow you around relentlessly. This guy was no exception. After hearing the price, and Grandma saying she didn't want it, the guy followed us to the door of the visitor's centre, then waited with his nose pressed to the fence for about twenty minutes afterwards, still calling out to me when I went outside briefly to go to the bathroom. After dropping his price to about a third of the original, Grandma decided to buy the hat after all, and finally the guy left us in peace.

I have to say, in a little side-note, I loathe bargaining. The whole institution of it. I hate how time-consuming it is. I hate how both sides are looking to get the best deal for themselves. I hate the competitiveness. I hate how petty I feel arguing over a few measly cents for some thing I barely care about. If I want to buy something, I just want to buy it. I don't want to stand around awkwardly trying to get the best deal without sending some poor Indonesian bankrupt whilst trying to maintain dignity and get out of the place as soon as possible. Ugh.

Anyway, back to Borobudur. We bought our tickets, and my UGM student card came in very handy. My ticket was about AU$2, whereas everyone else had to pay about AU$10. We hired a guide who led us to the temple, starting with the top level, and explained in great detail the symbolism, stories and meaning behind the stones, carvings, flowers and design of the temple.

My three mothers were feeling the heat, so they sat down and made best friends with hordes of school children, while I monopolised the guide and ascended all three levels of the temple. The guide pretty much told me over an hour's worth of information about the temple, so I'll just mention a few of the (in my opinion) more interesting aspects of it. There were the carvings outlining Buddhist economic principles: if you have a shop, make sure you sell cheap, moderate and luxurious goods so that all people can buy from you, and that way you'll be prosperous.

Men should be leaders, and women should be caretakers of the ocean and the environment. The carving below represents what men should be (like the Elephant; strong leaders) and what they shouldn't be (stupid, like a cow, dirty, like a pig...and something like a deer).

There was also a particular statue of Buddha that gave you good luck if you could reach through and touch his foot.

Anyway, after coming back from the temple, we spent the rest of the weekend relaxing and shopping, and then they all flew out at an ungodly hour on Monday morning, while I had to get back to the proverbial grindstone which is class on a Monday.

It was so great to see my family. Even though I feel like I've carved myself a bit of a niche here in Yogya, I miss home and I miss everyone there. It meant so much to me that my family came all the way over just to see me and how I live over here, and I was especially impressed and happy that Grandma made it along as well.

Alrighty kiddies, that'll do it for the moment. Thanks for tuning in!!