Indonesia
August
15, 2013 -
We took the train to Yogyakarta, this time a first class
air-conditioned ride snaking through beautiful landscape. Yogyakarta feels very much like Chiang Mai in a
way. A city spread out far and wide, with a dense core centered
within crumbling fortress walls.
This is where all the tourists seem to congregate, as we saw
nearly no one when we were in Bogor and Bandung. We settled in
the middle of the new tourist district and rented a moped to get
around. Yogya is spread out, and seeing the place by moped is
the best way to get around.
The best part of Yogya are the backstreets, impossible to figure out and always leading you somewhere unanticipated.
A local vendor watching a performance.
The moped got a workout and we rode out to the Merapi volcano. Without the comfort of a GPS, it took a few stops to ask directions but it turned out to be quite an easy ride. We crossed some pretty rough roads and steep hills, pegging the throttle of the poor Honda bike at max with the little engine screaming to get us up various hills. A hundred miles two-up was the tally for the day.
Unfortunately, the clouds obscured the view. We saw what we missed a few days later when we flew over Merapi, direction Makassar.
On two occasions we basically ventured completely off the map, just to see what was at the end of the road. Both times, we were rewarded. The first time, we ran into a local fishing competition.
The second time, the price was even greater. We stumbled upon a local dance of some sort. It was very elaborate, with costumes, masks and live music. People were dancing as if their life depended on it. At least four or five dancers were carried off either exhausted or in total convulsion. We were not sure if it was all an act or the result of some happy chemicals as part of the ritual. We were spellbound for at least an hour looking at all this. Being at least fifty kilometers away from Yogya, there wasn't a tourist in sight.
We went to Borobudur with the intent of visiting the one temple there, but didn't think it worth the $20 entry fee after seeing some of the local pictures for sale. An entrance ticket to the Thaj Mahal is half that price.
Instead, we found some local temples, rarely visited, let alone by Westerners. We saw maybe five locals while we were there.
We were pretty much done with Java at this point and were looking for an escape to more serene surroundings, so we packed our bags and headed to Makassar, the capital of Sulawesi, one of the bigger islands in the Indonesian chain.
The one upside of traveling in Indonesia is that flying here is unbelievably cheap. A ninety minute flight will set you back $42 all-in. All you have to do is battle the hordes to get through security and engage in hand-to-hand combat to retrieve your belongings from the security screening belt. As friendly as Indonesians are, they turn into something entirely different once you're in an airport. We never figured out why.