MY INDO HOLIDAY - DAY 8

Day 8 already, too fast!! But I have really been having such a great time this time round.
Day 8 was full of pleasant surprises :) and new experiences. I could even call myself a budding art collector now. ;P

In the morning we decided to go to Malioboro Street, its a big main street in Yogya full of Batik shops and market stalls, sculptures, old building and a vibrant atmosphere. I wanted to take a walk along the street as we had driven past it in our Becak from the train station. I thought that I might be able to find a shorter skirt for my Kebaya that I will be wearing to a wedding tonight as the one I have is floor length and might be quite hot. But we didn't find any sadly. But we did find or maybe he found us, but an artist started talking to me in the street in very good English and was asking where I was from and if I wanted to go look at his wife and his art exhibition. He was telling us that they had exhibited their artwork in a famous gallery in Sydney but I cant remember the name. His wife paints beautiful Batik inspired by Australian Aboriginal art!
So we followed him up to a small gallery showcasing his work and that of students and other artists. He had to leave to pray so we were handed over to another very enthusiastic, charming and inspiring artist who was also showing his work here. His name is Heru and he is married to a Canadian woman who is a writer of Javanese Sanskrit. He his about to go to New York to showcase his Batik artwork in a prominent gallery over there and I must say his artwork is very striking.

We sat with him and learned all about his paintings and how he makes them, where he finds inspiration and a bit about other forms of Batik art work that he considers "Coca-Cola Batik" or Batik paintings that you can find anywhere, very common style and subjects.

Heru actually travels to different regions of Indonesia and lives with his subjects for a few weeks, living how they do to get a real sense of meaning and understanding before he creates his artworks. One particular Batik that I would have loved to buy was of a woman that has walked up a mountain every day for the past 20 years to collect reeds which she then sells for only 18,000 rupiah or $1.80AUD!!
But there was another Batik of his that I loved more, and I ended up buying, of three shrimp fishermen, it is a very vibrant green, white and black image. And the reason I love it so much is that he made the green die himself from Avocados!!
I will put up a picture of it when I can properly display it back home.

The next part of our day was a tour of the Borobudur Temple at sunset which was INCREDIBLE!!!
It is honestly amazing to walk through all the tiers of the temple and just see the amount of detail that went into carving every single stone block! Not to mention how beautiful the stones look in the setting sunlight.

These carvings were on nearly every surface of the temple!

I am the new Buddha

An example of the beautiful colours and carvings on the stones.

Looks like a postcard, Ma'arif took this one, I let him have free rein over the camera today. And he's pretty good!

This one is the best that I could get of this stunning volcano in the distance!

This temple was truly beautiful! And a definite must if you are visiting Yoyga but you do have to be careful and I would also recommend arranging it through a tour group or your hotel prior, as entry is quite complicated, its 130,000 rupiah for international visitors and 30,000 rupiah for locals. They have different entrances and we were told by our local friend beforehand that the local villages in the area can try and trick you by telling you that entry closes at 6 am if you want to see the sunrise (its actually 7am) and they tell you to go with them to their village behind the temple to watch the sunrise instead of actually going to the temple. So just a word of warning. Our transport guide was great, he pre arranged my ticket and entry so I just had to walk straight through.

I'm writing this the day after, tonight I am going to a traditional wedding reception for Ma'arifs friends wedding, we went to the ceremony this morning and it was very full on and highly decorated, I hardly recognized the bride with all her traditional wedding makeup on! But she did look very beautiful!

Check back soon for day 9! I don't want to go home yet but it fast approaching :( hehe

Em

MY INDO HOLIDAY - DAY 7

A day of firsts, conquering fears and doing things I never thought I would do!!

Day 7 was pretty much THE best day of this holiday and maybe even one of the best experiences of my life so far!

I have a fear of caves, deep water, murky water, motorcycles, and doing dangerous things. Yet on this day I:
1. Rode on a motorcycle all the way up a mountain in Indonesia (my boyfriend was driving it)
2. Went cave tubing (sitting in a rubber tube guided through a pitch black cave)
3. SWAM in the cave!
4. Rode in the tray of a pick up truck
5. Rode all the way back down the mountain on a motorcycle

I'm so glad I did what I did because it really was so much fun!! We did all this with my friend Tennille and her partner Di. They are a bit more adventurous than me and were the ones who talked me into joining in. Here are some of the photos from the day :D

Some sexy people in our life jackets ready for tubing. :D

You ask for a smile and this is what you get !! haha

Walking down to the river, jungle trekking with our tubes.

We were given these rubber shoes to put on so we could walk in the water, it was a bit gross to think about who the last person was to wear them seeming they were still wet and squelchy :S

And this was us all linked up in our tubes ready for take off !

From left: My partner Ma'arif, Tennille, her partner Di and our guide.

The following picture is of the fourth largest stalactite in the world! It is MASSIVE, I would love to see how big the largest is after seeing this! :D 

4th largest stalactite (the big column of rock  in the middle)

And here we are riding in the back of a pick up truck!

I don't have any photos of me on a motorcycle because its on my boyfriends camera and his memory card doesn't fit in this laptop :( but I think my mum would rather not see me on a bike anyway haha

If anyone is going to Yogyakarta I highly recommend this but getting there might be a bit difficult for anyone who doesn't speak the language as we had to meet up with a man half way and follow him through the dirt roads to get there.

Next up -- day 8!

Em

MY INDO HOLIDAY - DAY 6

Finally I have time and internet access to get back to blogging! :D I'm in Yogyakarta now and I love it!! I just want to stay here, its like Bali but with more space, no beaches and hardly any tourists, the people here are soooooo lovely, friendly and generous! I've had the best time since I've been here and done so many things I never thought I would do...but I'll save that for the next few posts.


On day six we caught the train from Jakarta to Yogyakarta, it took about 8 hours in total.

A commuter train with men sitting on top

I wanted to take the train because I wanted to see the country instead of just flying over it. But I now realize I wouldn't have missed too much by plane because for 7 whole hours it was NOTHING but rice fields all the way from Jakarta in West Java to Yogyakarta in East Java (near Bali). I took a few photos from the train but they were all quite similar. Don't get me wrong though, it was a very nice trip and was quite beautiful when we rode through the valleys and past mountains and a MASSIVE volcano.

Endless rice fields.

One very angry building :P

One of the amazing views from the train. 

Can you see the volcano?

After we arrived at the station in Yogya we took a Becak (beh-chuck) to our hotel. It was soooo much fun :D The image here is what a Becak looks like, they are everywhere in Yogya!

Photo: Becak, Yogyakarta: colloidfarl.blogspot.com

The view from our Becak, pretty awesome!!

My good friend Tennille that I study Asian Studies with is staying in Yoyga with her boyfriend who is Indonesian and through some twist of fate we ended up being in hotels across the road from each other!! Totally unplanned! So we caught up with them for a drink and called it a night.

Please read day 7 and 8 because I did some pretty awesome stuff!!

Em

MY INDO HOLIDAY - DAY 5

Today was another great day! We visited Mini Indo, It's a huge theme park type place laid out in the form of Indonesia with all the traditional buildings from the different regions positioned accordingly. They also have an aquarium, reptile park, bird park, different gardens, children's theme park and an array of specific museums. We visited the traditional buildings, reptile park, bird park and drove around past most of the rest of it.
It was VERY hot today! But was otherwise very enjoyable.

This guide was so lovely and funny! Even though he spoke mostly Indonesian I could understand a lot of what he was telling us. He was guiding us through a traditional, high class family home. It was incredible!

A living room fit for a king!

This is a very exquisite bed for the upper class. (The guide made me pose like this hehe)

The detailing on what is a VERY VERY large traditional Sumatran long house!

 (below)

Below are some photos of the beautiful birds we got to see in the bird park. The colours on some of them are just amazing!!

And this weird looking crocodile/alligator (I'm not sure which), in the reptile park.

And this weird looking snake was the most beautiful shade of green!

Sleep time for me now! I have to be up in 4 hours to catch an 8 hour train to Yogyakarta. Hopefully I will be able to keep blogging from there!

<3 Em

MY INDO HOLIDAY - DAY 4!

Today was so much fun, a 3 hour drive to Bogor (actually one hour usually but we got stuck in A LOT of traffic!!) to go to the Safari Park. It is so amazing, you actually get to drive through an open zoo in your car and feed the animals as they walk up freely to your car!! And after a day of feeding every species of deer and bovine creature there was a fair amount of slobber on the car door :P !!

If you are into animal photography then this is the place for you, the scenery is perfect for capturing the animals at their best! Here are my best shots out of the 250 or so that I took!

This beautiful young elephant was here to greet us at the start!

Check our this little cutie!!

A smile that only a mother could love!! :D

"insert funny caption here" !!

My mum will be able to sympathize with this mum! hahaha

The answer to an itchy nose..!

"HHHHHOOOOOAAAHHHHHHHH"

One of the best photos I've ever taken, he was posed so perfect for me and the back drop was just so stunning with all the colours.

Now this had to be one of the most mind blowing experiences! Watching about 20 Zebra's strolling through rows of cars and just walking up to your window! They are absolutely stunning to see in real life close up!!

Old Fella

Finally this beautiful white tiger posed perfectly for me to take this photo, there were two white tigers in this enclosure and they were both absolutely beautiful!!!

I have many more photos I would love to put up here but I will leave it at this. I had such an amazing day and anyone traveling to this region of Indonesia I would highly recommend a trip to Taman Safari!

Tomorrow I will be going to Mini Indo so prepare for many more photos!

Em :)

MY INDO HOLIDAY - DAY 2 & 3

Wow, day two and three have gone by so fast! I am putting them together in one post because there isn't too much to share. On Saturday we spent the whole day shopping for shoes and third mall lucky I found these beauties!!

Now if you visit Jakarta at the moment you would think you've been dropped head first into your ipod whilst playing Angry Birds!! Check this out, a life sized game of Angry Birds set up in the middle of a mall!

And here is me waiting for my huge plate of nasi goreng, which was delicious by the way!! All the food here is amazing, I don't know if my tummy agrees though :S

We saw these quotes printed up on the walls of one of the malls that we visited and they made me laugh, they also made me think of my mum hehehe

And last but not least this little guy is for my friend Em! Isn't he just ADORABLE!!!!!!!

Tomorrow we are going to Bogor, about an hour out of Jakarta to see a safari park! Can't wait!!! Be sure to check back tomorrow night for all the best photos from the day!! 

<3 Em