MY INDO HOLIDAY - DAY 12

Today we visited the National Museum, we tried on Monday but all museums are closed on Mondays. Just after we arrived we were invited on a free tour of the museum in English, the guide was Thai so it was still hard to understand, but she was very enthusiastic so it was quite enjoyable. She did talk A LOT about few things, so we were shown a limited number of small exhibits for a long time, it got a little tiring but still fascinating :D I also found that I knew quite a lot of what she was saying from what I had learned during uni last semester :D

Walking through the museum, one of the other group members following.

One of the long rooms full of interesting artifacts from different tribes all over Indonesia

The statue in the image above shows the change in formal attire for the tribes after the Dutch and Japanese invasion. The tribesmen used to wear just the 'skirt' but they were told by the invading peoples that they should cover their chests, the same as westerners, but as they had never had anything to cover their upper halves before, they adopted the western shirt and jacket.

A canoe made out of one tree, it has one carving pattern down the entire length of the canoe. 

The tall white statue in the background of the photo above was carved out of one mangrove tree, it is three people stacked on top of each other, but the tree was carved upside down. So the persons head is carved from the roots and their feet from the top of the trunk, this is because when a baby is born it comes out head facing the ground, so they construct their statues in the same way, the top of the tree facing down. I thought that was really interesting.

The pattern carved into the side of the canoe above. It was so consistent the entire length!

A model of a traditional long house. 

Our guide was saying that there when a family marries off a daughter they will add another 'steeple' to their house, so if you see a long house with an uneven amount of steeples, that is why, they might have an uneven number of daughters. :) She was also telling us a story about the chief of a village that was approached by an invading tribe that wanted the land. The chief made a deal, they would battle it out using buffalo. So the invading tribe got the biggest toughest male buffalo they could, the best fighter they had. The Chief took a new born buffalo as soon as it was born away from its mother, kept it hungry. When it came to the battle each presented their buffalo, the invading tribes buffalo was totally indifferent to this baby buffalo and made no move to attack. The baby on the other hand, being so hungry, ran straight for the huge bull thinking it was his mother and kept shoving his head against its stomach looking for milk. The chief had sharpened the baby's horns so it ended up pushing so much that it killed the massive bull. Or so the story goes and the chief kept his village.

This room was full of gold artifacts, we weren't supposed to take photos inside, but we didn't see the sign. Don't anyone try to break in okay, I don't want to get arrested :P 

This is our guide, and the biggest statue they have in this museum.

This statue is very old, but I cant remember how old, it shows symbols from Buddhism, Hindu, and Animist beliefs so it goes all the way back to when they were all influencing the country and each other.
You can see here the shins of the statue are all worn away, that's because they found the statue in a farmers field, he didn't know it was a statue so he was using it to sharpen his tools!! And on the side of the base there is a salad bowl sized hole out of the side of the rock, the farmer had carved this out to grind rice in!!

This elephant stands out side of the museum and is quite famous, the colloquial name for the museum is Musium Gajah (Elephant Museum). I would recommend the Museum for anyone interested in learning about all the different cultures and beliefs around Indonesia, before the big religions and before modernization.
They have a new four story second wing with more artifacts and human skeletons found in Indonesia, that was quite fascinating too!!
One more day to go and its back home for me. :(

Em