Jogjakarta

Some of you may be thinking "Does she ever work? It seems like Michaela is always on Holidays!" If you have had these thoughts, I understand. I have had two 4-day weekends in February and it has felt like I have been gone a lot lately. Us singles at SPH live by the motto "work hard, play hard." How can we sit around on a weekend when there is so much to discover!!

On that note, I got to visit the city of Jogjakarta, in central Java, this weekend.This past Tuesday was a Muslim holiday for Muhammad's birthday, and Monday was a school holiday. I went with my friends Amy and Lydia. We left on the train Saturday night and Lydia and I flew back Tuesday night (Amy the day before because she had prior commitments). It was a whirl-wind weekend, but it was full of great experiences. Some of these included:

-the Sultan's palace
-the Water palace
-puppet shops, batik art shops, and silver art shops
-Borobudur (a Buddhist temple that was once a wonder of the world)
-A crazy night fair
-Ramayana (A Hindu ballet)
-The Prambanan
-motor-cycle adventures around the city

I thoroughly enjoyed the cultural richness in Jogjakarta, which is not as evident in Jakarta. I was able to bargain for some neat souvenirs and enjoyed using the little Bahasa Indonesia that I know. I discovered that if I mentioned that I lived in Jakarta, I often got a better deal or was given more respect by shop owners and such. Even so, we were constantly being asked if people could take our picture. After a while it got annoying and very old. I guess that is what celebrities feel like when they go out in public. We aren't celebrities by any means, but we are white, and apparently that was an exciting thing for a lot of the young people we saw. I am considering making a collage of all of the pictures I have taken with Indonesian people. :) Amy wants to make a book of signs or t-shirts with totally bad English. It is pretty funny sometimes to see what non-English speakers will wear on their t-shirts.

This was a successful trip with some more great Indo-moments to remember!

More fun in Indonesia with Grandpa and Grandma!

The fun in Indo continues!

Yesterday we went to Taman Mini Indonesia Indah (translates as Mini Garden, Beautiful Indonesia...or something like that). This was a large park area that had life-size examples of homes from tons of cultures and Islands in Indonesia. Inside many of the houses or buildings were additional artifacts, costumes and such. We drove around the park and looked at many of these houses and learned some cool things about Indonesia's history. For example, there are more than 17,000 islands in Indonesia, with 300 different ethnic groups and 500 different languages. Wow. So, as you can imagine there were many things to see at Taman Mini. We had to pick and choose what we saw. Some of our favorite things from the day were:

-Sulawesi's houses and history
-Papua's history (We talked to a man who grew up there, and spoke dutch because of the colonialism. G&G enjoyed that.)
-Petting the Komodo Dragon and holding a python
-Taking a gondola or tram ride over the park
-Walking through the beautiful National Museum







Today was also a day full of fun.

The day started off with lots of rain, so we decided to go to a national museum near Monas, the national monument to wait out the rain. The museum was pretty good, but not as good as the one we saw yesterday. After that we went over to Monas, which is basically a tower with a flame on the top. The flame is plated in 50 Kg of gold. We also went to the gold room, where there are other things plated in gold. We were going to go to the top of the tower, but it would have been a 3 hour wait. So, instead we went up the stairs to the second floor, then to the basement for a quick look at some historical dioramas.

After this we took a taxi to Batavia, which is the old city were there are some remaining dutch buildings. Overall, the area is very run-down and dirty, with many buildings falling apart, but there were some interesting historical things as well. We had lunch at a nice cafe, went in a museum, walked along a canal and over a bridge, and then went to a ship museum in the harbour area. We ended up walking through some dirty little streets and past a fish market, which was interesting. Nothing like getting right down with the locals. On the topic of locals, we were celebrities for the day. I lost count of how many pictures we had taken with kids. Yay for being white!

We finished off our evening with dinner at a little restaurant down the road, which was actually quite good. I have always wanted to try it, and now I can say I have. Grandpa and Grandma are leaving for Bali tomorrow, but they have had a great time with me in Jakarta.

A Day at the Zoo!

Grandpa and Grandma have been in Indonesia for three days now and they are having a great time here. Wednesday they came to school to check things out and Thursday we spent the day in Karawaci doing things like swimming, biking, and enjoying a Chinese New Year lunch. Today, however we broadened our horizons and headed to the mountains in South Jakarta, to Taman Safari. Taman Safari is kind of like a zoo, but it also has a water park, a small theme park,a camp ground, and some different shows. Although we couldn't do it all, we did enjoy the "Zoo" aspect of the park quite a bit.

When we first arrived at the park we did a caravan drive which is basically like driving through all of the animal's pens. At the beginning we had all kinds of deer, zebra's and antelopes coming up to our windows and looking for carrots, or wortel as they say here. Luckily we had bought come wortel on our drive up. This drive took us through the homes of elephants, giraffes, tigers, lions, bears, hippos, rhinos, and the list goes on. When we went through the lion and tiger pens we could see them walking right by the car, so we made sure that our windows weren't too low. There were signs depicting people's arms being bitten by the tigers, which were quite funny to see.

After our caravan drive we parked the car and walked through different parts of the park. We first stopped by the baby zoo where we got to take pictures with a leopard and a baby orangutan. It only cost a dollar per time, so I figured it was worth it. After this we had lunch and then we went to see the komodo dragon, which was quite large, but lazy and not in the mood for a photo shoot. The Cowboy Show started soon after that, so we headed out to that and listened to an Indonesian version of a Wild West show. It was all in Indonesian, but it was fun to watch anyway. They had western-type stunts and all kinds of typical farm animals to make the experience more real. We even got sprayed by some water during part of the show because we were sitting close to the front. We did not expect it at all. After the show Grandma and I had a quick ride on an elephant and then we visited the reptiles and monkeys before our 3 hour drive back to Karawaci.

Overall, we all considered the day to be quite a success. We have included some of our favorite shots from the day. I love the one with Grandpa's Taman Safari shirt. He was cold during the day, so he bought a shirt to put under the shirt he was wearing...but we think it was an XL for an asian woman, and not a North American man. Haha. Don't worry, he is not trying to pull off a new look, he will pass the shirt on to one of the grand kids. :)