Well, just thought we'd try and keep things current, so a story or two of our recent business and some photos to tag along.
We were on our way to Java last I wrote, and we've come through to find ourselves comfortably planted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at the moment. Java was a fantastic, hard, dirty, hot, beautiful, steamy journey. We took a long, long bus ride from southern Bali, up to the ferry crossing on the in the northwest, across eastern Java to the city of Surabaya, and through all the way to the city of Solo. Deposited groggy and disoriented at 4 am in the middle of this dark city, we stood alone, shouldering our loads in the middle of an empty street, while streetlights flickered and somewhere far off dogs and roosters howled.
After nervous wanderings, two bicycle rickshaw drivers peddled us silently through the sleeping city to waking downtown street to find a hotel. Despite it being the wrong street, and us walking for 20 minutes in the wrong direction (sun rise = east) we eventually found a cosy little hotel to lay our weary heads.
Waking somewhat refreshed to the clattering of breakfast, we ventured out to sample the local fare and get our bearings. Conor never did get his bearings back, after his initial reversal of north and south, and kept turning the map askew whenever Tricie was navigating. But with one of us oriented, we managed a hunt through the antique market, the textile market, and to the Kraton, home of the Sultan of Solo, recent in a centuries-long line of rulers dating back to the Mataram kingdom that ruled Eastern Java until the arrival of the Dutch, and later the British.
We browsed batiks, hunted for local snack favorites at the street stalls, and in general just poked around in what is very much a working city.
We sat for a while watching an all-night wooden puppet show of the Ramayana, with traditional Javanese gamelan and vocal accompaniment, attended by hundreds of people including the regional governor of the province of Eastern Java.
From Solo we grabbed a train for a smooth and scenic ride across the plains to Yogyakarta (pronounced Jogjakarta, or just 'Jogja') another ancient and historic city, also home to a long line of Sultans dating back to the beginning of the millenium. In Yogya we again sampled delicious foods, fruits and fare, visited the famed silver artisans and factories of Kota Gede, and laid awake all night as a local band covered reggae and Rolling Stones tunes with the amps set to '11' until 3 o'clock in the morning at the bar next to our hotel.
We went to the ancient Hindu temple of Prambanan (10th Century) to see a performance of the famous Ramayana Ballet, which more than lived up to it's reputation, complete with burning buildings, melodious and hypnotic gamelan, and lively and sly classical dancing. All set in a broad concrete amphitheater backed by the towering stupas of the Prambanan temple.
Our next day took us to the equally ancient Buddhist monument of Borobodur, a massive stone edifice reminiscent of the temples of Angkor, but covered head to toe in Buddha statues and bas-relief carvings of the sage's life.
Another long but pleasant train ride took across the broad central plains and volcanic vistas of central Java to the smog-choked capitol city of Jakarta.
A city of 17 million people, Jakarta suffers all the maladies one would imagine and some that you'd prefer not to. Under a perpetual haze we wandered the old Dutch port, where abandoned colonial buildings are crumbling down, but a museum we found has some pretty could contemporary Indonesian art, Freedom Square with it's massive monument, and a fantastic National Museum filled with classic pottery, wood pieces, and maps and exhibits on the geography and history of Indonesia's varied islands and archipelagos.
Fried and frazzled by the squalor, clamor and overall intensity of a city that displays both wealth of a degree unseen anywhere else in Indonesia and poverty, disease, and degradation that rivals Calcutta, we rose in the pre-dawn for a long bus out to the distant Soeharto-Hatta Int'l Airport.
A touchdown in Kuala Lumpur sloughed us back into what for all appearances was the rich world. No eye-burning smog, no putrid piles of trash, moto clogged traffic jams, bubbling open sewers.
A thoroughly modern city, highly diverse, clean, efficient and quite beautiful - a blend of modern architecture with Islamic influences, street-level arcades, Indians, Malays, Chinese, myriad mosques, Hindu temples, Chinese temples.
We are quite loving it here, indeed. For a few more days we'll enjoy the food, the markets, the museums and culture, and then head north to Penang, the ancient trading city that stood in the centre of the spice trade, centuries of barter between the Indians, Arabs, Chinese and more.
Most looking forward to it indeed.
Hope everyone enjoys the photos, we're doing our best to get the postcards flying too.
Cheers,
Conor and Tricie
We rented a motorbike with which to tour the island and visit a fruit farm on the remote western coast. We sampled a plate of fruits and drank shakes under the canopy.
Most of the island surrounding Georgetown is rife with high-rise resorts and they are still building. As the port declines in importance, tourism, especially medical tourism, is heavily promoted.
The main mosque is astoundingly beautiful, set just between Little India and Chinatown. The Malaysian government strongly asserts the peaceful coexistence of Islam, Hindu, Christian, and Confucian people. Each group seems to retain strong cultural ties with their native countries but they all speak Malaysian.
An example of a Chinese temple.
The most common temple in Georgetown is the Confucian temple and this evening we witnessed their offerings: as dusk falls each house acquires folded joss paper which they pile in the street with fruits and incense and burn to a small pile of ash.
We ate all our meals at the Hindu vegetarian restaurants. They serve a banana leaf lunch with piles of curries and rices but for dinner we indulged in dosas: papery and crisp lentil rice pancakes, dipped in simmered sauces. We also bought ourselves incense and dosa mix at an Indian store to experiment at home.
Many of the buildings appear derelict and retain their original fronts complete with wooden shutters. A few have been burned or deserted but we think that the majority are still inhabited.
