Bandung
Hello
Indonesia!
So it
happened, we landed in Jakarta, getting
there from Singapore. Unexpectedly,
I may say, cause we made the decision of going to Indonesia finally
just because some extraordinary circumstances that emerged on the
horizon. What circumstances am I talking about? Our
plan was to attempt to travel on a bike, backpacking and hitching a boat... to
volunteer in eco-projects, workaways and for traveling experience
itself. Primarily.
How it was going to happen we didn't have figured out back
then, but that was what we were looking
for before even going anywhere. So,
we've got biking and backpacking, taking part in different projects
and more than we could have even think of, checked-off the list. Then
came the time we got homesick a bit, thinking of maybe starting
working our way back home soonish, when... we got this reply from
CREWBAY... Every now and then we were looking the offers up, mailing
people, giving a try. And eventually the right one came across, the
German lady invited us to share a cruise, two-phased one, one her
huge catamaran just for food sharing in return. Wow! Normally it's
very hard to snag such a deal, and they call from 25-50 USD per day
or a lot of experience. J. obviously has been doing it for ages and
knows the thing pretty well
(although
not on the sea that much),
and I, from
the other hand, have no clue about long cruising and not much more
about sailing in general,
broadly speaking.
We did some together, when I learned bits
and pieces, but I wouldn't call it 'an
experience'.
;) The only real requirement was to get
to the place of departure and off the one of arrival, on
our own cost. Well, hell yeah! We bought
our tickets to Bali right away, where our journey on the boat
is going to
start from, hopefully.
More
about the whole thing – soon :)
Anyway!
We had the whole plan for Indonesia discussed and worked out with
Asia, who we visited in Kuala Lumpur. Very helpful indeed, she told
us the must-see highlights of Java in two alternative routes. We
picked the “volcanoes trail” instead of the beaches. We've
never even seen one, so sounded exciting enough!
Straight
after landing in Java we headed down to Bandung, where with some help
of one local guy (Tetuko)
who we spoke to in the bus, we got to
the city centre and, after hectic mingling
around, finally found a place to stay.
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| with our right hand - Tetuko, who helped us to get to the centre (being ashamed of the shitty public transport his homecity has ;)) |
Bandung,
and Indonesia as a whole (looked over
the window), appeared to us as a
reflection of “gentler” India... We
got this uncomfortable feeling about that, not expecting to get into
this typical maze and bustle everywhere you go. We didn't recover
after India yet, apparently.;) We got
through the first awkward sensations and got used to it again.
Another surprise – omnipresent and thoroughly practiced Islam,
mosques at every corner and, very unfortunate for us, Ramadan time
(actually still on since we got to Malaysia). The
latter one was linked to confined food availability, at last if
refered to the open restaurants and hot
food stalls. But
well, we had to get through it and we did, as usual. In Bandung
itself there was nothing interesting enough we wanted to struggle
with (in terms of the frenetic
traffic and amount of people on the streets), so we rented scooters
out and
drove out of the city. We took a way on
Ciwidey town
and visited the Kawah
Putih crater. Milky
water and snow-alike silt
on its banks left
us dumbfounded! Very
unusual. Sulfur's
smell hovering
around, blahh. On
the way back we went through tea plantations and
felt the touch of India, once again.
Very sentimental
and pleasant this time ;)
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| Kawah Putih crater with its blue water... |
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| ...and snow-ish sand |
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| Garfield's helmet :) |
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| tea plantations |
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| a village among plantations, in the middle of nowhere |
We also grabbed a box of strawberries, that are grown there in abundance, among the hills and in an awkward way - in odd vertical tube-pots. Freshly picked - yummy and so cheap! (~70 pennies/3zł for ~1kg box)
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| freshly (and ardently) picked strawberries |
Yogyakarta
After Bandung came the time for
Yogyakarta. First impression – much better than Bandung, less
crowded (but still) and pretty modern, seemingly at least.
In Yogya we went for Wayang
Kulit – the shadow puppet performance, traditional show of handmade
puppet-templates (flat, intricately prepared and cut off figures in
typical for Indonesian mythology shapes). Intriguing and fascinating
show, which took about 2 hours altogether with the accompaniment of
the whole group of musicians playing different and unknown (at least
to us) instrument, like for instance – 'the gamelan' traditional instrument.
A few shots from this particular show:
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| "the puppets" hand crafted in the museum |
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| a final 'product', beautiful result! |
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| The puppet show: Wayang Kulit (the backstage or...the front one? ;)) |
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| performance of shadows (on the other side of the curtain) |
Whilst in Yogya, amongst more
interesting things, we also popped out to the Borobudur - Buddhist
temple on the top of the hill, situated remotely in the jungle. After
seeing so many things akin in India (let's take Elora Caves with
their memorable Buddhist figures carved out
in the rock, inwards), not much stuff can outdo our hitherto
experiences. Nevertheless, it was still different and worth scoping
out. Built on the square outline with 7 storeys, resembling a pyramid
a bit, made out of big, cut stones and elaborate figures depicting
one of the king's journey through Dharma – path of living, towards
Buddha, enlightenment.
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| some guy built this ship taking as a pattern carvings from the temple, being curious if it could sail across the ocean... It did. :) |
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| A cemetery in the middle of the jungle, outstanding, I'd say ;) |
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| the first beach we got to in Java (turned out to be..not that spectacular sadly) |
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| Latitude: 8 degrees under the equator, on the southern hemisphere! Far far away ;) |
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| Some dutch owner just left it stranded, an outstanding piece of architecture in the very Muslim country |
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| my beloved bananas! (nothing like the ones we used to back in Europe) |
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