Days 28 – 29: Jakarta and Yogyakarta

Photos:
Jakarta: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050805&l=8b141&id=1101094
Yogyakarta: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050806&l=6740c&id=1101094

I caught a bus from the Jakarta airport to the train station, and upon entering the terminal saw a sign that said “Reformasi, Informasi, Toilet,” with arrows pointing in different directions. Was this really Bahasa Indonesia? This is a language I could learn.

I managed to get a seat on an overnight train to Yogyakarta, which meant that I only had to spend a few hours in dirty, chaotic Jakarta. I made a quick trip down to the National Monument, which was built by Sukarno, Indonesia’s first president, in 1961 before heading back to the station to catch my train.

Aboard the train, I spent the first couple hours of the ride talking with two Indonesians who spoke decent English. Their topic of choice? American politics. It was during this conversation that I began to understand the true ramifications of current US foreign policy. Here were regular middle-class Indonesians who felt personally wronged by an American president that they considered blatantly anti-Muslim. Once we had talked for a while, they made it clear that they had no problem with me personally, but the fact remains that their opinion of America and of Americans in general is dependent on the actions our country takes in the world. And right now, those actions are making enemies of the Muslim world.

In Yogyakarta (or Yogya, as the locals call it) I checked into a wonderful losmen (guesthouse) that was covered in artwork done by the son of the guesthouse owner. I booked a minibus trip to Borobudur and Prambanan, two archeological sites just outside of Yogya, that left in a couple hours.

On the minibus I met a whole crew of new friends: four Frenchmen, two Japanese girls, and one Indonesian. The Frenchmen were on month-long tours of Indonesia, and the Japanese girls were visiting their Indonesian friend who studied with them at their Japanese university. I got along especially well with one of the Japanese girls, Natsumi, who had spent a year at Creighton University in Nebraska and spoke fluent English.

Borobudur, the first site we visited, was quite impressive. A Buddhist monument built sometime between AD 750 and 850, Borobudur is a huge stone structure covered in some 1500 narrative panels that illustrate Buddhist teachings as well as over 500 images of the Buddha himself. I toured around the place with Natsumi and her friends Asumi and Five, but after a while Asumi got tired and had to sit down. It turned out that Natsumi and Asumi were fasting for Ramadan along with Five, so they weren’t able to eat or drink anything while the sun was up. In this heat, that will get you.

We journeyed on to Prambanan, a set of Hindu temples that was built around the same time as Borobudur. The main temples were closed for some reason, but a quick Rp 50,000 ($5) bribe got us access to the place. The various temples were covered in intricate carvings of Hindu gods, and having spent the last month in India I could actually recognize some of them.

Back in Yogya, I spent the afternoon with the Frenchman listening to their tales of traveling through Southeast Asia (they were particularly fond of Burma), and I spent the evening with my Japanese friends. I even learned how to write my name in Japanese!