Yogyokarta

Salam.
Hope you won't mind the extra long journal :D and it being in english. Gotta expand my vocab :P

Day I

Got to KLIA and took the morning filght to Yogyokarta. The flight took only 2 hours, but waiting for the flight took longer than I expected. I was actually excited to ride the plane because I wanna eat some 'flight food', I have no idea why. Well, I did get my food, and some weird tasting pink guava juice..As our group reached Indonesia, we were greeted by an amazing scenery of mountains, closely packed houses quite near to the airport, and a nice tour guide. Right after we checked in, I took a short nap, and then me and my family took a tour to Malioboro. There's so many things to look and buy, but we didn't do much shopping.

Day II

A visit to Universiti Gadjah Mada (the real reason for the trip) UGM, to the Fakultitas Kedoktoran Hewan (FKH). Pronounced 'Uu-ge-em' and 'Ef-Ka-Ha', respectively. After a somewhat lengthy talk between upm and ugm, I discovered a green type of Cincau during lunch, namely 'Camcau'. Of course, I didn't go for the camcau. I don't even like cincau.

Later dropped by a batik store which has their own man powered factory beside it. Most people know how batik is made so I don't really have to describe the whole process. The designs are nice but some of them have motives of animals, which does not appeal very much to our group. So we said goodbye to the shop and visited a pottery village, Kasongan. The clay/porcelain pots there was a real bargain. I would've brought the 1 metre tall pot which only sells for RM36 bucks, if it weren't for the hassle I will encounter at the airport for having a 15 kilo vase as hand luggage.

Very nice, cheap vases

Then, there was the leather village, where rows of shops sell stuff made from leather. I'm not really interested in buying leather stuff. I already have a pair of leather shoes and I'm not really the type to expand my collection of foot wear. Furthermore, some of the stuff looks like it was forged and won't last long despite it being leather..

Day III

We drove a bit far this day, to Solo. We visited a farm, I think. Well, there's cows, fish, fruit trees, and more cows, some potted flowers for sell, and more cows. Mom and Dad are used to seeing cows in barns.

A kid from my group actually believed this sign.. located in the middle of the farm..

Then we visited some more batik shops. Rows and rows, heaps and heaps. The batiks are nice but if I see myself wearing one, I'll look really old...
At night, we were given the opportunity to watch a cultural show, called the Ramayana Dance at Prambanan temple. After having an open-air dinner quite a distance from the temple bathed in night-lights we were ushered to an open-air stage. The show was probably about 1 1/2 hours and it was like watching Zuko from Avatar do fire bending, without the fire.

This part has some fire, though

If Ramayana kinds of ring a bell, then you must still remember the story we studied during BM From 4.. or was it 5? About Rama and Sita, Sita told him to go catch a golden deer and Rama told Laksmana to look after Sita, then there's the Jentayu, so on and so forth. Well, the show we saw was all about that. Including monkeys, fire, fishes, a bridge and more. Maybe you should check Wiki if you wanna know how the story went.

Day IV

Went to Ketep Pas today, a place situated between 2 volcanoes, Merapi and Merbabu. Since the weather was a bit foggy, we couldn't really see the top of both mountains, which was a let down. However, the scenery at the foot of each mountain was of great. Rice plantation, vegetables, and small, modest farm houses. Mom said the baked corn here is the best.

Lol. Those are goats in the baskets. Bisa bersenang-senang dahulu, ya

But before that, we stopped to buy some Salak fruit. They love to sell heaps of stuff ..
Next stop was Candi Borobudur. Its real name was BaraBudara (Bara-Monastry, Budara- Holy hill), but the people here has this slang which changes the sound of 'a' to 'o'. Mr. Nice Tour Guide told us here that the street vendors here are a bit more aggressive than the usual vendors. I laughed it off since I thought it was some exaggeration. Turns out it was true. Right when the bus door opened, many vendors came running out of the blue, gathering around you, shoving stuff in your face, stalking, chanting and calling you out to buy their stuff. Some even came inside the bus and sang songs, expecting for some money. They even go to the extent of calling you Dato/Datin.

It was scary. I had to walk with someone to get out of there to prevent myself from getting too freaked out.

But, I have to point out, they won't accept money meant for charity. Dad gave some money to them so that they would just go away. He doesn't want stuff piling up at home. But the vendor won't accept it. In the end, Dad brought some cheap T-shirts out of sympathy.

Some relief images

I thought Borobudur was extremely large. It wasn't as big as I thought. The weather was hot so I was constantly finding some shady place to sit down. Some parts of the Candi are stolen and some parts broken off. And sometimes, they will replace the stolen parts of the candi with normal stone, which... makes it look weird. Stopped at more batik shops, this time, I get to see batiks for up to 1 mil Rp. Crazy, dude.
Next was the silver factory. The sell mostly silver, pearls, blackpearls, and ladies ornaments. The silver was very nicely done; I had my eye for a 600K Rp brooch, but mom won't let me buy. Not because of the price, though. Silver wears off quickly to turn black and it has no value whatsoever if you wanna sell it back. And, its a pain to dip them in a special solution everytime they change to black.

Day V

Right in the morning, the bus drove us to buy some local delicacies, since some of the participants of our group are going home this evening. Bakpia, a local delicacy, was one of them. Dad said bakpia meant pork meat or something in Chinese, the 'Ba' meaning pork. But the now modern bakpia doesn't have pork in it, but ranges from chocolate to cheese, green bean and more.I have yet to taste one..
We continued to Kraton, a place which has the royal palace. The royal palace has some weird rules. First off, you can't go back the way you came in. For example, if you got through one door, you can't go through it again. I have no idea why. Next, the palace environment is completely absent from grass. Yep, its fully sand and soil on the ground because the king/prince can't step on grass. Then, the palace guard have to be barefoot and wear sarong and a special hat all the time. Sarong being batik in this context. Yea, men wearing batik, its nothing weird in this part of the world. There are more rules, but I forgot :P
After walking through a maze of houses, we came to a place where the kings used to have their baths. I'll have to say, the water here is not properly maintained, its full of water bugs, and the water is green and slimy.

The royal Highness's bathtub

After walking through yet another maze of houses, we came to a tunnel which is 300km long and is connected to Melaka. Well, the part to Melaka was blocked, so I can't run back home. We had lunch after going through the Pasar Burung. Now, I didn't misspell that word, they really do sell birds there. Load and loads of birds chirping all the way through.
Back to my lovely room and after a short break, my family and I yet again, visited Malioboro.

Day VI

After packing, we went to the airport around 9 (9 is about 10.30 something, since the sun comes up around 5.30, i think). Mr. Nice Tour Guide sang Begawan Solo to us, which was really sweet :D Oh, his name was Mr. Darween and he can speak french and Dutch, not to mention him being very flexible, sporting, and funny. You do not know how happy I was when I saw the plane bound for Malaysia arriving right in front of me. Again, 'flight food'. Nasi Briyani. I praise Allah for finally being able to eat Malaysian food.

I just got back from the trip.

Skies of Malaysia

Conclusion

-YogYakartians love to draw Graffiti. There's graffiti everywhere.
-I learned some indon words, which was quite fun. Now I can compete with Syaza XD
-They have some funny advertisements on TV.

-Cikgu Amin always said that their language is much more accurate. Well, its true, but they have a much more diverse assimilated words. Too diverse. It took me some time to know that 'pasien' was 'patient', 'kualitas' was 'quality'.

I have no idea what 'repot' means, but I laughed anyway

-Hujan emas negeri orang, hujan batu negeri sendiri.
-Some words you say normally in Malaysia might be a bit offending over there. One of them was 'Lembu' (I'm not sure if this is true). Its like us saying 'Babi'. So the alternative word for 'lembu' is 'sapi', such as us, 'khinzir' for pig.
-The water there is different. A bit 'thicker', I don't know how to explain. But, its definitely different. Because I had a hard time consuming water there.
-You get a lot of chocolate from airports nowadays..
-One of the pots that I brought from Kasongan broke T^T
-I didn't buy a lot of stuff, even when there are so many things to buy. Most shops sell the same thing, with different prices. Its true. One shop sells a toy car for 30K Rp. Walk 50m, and they same car costs 20K in another shop. Same quality, different vendor.

-I don't feel so good..

~Best regards~
-Kai-