Yogyakarta

It's taken several days for Jogja's unique flavor to develop into our awareness. Initially, our impressions of Jogja were of how unlike Bali it was--hotter, larger, louder, dirtier, busier. I've come to really enjoy it here, however.

We live a few blocks off the large batik shopping district along Malioboro street which runs 10-16 blocks from the sultan's kraton to the train station. Batik refers to a wax-resist dying technique that produces elaborately patterened fabric used in shirts, dresses, sarongs, sari, bed sheets, bags, and so on. Since each fabric contains an intricite pattern, and two of the same design are rarely placed together, a street lined with racks of batik presents a visual richness that threatens to overwhelm.

There are few cars, innumerable motorcycles, frequent horse-drawn carriages, and ever-present becak drivers, as often seen sleeping or reading a newspaper in the 2-seat carrier of their becaks then peddling them.

Around 8pm, the batik stalls roll up, and large woven mats are lain over the sidewalks on both sides of Malioboro. Portable dividers are erected, stoves rolled out, and low plastic tables placed to create a 10-block open-air restaurant district. Much of the street becomes ad hoc motorcycle parking lots, overseen by vested parking attendants, and crowds of people sit cross-legged on the mats, enjoying mie goreng, nasi goreng, and other street foods, while small groups of youths with guitars and other instruments sarinande the customers. Yesterday, upon learning that I was from california, two spirited street musicians treated me to their rendition of "Hotel Yogyakarta", only slightly adapted from The Eagles' original. The restaurants all remain open until dawn.

Off Malioboro is a small street lined with cheap hotels and restaurants. Off of the small street is a series of even smaller, foot-access alleys called gangs (responsible for the excellent signs requesting "don't ride motorcycles in the gang" which I liked a lot). We have been staying in the hotel Merbabu, in gang dua. Here is a view down the alley from the rooftop garden cafe of our hotel (which is where we spent much of our time for the free wifi).

The alleys have the feeling of a small town. Grandmothers hang up the laundry and small children play alongside the entrances to family restaurants and hotels. The middle of gang II opens onto a kind of dusty square containing a concrete badminton court directly across from the entrance to the neighborhood mosque. Every evening all of the kids congregate around the badminton court, joking, practicing guitar, waing to play, or just enjoying the company. After watching two games seated on the ground, I was invited to play doubles with three 8-10 year old boys, which proved to be a pretty even game, and great entertainment for them and for me. I had made friends earlier in the day with an older boy sporting a bright red tshirt with the words "FUCK TERRORIST" on the back, and when the younger kids went to bed around 11, I played another game with him (and was roundly beaten).

Our trip to Jogja

We departed Bali aboard another of those ubiquitous dilapidated tour buses of long faded luxury; worn upholstery, warped, uncomfortable seat frames, and the floor covered with ants. The other passengers joked with each other in Indonesian. One started playing a pop tune from his cell phone speaker for communal enjoyment. Looking around it struck us that the other tourists had apparently opted to fly.

We faded in and out of sleep for the first hour, with brief flashes of passing rice paddies, roadside food stalls, and young families commuting on motor-bikes. By sunset, our bus had queued with its aging brethren at the harbor to board the cargo ferry that would take us across to Java. A constant stream of food vendors flowed fore to aft with cardboard boxes filled with small packets of chicken-rice wrapped neatly in banana leaves, or fried tofu cubes with small raw chilies and a smear tamarind sauce.

We exited the bus with the flush of other passengers and climbed the steep, metal ladder stairway to the third floor passenger room of the ferry. Rows of plastic bus-terminal-style seating faced a television blaring Hindi music videos at full volume, entirely neglected by the packed room of Indonesians who variously joked, ate instant pop mie noodles from styrofoam cups, and smoked clove cigarettes. We continued our ascent to the brisk observation deck above to let the stiff ocean wind blow us clean.

Almost as soon as the ferry docked in Java, our bus shut both its doors and accelerated quickly into the dark. We slept fitfully for several hours, as our bus careened along a 2-lane road, frequently passing slower-moving trucks, or, just as frequently, fainting back before quickly oncoming headlights, as the road snaked through jungle.

Suddenly, it seemed, we emerged from night and pulled into a brightly lit restaurant parking lot filled with other buses. For a second time, our fellow passengers poured from the bus, queuing to left and right lines feeding symmetric buffets and emptying into a large, crowded room with bright plastic tables, affixed chairs, and a cacophany of voices mixing with the thin hanging cloud of cigarette smoke. It was 10 pm. We queued to the left as our bus driver forced food tickets into our lost hands, which were immediately collected again by an agent of the restaurant.

The buffet was, as buffets are, standard Indonesian fare of somewhat substandard quality: steamed rice to start, adding thin slices of nutty fried tempe, a watery curry bobbing with the ends of eggplant halves, the forbidding remains of some small, dessicated fish, and a tray of hardboiled eggs, concluding with a ladel of curry sauce over everything and a handful of the puffed, airy kroepoek prawn crackers. We sat at one of the few empty tables, and were quickly asked by a richly dressed and broadly smiling man if he could join us. He spoke halting English, but seemed very interested in where we were from, what we had done, and where we were going. Short on time and shared vocabulary, we bid each other a smiling goodbye after covering only the basics. After washing at the line of sinks along the back wall, we re-boarded the bus, and dropped off to sleep again.

And, once again, we were woken after what seemed a short time by another well-light restaurant parking lot. It was 4 am, and time for a pre-dawn breakfast so the Muslim travelers wouldn't have to break the Ramadan fast. This time, the large dining hall was almost empty, and only one of the handful of separate kitchens set up around the perimeter seemed to be operating. Still groggy and confused, we truly awakened only after ordering omelets and fresh pineapple juice which we realized we weren't actually hungry for. Most of the other passengers elected to smoke cigarettes in the parking lot for their breakfasts, maybe because there were no vouchers for this stop.

After re-boarding the bus, we fell asleep for the 4th time and didn't wake again until we arrived in Yogyakarta around 9am.

At the station, six uniformed taxi drivers quickly surrounded us with smiling assurances of "cheap price", "indonesia price", "where you go?". Smiling back as usual, we tried to wave them off so we could sit and consult the photocopied pages of travel information we'd brought along. A few drivers left, but most of them elected to sit or lay down in a semi-circle a few feet away from us, apparently biding their time until we decided to try and move again. I left Jen with the bags, and sought out a food vendor to question. After some confusing consultation in a combination of broken Indonesian (me) and broken English (him), I established where the public bus was, and we were off. I never found out what the tourists' "indonesian price" for a taxi was, but I'm sure it was going to be more than 5000 rupia (50 cents) the bus cost.

As soon as we began driving, it was quite apparent the bus had no shocks at all, and we regularly slowed to a crawl to traverse some near-invisible bumps in the road, as a steady stream of scooters and motorcycles flowed around us. Lacking side mirrors, the bus driver had an assistant on the other side who would scream at regular intervals in short barks. We weren't sure if they signaled "all clear" or "alert! danger!", but we floated through lane changes and turns with the river of motorcycles miraculously parting around us. The bus zigzagged up and down small roads and large ones for 40 minutes, all teaming with people going about their business. After the small, sleepy towns in Bali the scale and energy was a little overwhelming.

Finally we arrived at Jalan Malioboro--Malioboro street--the city center, main tourist hub and batik district; named after the cigarette company. Feeling disoriented and unclean after the bus rides, we loaded ourselves with our bags and began walking the long, swealtering street, in the hopes of finding an internet cafe we could use to find accomodation; the becak drivers on every corner offering to take us wherever we might want to go, offering "cheap room", and "batik show! only today!"

We slowly traversed the length of Malioboro, threading between the rows of batik stalls lining both sides of the sidewalk as less heavily laden pedestrians flowed around us like the bus. At the end of Malioboro we found the train station with many hotels across the street. The mounting suffering of our walk had done its work, cleansing us of any reservations about price or quality, and we fell into the first one we saw without visible bugs.

Having made it without saying uncouth things to friendly becak drivers, we felt the journey a great success.

Two performances

We saw two performances in Ubud: A Kecak (pronounced "ke-chak") dance, and the Legong dance, both of which enact parts of the sanskrit epic the Ramayana.

Kecak Dance

I'd seen the Kecak dance before in the excellent movie "Baraka", but that version lacked any costumed dancers or storyline (due to the constraints in the form of their film). The version we saw opened with something quite similar to the Baraka version (this isn't my video, but it's close):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJusJonnSPo

After which there was a dance/story lasting about 45 minutes, with a few main dancers enacting the storyline, and the kecak chorus serving as background music, set, and sometimes props. The story is part of the Ramayana in which a demon contrives to separate Rama, his wife Sita, and his younger brother while they're out hunting, so he can steal Sita away. A number of animal friends come to the aide of Rama (there are many twists and turns in the plot here which I won't go into), and the whole thing culminates in a battle between a monkey and a demon army.

The main kecak rhythmic chant was extremly cool. It's a bunch of interlocking, staggered repetitions of the rhythm: "x x _ x x _ x _ ". Here's a circular diagram that shows the interlocking structure: http://www.healthyarts.com/kecak/8x8-kecak-C-Web.htm

Aside from that, my favorite part was definitely the costumes and movements of the monkey and the bird, which did very convincing stylized dances of their animals. Their movements conveyed the distinct impression of originating in an alien set of perceptions and interests.

Legong Dance

The Legong dance tells a different section of the epic, and, compared to the kecak dance, is more dance and less story.

Here is a video (again not mine, but the same performance) of a representative part of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpdDDLWHhTc&feature=related

Many of the elements in the dance style I recognized from a style of south Indian dance my friend Deepa performs--in particular, the body-positions and precise hand and eye movements. I really enjoyed it, though the movements are a lot more subtle than other forms of dance I've seen. Every movement was carefully matched to one of the sounds in the accompanying gamelan, including the rapid fan waving, movements of the fingers, and eyes. Though not in the video, the dancer was also clearly flexing and positioning her toes as part of the dance as well.

The gamelan music was interesting as well. Usually (or so far as I could hear) there were three different meters happening at once, with a lot of gradual tempo changes in which either the fastest meter or slowest meter would drop out, and re-enter at double or half-time. With this ever-changing ocean of sound, the gamelan and the dancers could accentuate different tempos or rhythms from within the texture. It was definitely an enjoyable event, though a german tourist seated on my left (who looked as if his girlfriend had dragged him) wore a very offended and upset expression through the whole performance. I guess dance wasn't his thing.

Bali Cremation Ceremony

One of the reasons we stayed in Bali longer than we'd planned (aside from the fact that it was more awesome than we anticipated), was that a Balinese friend we'd made told us we should stay for the Cremation ceremony that was happning later in the week.

The ceremony is huge and festive (being a joyful, rather than sombre occasion), with a long processional, music, and many decorations. Everyone who dies in Bali will have a ceremony like this, but they're so expensive that generally they are only performed once a year for many people at once. If a family is poor, they may wait up to five years to save enough money. In these cases, the body is buried, and then exhumed later for the cremation ceremony.

There were several large floats of bulls on bamboo platforms supported by 30 or so men each.

You can see in the picture that the men don't just carry the platforms, but rotate, tip, and generally jostle them around as much as they can. Apparently, this practice originated in order to "confuse" the spirit of the deceased so they can't find their way back to the family compound, though it's not really clear to me whether this is still an active part of most people's belief system here. (it might, but it also might well not).

The procession also included decorated caskets, long lines of women carrying offerings, and most of the town on foot or motorcycle behind.

The procession was staggered in several stages over about an hour and a half. Here is a video of most of the musicians that accompanied the final stage:

For the entire day (and well into the night) you could see a huge conflagration behind the high stone walls of the main temple where the procession ended.

Music Lessons

We've been to a few performances (about which more in another post), all of which included the music teacher whose house we're staying in. I've had a lesson on the balinese drum, and two lessons on the Ugal, which is one of the instruments in the gamelan.

Here I am explaining what I learned on the drum. The tones don't come out particularly well on the video (especially the high tone) but it gives the general idea. (You can also see the new shirt I bought for $3!)

Ok. I said I was a beginner =) If you play that approximately 3 times faster, it's actually the first part of an accompanyment to a gamelan piece called Gilak Bebarongan, which I learned 3 more of the melodic parts for on the Ugal.

Here is what the melody sounds like...

There's also an ornamented accompanyment that I learned. In this video, my teacher is playing the "onbeat" version of the accompanyment while I practice (almost successfully) the "offbeat" version.

I transcribed all three parts, and here's a screen shot of about the first quarter...

Finally, here is a rehersal of a music group led by the teacher's son (taking place in our homestay, which was cool)...

Incidentally, the teacher's son (whose name I don't think I ever caught) is going to be performing the US premiere of Evan Ziporyn's new opera, A House in Bali, along with Bang on a Can, at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley on Sept 26th and 27th. Here's the info: http://bangonacan.org/events/upcoming

So you should go and check it out! He's really friendly, and a great musician!

Trip to the Sacred Monkey Forest

Today we walked to the end of monkey forest road, which terminates in the "sacred monkey forest". About 300 monkeys live in the forest (according to their pamphlet), and I'd say we saw maybe half that number running around the path on the half-mile walk we took.

Here's a male (which you can identify by its size, and, closer-up from the mustache-like facial hair it grows) on a temple wall.

And the same male closer up.

This one is a female (again, the size, the baby-en-tow (though this isn't always a sure sign), and the beard-like facial hair distinctive of females).

And one we spotted sleeping in a tree... (something I kind of wish I could do)

Tourists were encouraged to buy and feed them bananas which is something I tried...

A more enterprising monkey climbed me and decided to eat his on my shoulder (something I'd see happen to other people, so I wasn't too freaked out)

I thought he was going to share his banana with me, but this turned out not to be true

It took some doing to get him off my shoulder. He suspected that I had more bananas in my backpack (true), and so his plan was to sit on my shoulder until I gave him the rest. If other monkeys tried to approach me, he would bare his teeth at them, clearly staking his claim. I tried to shoo him off a little bit, which did go very well, and tried to put a banana on a nearby ledge so he'd have to jump off to get it, but it turns out a monkey has a rather longer reach than I had calculated, so that didn't work either. Eventually, one of the park guides (who monitor thing) came over and shewed him off. Very exciting!

My other favorite part was watching the younger monkeys play in an artificial pool with some branches over it. They loved to cannon-ball off the branches into the water, try to knock each other off the branches, and generally behave like mischevious kids. It was awesome (though very difficult to photograph).

Bargaining in Bali

Ubud is very cheap. Our homestay, for example, is $9 a night, which includes a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, coffee, and fresh fruit. You can get a wide variety of excellent meals for under $2. You can rent a bike for $2 a day, or a motorbike for $4.

Getting here was the hard part. We flew into Bali's main airport in Denpasar and stayed over one night there (since our flight got in late). In the morning our taxi driver said he would drive us to Ubud (about 45 minutes away) for 300,000 Rp (that's $30). By comparison, the rate on the local bus for two people is 8,000 Rb (less than $1). While the taxi driver's offer certainly pushed the envelope, we discovered that it's fairly normal to get quoted about 2-3 times the market rate for transport.

Getting to the bus station did not prove simple, however. In our efforts to walk to the bus station, we discovered that anyone and everyone is a prospective cabbie (even people with no apparent connection to any cab service, and no visible sign of transport). We were told several times that it was "very far" to the unmarked bus stop we had read about on the internet (the speakers, of course, egar to take us themselves). The last time this happened, he eventually pointed us in the right direction (when it was clear we weren't going with him), and the actual distance turned out to be approximately 3 blocks.

Once on the corner, the man standing there said the actual corner we really wanted was, in fact, "very far" and offered to take us there. He persisted in this claim until the Bemo actually pulled up to the curb, at which point he pointed at it and said "here it is". (I particularly liked that part).

All of this was fairly stressful at first, but now that we know the system, I think it's great fun. The trick is to remain happy: you and he just keep smiling and laughing and bantering together as you keep re-iterating your point, and he his. Eventually, he'll come around, and you've both shared a good laugh. It actually felt like we were making friends with taxi drivers whose services we refused in this way.

There is one taxi driver in Ubud in particular, who asks us every time we pass if we want a taxi. Today, after probably 10 or 11 refusals so far, he yelled from across the street (normal for taxi drivers), "you want taxi now?" with a big smile. We laughed and shook our heads back. He's a familiar part of the landscape now, and we always make sure to wave and smile at him on our way past. (As well as throw in whatever Indonesian greetings we can think of)

* * *

Using my newfound technique of always laughing and smiling and acting friendly, I tried my hand at bargaining in a shop for a batik sarong (which is cool--pictures of this later). The man in the shop offered 120,000 Rp ($12), citing its beauty and fine quality. I countered with 6,000 Rp ($6) smiling and explaining apologetically that it was truely very beautiful, but I wasn't sure if I would wear it very much yet. After several backs and forths (with reasons on both sides), we settled at 85,000 ($8.50). (This, by the way, was 50 cents more than the target price I quietly had discussed with Jen earlier).

And this is the nice thing about bargaining. I think it was possible that he would have gone lower, but I felt like I was getting a great bargain at $8.50, and he seemed to feel that he was doing well too. (He actually said "good for me, good for you!" when he suggested $8.50). So the whole thing was pretty low stress, and came out well for everyone in the end! I only hope all future bargaining is so friend-making as this turned out. Before we left he gave me a lesson in how to fold it in both a male style, and in a female style (in case Jen wanted to wear it).

As an addendum, I've made good friends with a lady in a coffee shop here--we have spent several hours talking about Bali and California and all kinds of things. I mentioned to her about bargaining for the sarong, and asked (without telling her how much I got it for) how much she thought was reasonable for something like that. She thought for awhile and said "about 85,000" ($8.50). So it seems like I did ok!