Indonesia: Life In The Islands

Flashback: We Naik a Bus to Yogya

naik: 1. climb, ascend, go on (up). Pesawat itu gagal—The plane failed to get off the ground.

Indonesia has a magical system of bus transport. You can buy a ticket from any reasonably sized city to another reasonably sized city, and for $9 they will pick you up at your house, give you a meal, and deliver you to your final destination. This system of mini-buses, succinctly enough, is called Travel. Layne and I decided to give it a try a week and a half ago and go to Yogyakarta in Central Java. Willow, another ETA, is stationed there for the year, and a bunch of other ETAs from Java (and one from South Sumatra) made the trek for a mini-reunion. Yogya is considered the cultural center of Java; it was also at the epicenter of a May 24^th earthquake that left many people homeless.

Everyone knows you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but when a bus pulls up and the name of the company written on the side is “Rizkey Travel,” that’s someone trying to tell you something. Layne and I had been deceived into choosing the front two seats next to the driver for their “safety” and “comfort.” As it turns out, the other six seats in the van recline and are fairly cushy—while the seats in front are located about 10 inches back from the dashboard and close enough to the driver that every time he shifted gears he copped a feel of my upper thigh. There was also a mysterious black liquid dripping from a murky bottle located under the air conditioner, but that was the least of our worries.

In Indonesia, passing on the right is so common that it doesn’t really elicit beeps from anyone. If the car in front of you is going too slow, then you just pull into oncoming traffic, gun the engine, and race to get in front of them before a truck barreling down the other lane plows you down. In this game of chicken, motorcycles are incidental—they have to move out of the way and onto the shoulder of the road no matter where they are on the road or what traffic rules they’re following/not following. We had about 100 close calls, but there were 3 times in the course of the 11 hour bus ride when Layne and I honestly shut our eyes and readied ourselves for impact with the 80 passenger bus coming 70 mph toward us. It was a truly matter of inches as we swung back into our lane.

There were several unscheduled and seemingly purposeless stops along the way to Yogya. Occasionally we would get a new passenger or some gas, but sometimes it seemed like the driver just wanted to talk to some random men at gas stations or rumah makan (restaurants—literally “eating house”) and smoke a cigarette with them. On the way home, our driver picked up a man (his friend, maybe) and we drove him about 20 minutes down the road (and out of our way) for fun. We also got out at one gas station to get money from the ATM and the bus driver took off again without us—luckily Layne was close enough to run and shout at him to stop.

Besides the excitement of transit, the weekend was great. Since we were all English starved, most of the weekend was spent speaking as fast as possible and filling each other in on school placements, houses, and travel plans. The first day we explored a little around Yogya, looking for some batik (Indonesian fabric painting). Having read her Lonely Planet extensively, Layne predicted that someone was going to tell us about the “last day” of an art exhibit held by “art students” and encourage us to go there. Sure enough, a man picked us up and showed us to a gallery that was showing various batik paintings. Coincidentally, it was the last day of the exhibit (although in all fairness it was the day before the start of Ramadan, so that may have been true) and started off with some ridiculous prices, seducing us with offers of tea and explanations on how to make batik. Luckily, most of us have mastered our numbers by now so we could bargain fairly well, although I’m sure we still paid triple what they’re actually worth. I bought a painting of red flowers that’s striking against the light.

After haggling, we decided to go to Borobudur, an extremely famous Buddhist temple just outside of Yogya. We started asking some dudes by the restaurant we were in how to get there. First they hooked us by showing us the mangled finger of one of their friends who had been bitten by a cobra. After they had our undivided attention, someone offered up their father as a chauffer to Borobudur, which was about an hour away. Sure enough, about ten minutes later an extremely large SUV pulled up and we piled in. The ride to the temple was beautiful and featured some fantastic views of Mount Merapi, a volcano near Borobudur that had been acting ominously earlier in the summer. It started smoking as we were driving by, and I could imagine what it must have looked like during the minor eruptions in May-July.

To reach Borobudur itself, tourists have to pass through the gauntlet of vendors and hawkers who block the entrance to the temple. The second we stepped out of the SUV, we were literally surrounded by aggressive peddlers of Borobudur booklets, wayung kulit puppets, and really ugly little Buddha statues (I mean really, Buddha didn’t even have eyes). You almost had to push them away to make any progress walking forward. I thought a giant Buddhist temple would be a peaceful place, not somewhere where you run the risk of getting clocked over the head with a badly painted Borobudur memento.

Once we were inside, however, it was definitely worth it. We hired a guide (Buddhi) and he gave us some history of the temple. Seen from above, the seven levels represent the seven stages of enlightenment in the Buddhist religion. Borobudur has undergone several restorations, and sadly, you can tell. There are some parts where the beautifully carved stone panels have been obviously misassembled, with mismatched bodies or no head at all. A few years ago terrorists placed a bomb on the top level, destroying some of the statues there. The dome has since been reassembled, now marked with a black star. From the top of the temple you could see Mount Merapi and other mountains. We were there right before sunset, and the views were fantastic.

The next morning a few of us tried to go to the foothills of Merapi to see the famous volcano, but clouds completely obscured the peak so the trip was not really worth it. We came back and walked around Yoyga for a while, and then everyone met up and ate a great dinner. A lot of people were staying in Yogya longer and then heading to Bali, but Layne and I had to work on Tuesday so we hopped on the bus at 9 am (after buying some oleh-oleh, bakpia, which are traditional biscuits from Yoyga) and traveled 9 hours back to Malang. All in all a great way to start off exploring some of the other cities in Java (as well as Indonesian transit).

posted by Caitlin @ 5:19 PM