Half a World from London: A Warm Welcome to Indonesia

Traditional Javanese dance in the Sultan of Yogyakarta's Palace

Things we learnt about Yogyakarta, Indonesia:

It's pronounced 'Jogjakarta', or Jogja for short.
It's not to be confused with Jakarta, Indonesia's traffic ridden capital city.
The people are incredibly polite and friendly.
The city has an exceptionally passionate and sizeable Arsenal supporters club
The locals really like birds (of the winged variety, I'm not describing a city of womanisers)
Oh, it's hot. But I think that's proving to be a running theme.

If we thought that KL was another planet to Singapore, arriving in Indonesia and Jogja was the equivalent of landing in another galaxy. The skyscrapers were gone, replaced by hundreds of street sellers, mosques, batik markets and becak (tricycle or horse drawn rikshaws). For the first time the billboards were no longer in English and we saw our first motorcyclist (of many) carrying a load that by all rights should only ever be transported in a van. And the prices, thankfully, plummeted after the more expensive cities we'd visited so far.

The principle method of transport is the becak where you basically sit in a cramped seat pinned to the front of some bloke's tricycle. It's a fun, if uncomfortable journey. The problem is, us Westerners are a bit bigger than your average Indonesian. It was at the end of a 5km, mostly uphill journey than I suddenly realised we were in danger of killing one of these becak drivers. The poor fellow disembarked his bike, and when we turned to him, he was sweating more than I've ever seen anyone sweat and looked like he was actually going to keel over. Woops.

Making the becak driver work hard

I should move on to the most striking thing about our 4 days in Jogja - the people. As a backpacker arriving in Indonesia, armed with the Lonely Planet and dozens of different tips on avoiding scams and rip off merchants, we could be forgiven for being on our guard somewhat. On our first day we ventured to the city's main market, Pesar Beringharo. To say it's huge is a serious understatement. It's very huge. Maybe I need to work on my adjectives but you take my point. We were the only tourists and only white faces in the place which served only to add to our guardedness. It came as no surprise when as soon as we started strolling an old man decided to start walking with us telling us all the amazing things we could buy at the market. "Come see, many many spices, very good" he said. "Happen to own a spice stall mate?" I thought.

As it happened we fancied eyeing up a few spices so we cautiously followed him, primed for the inevitable hard sell. To my surprise he took us to an impressive spice stall that he did not appear to own and proceeded, with the owner of the stall, to show us the myriad spices explaining their uses and lets us touch and smell them, never once making any attempt to sell them to us. "Mmm", I thought, "He didn't seem to even TRY to con or rob us. Weird."

We continued, with our old Indonesian man in tow, still jabbering away about every stall we passed.

"He's just lulling us into a false sense of security", I thought. Any moment now he would lead us to his stall and force us to buy something. He suddenly turned to us in revelation and shouted,

"Come see many many fruits upstairs!"

"No." we said, "We don't want to see fruits."

We did really, we just thought he was trying to stitch us up in some way. So we wandered around for a while pretending we didn't want to see the fruits and then went to see the fruits. To be fair, the fruits were pretty amazing, although anyone who has ever smelt a durian will have no trouble understanding what I mean when I say it was a bit stinky. Our old man, took us around describing each fruit, telling us the Indonesian name for it. I didn't know what kind of scam this was but it was so subtle and elaborate that I was certain I would at some stage find myself completely naked holding nothing but an inadequately sized sarong. But I was wrong. It was at the stage when our old man told us of his love of Tom Jones and then started singing us some songs that I realised that he was walking and showing us around purely for the pleasure of practising his English and helping out some (overly paranoid) tourists. So we left happy and with a new found trust in the human race, scoffing at the silly Lonely Planet.

Look at all the lovely fruit and veg

And the stinky dried fish

We decided to go and see the Water Kasteel, which was once the bathing pools of Yogyakarta's Sultans and their playboy habits. Let me explain what I mean by that last comment. The Sultan, in days gone by, would have 12, or so, wives. Each day he would have them frolic together in one of the pools as he watched from his viewing tower. After a while they would line up in the courtyard, with him looking on from above. He would select 3 of them to go through to his private pools for a personal frolicking session, for which he would join them. Then each day of the week he would choose another 3 wives for that day's frolicking, so as to keep it fair and all. Fair dos mate, I say. Being a Sultan's not as bad as it's cracked up to be I suppose.

The "Frolicking Pools". Being a Sultan ain't so bad.

We also discovered the Javanese obsession with birds (again, of the winged variety). They all seem to keep birds as pets so we decided to see the local bird market where, once again, a local adopted us and showed us all around for nothing more than his own pleasure. Turns out he's studying English and loves English football. I nearly fell off my chair when he told me he supports.... wait for it... Norwich City. Wonders will never cease.

The bird market

The locals really like birds

Our Norwich City supporting new friend.

We went to see Borobodur, a massive (should have used this world earlier) 1200 year old Buddhist monument. Its stunning architecture and colossal size makes it a work of engineering genius when you take in to account it's age. Here we met another amazing person, our guide. He did a cracking Jackie Chan impersonation which he named "Friend of Jackie Chan". He would alternately pretend he was trapped on the other side of an invisible pane of glass or, when finished explaining something, use an invisible length of rope to pull himself along to the next point of interest. Legend.

Borobudur. 1200 year old Buddhist temple. It's big.

Prambanan. The Hindu answer to Borobudur.

On a slightly darker note we also went to see Gunung Merapi, an extremely active and destructive volcano. It has erupted twice in the last 5 years, most recently in October when it killed 700 people. The lava flowed suddenly at 4am when most people were sleeping. Whole communties had been destroyed, but already they are rebuilding on the same land. It's a scary thought for them to come straight back to such a dangerous place, but that land is all these families have. The valley through which the lava flowed is astonishingly large, and the dried up rivers of lava carving up the land were frightening and awe inspiring in equal measure.

Merapi's valley of lava. This valley was filled with lava. You can see the scorched trees near the camera.

This used to be farmers' fields and trees. Now it is a desolate, dried river of lava.

Let me move on to a happier story. As I mentioned in the first blog, I have decided to try and meet Arsenal fans throughout our travels in Asia. Where they exist I'll try and meet the official supporters' clubs, and where they don't and I'll try and meet smaller groups or individuals through the national supporters clubs. The first group was the Jogja Gooners, with whom Jess and I watched the Arsenal v Swansea match. The game was not on Indonesian TV, so through Twitter a the local Gooners let me know details of a cafe where they would be gathering to watch a stream of the match. We were even picked up from our hotel by a lovely guy called Agung and his girlfriend Anggi. The Jogja Gooners were incredible. There were around 50 of them, singing all the songs in full voice, everyone of them in an Arsenal shirt. Some of them were in extremely impressive vintage shirts. Their voice, passion and devotion to the Arsenal cause was really something to behold and when they refused to let us pay for our drinks or food I knew we had made some amazing new friends. I commit here and now, that if any of the Jogja Gooners ever find themselves in London, I will get them tickets for an Arsenal game.