Quick update for Java and Bali

I have one thing on my mind at the moment - I'm thinking what it must feel like to be smothered by a sweaty Adam Jones after 80 minutes of running... it would be an experience, that's for sure! I'm thinking that because I've just uploaded his picture and finished writing the last blog post, even though I started it two weeks ago. I was meant to talk about other things I've been up to too but I've been so busy sorting out lots of other stuff and procrastinating from writing on my blog that I kept putting it off. Anyway, I only have one more short week left after 24 weeks of being out here so I can't afford to put it off any longer. So here's a very quick update on what I've been up to.

The day after Prambanan (my birthday) I got up at about 5:30 am to catch the first bus to Borobudur, and ancient Buddhist monument not too far from Yogyakarta. In fact it's the largest Buddhist monument in the world and the largest monument of any kind in the Southern Hemisphere (that's right, I'm below the equator now). As you can imagine, it was pretty massive and impressive with lots and lots and lots of reliefs telling fables and the stories of the Buddha at different reincarnations. Ffion says that her prof at uni says that they're one of the best preserved reliefs in the world. It was a good job I came early to avoid the crowds as this is Indonesia's #1 tourist destination and I managed to go around all the levels in peace until I got to the sputa at the top, by which point all the school trips had arrived and all the annoying children wanted to have their photo taken with me.

Also on the grounds was a museum about Indonesia's nautical history which had inside it the boat someone build based on the boats on Borobudur's reliefs. He and a team used it to sail from Bali all the way round to Ghana to show that transportation, trade and contact was available between the two continents all those thousands of years ago, although in reality they never sailed further than Madagascar, whose people and language are actually decended from the Indonesian archepeligo and surrounding islands. Apparently, again according to Ffion's prof, the boats were only meant to go one way (from East to West), which proves that bananas originated in Asia and were introduced to Africa rather than the other way around. Later that day I arrived in Solo (or Surakarta, as it's properly called), another royal city in Central Java, and after dumping my stuff in my room went downstairs to play some gamelan after all this time.

The hostel itself used to be a batik factory, and not only did they have a whole gamelan orchestra but also their own small swimming pool and lots of interesting furnishings. One of the people I met there was an old Dutch man who used to live in Indonesia when he was a child, his farther being the owner of the country's second largest sugar factory. He's been back to Indonesia a few times but today was the first time he'd gone back to visit the concentration camp he and his family were sent to by the Japanese during their occupation in WWII. His father and elder brother were worked and starved to death there and he was almost about to die too until he was saved by the Japanese surrender, after which he and the other Dutch had to flee back to Europe. Over a million people - Indonesian and Dutch alike - were being worked and starved to death in the Javanese concentration camps at the time of the surrender. "The bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were terrible," he said, "they took many lives. But many, many, many lives were saved. Many lives."

I got to know a few Brits in Solo, some students studying gamelan in the arts institute there. It was good to be able to speak English for once without having to slow things down to a snail's pace and to have conversations that went beyond trying to explain where Wales is. Incidently, I've had enough of saying "it's next to England," so I now say "it's close to Scotland and Ireland" instead. Hopefully they'll know who Ryan Giggs is though, then it needs no explaination. I met these people at the various gamelan latihans (practices) and wayang kulit shows we went to, which included two all-night performances from 7 pm 'till 4 am. One of them had a very useful simultanious English translation, about which Rachel Hand, one of the Brits studying at the institute that I got to know and who's a SOAS alumn, whose an article for the Jakarta Post, quoting me in it! You can read it online - http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/12/03/039wayang039-with-english-a-first-surakarta.html

David McKenny, another SOAS music alumn studying at the institute, is another guy I got to know and it was good to get lots of inside information about SOAS, the music course and staff and other nit-bits to put some of my concerns away. Now that I've finally finished the UCAS applications I'm only waiting for a descision from the universities - four out of five of which are in London - but after talking with David and Rachel I'll accept SOAS straight away if they want me. I spent quite a bit of time with David and Joe Lunar, my original contact for Solo that Nikhil Dally, the gamelan teacher from AC, put me in contact with and who's played at one of the gamelan concerts in the Glass Room there.

If you're reading this and haven't got a clue what gamelan or wayang kulit is, I suggest you search them on Youtube and have a listen and a look! They're both a pivotal part of Indonesian culture, especially so in Central Java and Bali, but their styles are very different. Another important aspect of Central Javanese culture is batik - literally "many dots," refering to the technique of putting lots and lots of wax dots on cotton or silk to make a design and then dying the material so that the colour doesn't dye the area that the wax is. It's all very simple in concept but the art and application itself is very difficult, as I found out myself when I took a day course in it. In Jogja, it was very tourist-orientated, with modern wall hangings being the thing to buy, but in Solo it was much more traditional with the small team of batik makers where I was doing the course behind a clothes shop were spending the whole day just covering certain areas of sarongs with bees wax. My attempts were miserable and I was getting drips everywhere, but I had fun and managed to make a couple of Christmas prezzies along the way.

After twelve days in Solo I headed for Surabaya, Indonesia's second largest city. There wasn't much to do here though - the only reason I wanted to go was because this is where Alice grew up - but it did have an excellent zoo by Asian standards and some enormous shopping centres by anyone's standards, which meant I was able to top up on a few essentials like tissues for toilet paper and shampoo. I also watched an interesting film called 'Twilight', a kinda teen vampire film that really doesn't make much sense but it was either that or Disney.

After Surabaya I headed to the Bromo region. Gunung Bromo is an active volcano surrounded by a few other sleeping volcanoes in a large crater which is in turn surrounded by volcanoes - well, they do call this the 'Ring of Fire'! Actually, as impressive as Gunung Bromo itself was - which is the main thing people come to see and has about 240 steps leading up to the top - I prefered to jalan jalan (wander about) along the crator rims of the other volcanos. At least they didn't stink of sulphur! I woke up at about 3 am both days I was in the region, the first time to climb a mountain on the edge of the large crator that Bromo and the others were lying in (known as the Sea of Sand, for obvious reasons) in time for sunrise and the second in time to climb Gunung Bromo itself in time for sunrise. Walking along the ridges from an active volcano to a sleeping one gives a very strange scenery: it's as if you were walking through Russia at the transition of winter and spring, that is to say that one moment everything around you is barren and dead, a wasteland of sand and black rock, then suddenly you turn the corner and you're in the middle of a lush green landscape with a thick forest below. The morning mist, which fortunately didn't rise above the ground for the whole time I was walking, added a lot to the mood, and I got lots and lots of good photos. But now I want to visit the Caucasus instead to see if it really does look like how I imagine it. How about a family holiday in Georgia and Armenia this summer, eh?

What with two very early mornings and then a sleepless nightbus to Bali, I had a rather confused body clock by the time I rached Ubud, a town in central Bali that's been known as a very artsy place ever since the German artist Walter Spies moved there in the 1920s, with many foreign artists following suit ever since. So after finding a very friendly homestay and eating some honey on toast and fruit for breakfast, I slept for the rest of the day. And because it was raining I slept most of the next day too! But don't worry, by the next day I was out and about again, jalan jalan-ing through some of Bali's signature terraced rice fields and popping in a few galleries along the way. I stayed in Ubud for a week all together, trying to get as much Balinese 'culture' in me as I could before heading to the beach. So I went to a lot of museums and galleries, temples (one of which houses the world's largest kettledrum, cast in the 2nd century BC) and shows and dances. On Sunday night there was an all-you-could-eat traditional Balinese buffet at my homestay, which was really tasty and finally brought some people to the place, as it had been dead all week. All you could eat and only for 30,000 rupiah, which sounds like a lot, and for a meal that it a lot, but it converts to just under 2 pounds!

One of the best things I saw was actually in this temple with the kettledrum: the temple is a bit out of the way so I rented a push bike for the day, and when I arrived there was a ceremony about to begin. I'm not allowed to enter one but the wall was just low enough (or, rather, I was just tall enough, as I'm sure the wall is a perfectly adequate size for the Balinese!) to peek over and watch. There were girls and ladies carrying tiers of fruit on their head and putting them on the alters as offerings to intice the gods to join them in their festival, priests flicking holy water everywhere, all to the sound of the gamelan. It was just so colourful. The Balinese are an incredibly spiritual and superstitious people, and their unique take on Hinduism affects every part of their lives. When I arrived back in Ubud there was yet another ceremony in place, this time on the streets surrounding the main temple, with all the men dressed in white and all the women in colourful tops and sarongs. After being in Muslim areas for the last 15 weeks it was odd to see women praying without covering their hair at all, whereas it's the men who must partially cover their hair with a while wrap.

And that bring you up to date. I arrived in Kuta this afternoon, the most popular place in Bali, packed with Aussies and surfers. It's also the place of the October 2002 bombings that killed over 200 people. There have been warning not to travel to Bali at this time because the masterminds behind the bombings were executed by firing squad just a few weeks ago, so the authorities are a little nervous that there'll be trouble. But so far so good, which is helped by the very tolerant nature of the Balinese people. I thought I'd come to Kuta to finish though as there's still a lot of fun to be had, what with an 18km stretch of beach and the hottest place in town just down the road from my homestay - the Hard Rock Hotel! It has a swimming pool inside that's more like a lagoon with slides and a wave machine, although there is a proper waterpark not far away. Choices, choices! So I'm going to enjoy myself for these next few days before I have a 24-hour coach ride up to Jakarta on Friday and a 22-hour flight home on Sunday. I'll try to post something small for y'all on Saturday night. In the meantime, maybe you can head down to your local waterpark and see how much fun you have during wintertime!