Here are a bunch of photos from our trip to Jogja. Brilliant it was, even though it was dirty and polluted it was a reet nice trip away for the week. First holiday I've had in ages where I wasn't a total pennypinching backpacker.
In this series you can see the marvellous temple monument at Borobudur. Made around 900 years ago or more, then the civilisation that made it vanished and the jungle took it back. Rediscovered by Stamford Raffles, and rebuilt a bit, then generally looted by anybody that felt like it and messed up, until in the 1970s when UNESCO and the indon government rebuilt it. And all so that uneducated indons can run all over it touch and climbing and generally ruining it all over again. Hooray for the uneducated masses.
We stayed in a really nice hotel for the first 3 nights, and even did posh stuff like hiring a car and a driver to take us to places. The other 2 ladies you see in some pictures are Vanessas cousins (or something, it's hard to tell with such an immense family) and they were both lovely and took us to lots of places where we ate nice food (not as nice as Malaysian food I hasten to add).
Sorry about the layout of this, but for some reason blogger has gone a bit mental, instead of showing photos in the main typing page it is just showing HTML script which is just a big random jumble of letters. Not having the best luck with technology this week.
So what else did we do. We went for a long (and a bit pointless, but nice nonetheless) drive to a town called Solo, about 2 hours away, then we bought Batik and had a look in a Batik museum, owned by some rich bloke who collected Batik, which was certainly interesting up to a point (I'm sure mum would have been very excited). Then we ate frued jackfruit, got to drive past a rally by the aformentioned JI islamic extremists (commonly referred to as a bunch of utter mentals who's perception of religion is so far skewed from the real Islam that they are pure dangerous, in fact very dangerous, just a bunch of poor and ignorant dissafected young lads who have been brainwashed into believing sick things that relate to their faith in no way whatsoever. Bit scary when you are next to them and they have their faces all covered and only eye slits showing - a la Al Quiada stylee - and they got big sticks and you could reach out the window and poke them. Sadly no photo, cos it was a bit of an unexpected surprise and I am not Japanese).
Vanessa and I went up to a place called Ketap Pass, and (you can see photo of me in front of lots of clouds) we were supposed to be looking at the volcanos that surround it, but it was just too cloudy. If you look behind me, you can see a big dark patch, that is a big active volcano, it is high, but invisible due to cloud/smoke. Shame though
We also had fun watching the Volcano movie there. Not because the movie was any good, because it was poo. No the funny thing was that the tannoy lady had been saying in Indonesian about watching a volcano film, but we didn't pay attention. Then, just as we decided to go she evidently spotted me and so said "For lady and gentlemen want watching volcano filem of duration 22 minute, please coming and inside volcano theatre seeing, but registering before thank you". So with such a delightful invitation how could we refuse. So we went towards it, and there were 3 girls and a man looking at us, we made the gestures of "how do we get in", and they looked so shocked that their marketing ploy had worked they started jumping up and down, going, "wheee" and clapping. No joke. As the door closed behind us they carried on clapping and talking excitedly. There were a few locals in the "theatre" which was a lovely little place. The "projectionist" sat at the back, with the light switches (which went click when turned off, very classy) and his projector and DVD player which he didn't know how to work. Then half way through the film it all turned off - evidently the "projectionist" had moved a little excitedly and unplugged the bloody thing. So the lights clicked on again and the "projectionist" went oooohhh, then called in an assistant. Between them they managed to turn it all on again, but oh no, disaster, were we going to have to sit through the first 10 minutes again??? Much confused chatter between the "technicians" as they tried to decipher the remote control of a home DVD player. The muslim girl between us and them was covering her mouth as she choked back the hysterical laughter listening to tweedledum and tweedledee taxing their brains to the limit. But, finally the fast forward was located and we managed to watch the rest of the film. It was quite good, but the Chuckle brothers routine was better.
What else? We decided to have a full day sitting around by the pool and doing nothing. I took a walk around the area where our hotel was, to get food and just have a mooch. I then brought Vanessa out of the hotel (on false pretenses that there was actually something to do around there, but I was much mistaken) and then she slipped over and hurt her arm so we went back inside. I somewhat chagrinned at my pitiful attempt at light entertainment.
We went on the penultimate day for a long becak (trishaw) ride, into the old Sultans palace area, which is a city within the city, called the Kraton. This place was proper nice, as it's a palace, but that only covers about a quarter of the Kraton area. The rest of the area within the city walls is occupied by around 700 families, who have lived there in service of the palace for 10 generations or more. It is sort of a servants quarters only more like 5000 people. The residents there carry on with the old artisan practices of their forebears, making Jogja batik, wayang kulit (shadow puppets) and god knows what else. I ended up spending lots of money on a wayang kulit puppet, and I will tell you more about him next time. The nicest thing about this area is that the Sultan protects the families there, subsidising their homes and food, so that they don't have to worry and can settle down to just doing what their families have been doing for generations, namely, creating amazing pieces of art hand crafts. I was distinctly taken by this place, and I want to go back.
My eyes hurt now from tyoing so long. Getting back to KL stuff kind of sucks, as the political power struggle is getting more intense. The opposition leader got arrested for "sodomy" the day that he was announced that he was running in a by-election and so that has upped the stakes somewhat. Today we got caught for hours in a city wide traffic jam, caused by the Police establishing roadblocks all over the Klang valley. The reason? Unknown, but they generally do this when they want to make people feel scared/intimidated, as a reminder of sorts as to who holds the power in the country. Tomorrow they will blame it on the opposition leader, or say that they "heard rumours of a demonstration somewhere" so they make life hell for everybody. It's a shame, it was such a nice holiday.
Oh and everybody has been very excited about the olympics.
On another note I have been asked to write/direct and edit a corporate video for a flying acadamy, we went there on a location recce today, and this means that I will get to spend 2 days flying around in light aircraft and HELICOPTERS!!!!!! Waaaaaaaaahhhhh!!! I get to go in a helicopter. not just once, but lots of times, and I also get to DIRECT THEM!!!!! I have asked if I can have a shot with all 5 Eurocopters flying in formation, YES, then can I have the planes in formation? YES. Can I shoot the formation of planes from a helicopter? YES. The helicopters from a plane? YES. Can I have the formation of 5 helicopters fly towards us at the bottom of frame and then the 10 planes fly in formation over the top of them, so we get all of the schools aircraft in the same shot?????? Ermm, well I suppose so, YES.
WAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!
I am excited
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