Blue Sky, Buddha and Becaks...and Tris is done!

It is FINISHED! As of Wednesday morning, approximately 3:47 am, April 8th, 2009, Tris pushed his final "send" in order to send off his very last Masters of Educational Technology assignment. How did we celebrate? About 13 minutes later we piled into our car and took the 6 am flight from Jakarta to Jogjakarta with the Weeda family. Of course we'd planned it, but it sure felt good for us, especially Tris, knowing that the next time we caught him in front of a computer it would be for pure enjoyment. Our family is very proud of Tris for toughing it out and working so hard in order to increase his education.

We just returned from Jogja and it was one of my favourite Indo trips that we've taken so far. I have had some excellent trips thus far and so was a little curious as to why this would be so. After I thought about it for a while I think it's because I have been inside our house for a lot of the last 4 months due to being a little under the weather off and on. However, there was something a little magical about the place, and I think it had something to do with the centrality of the hotel, which in itself was clean, modern and had a great swimming pool. We rode a becak (bicycle manned push-cart) and a horse drawn carriage, and walked many kilometers of market stalls. My favourite memory (however recent) is of a nighttime becak ride that Tris and I took alone through the streets of Jogja. While we chatted in our best Bahasa Indonesia with our becak driver, he drove us through the Sultan's village where there were night stalls set up with batik clothing, entire shops filled with cheap flip flops, beadshops, and puppet shops where they make puppets out of wood or of buffalo hide (kulit caribou). Every once in a while we'd smell chicken or goat satay being barbecued over charcoal briquets and although we've learned it's best not to eat from street vendors, ours mouths would still water. Once 2 guys on a motorbike carrying stalks and stalks of jasmine rode by, did a u-turn and then rode by once more, and the scent of the jasmine clung to the air. I've never experienced such a thick floral aroma outside before, and mixed with the night smells it was quite memorable. Mix that with the various sounds of the nighttime call to prayer (via loudspeaker), cicadas in the Banyan trees, the bells and calls of vendors and oddly, a portable bread cart ringing an electronic song to bring in customers, and the night was beautiful. I never thought I'd say I enjoyed the call to prayer, but in the mix it seemed to fit.

We stayed a total of three nights and four days, and although we did a lot of touring around we did spent a good part of each day near the pool. When asked, I'm sure that each of the kids would say that one of their favourite parts of the holiday would be the pool time. On our second day we woke up almost as early as the previous day (4:30 verses 3:30 the day before) and rode our rented mini-bus up to the famous Borobudur temple, a buddhist monument built 1300 years ago. Although we hired a guide, Tris and I missed out some of the time because we'd fall behind taking photos of the friezes and of the headless buddha statues. Of course there were photo opportunities that we couldn't pass up and our kids were right there eager to help out.

Some of our other highlights will remain in our memories but unfortunately for various reasons not on camera. One of them is the bird market, which contained not only birds but mice, rats, snakes, ferrets, dogs, cats, bats, owls, eagles, maggots, fire ants, probably rabies and who knows what else. Matthew's conclusion about this market is that it was "interestingly sad." Both kids comment on how both their grandma Bea and Grandma Sunny as well as Aunties Laura and Jenny would probably come into the market and turn over the stalls (like Jesus did in the temple of Jerusalem) because of the horrific treatment of the animals. There were so many sad, sickly animals crammed into such small spaces. SPCA would have years of work to revamp the mindset of the treatment of animals here. One of the reasons it was a highlight is because the bird market was built at the base of the remains of an old, old castle. We had a self-appointed tour guide lead us from the bird market up some stairs (no workers compensation codes of safety here) into the crumbling walls of the castle. After a quick peek at the top we descended into a tunnel which led us to the 4 pools that the Sultan and his wives and family shared many years ago. My favourite was when the fellow lead us through the village to reach our becaks again and we just saw the people living at the foot of these ruins, their rooftops leaning against the castle stones.

Another unrecorded memory was of a Javanese (Jogjakartan) ballet called Ramanaya. It was a story of love and war accompanied by music and Javanese singing. I enjoyed it and I think the others did too, especially after intermission when we realized that there was a sheet written in english interpreting the ballet for us.

Overall we had a great time celebrating Easter holidays and, of course, Tris' completion of his courses. If you want to see more photos, I will be posting some more on my Facebook page. It's way easier to put in comments etc that way.

Thanks for reading!