Jogjakarta

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164_6445-4.JPGWe budgeted at least three days for Yogyakarta (abbreviated and pronounced as Jogja), but one full day was enough for us. Tomorrow, we’ll do a morning trip to Borobudur and then its on to Bali. We saw pretty much everything we wanted to see today. We checked out the Sultan’s palace in the morning, along with a couple adjacent and uninteresting museums (unless you have an interest in paintings of royal carriages or seeing royal sitting areas). The palace wasn’t too interesting, although we got to see part of the weekly gamelan performance. The royal family of Jogja still lives in a part of the compound and is still somewhat respected. I guess the Jogja sultan was the man back in the late-colonial days, during the push for independence. He gave refuge to freedom fighters and rebels in his palace. The Dutch knew the resistance was operating out of the palace, but never took any action out of fear of enraging the local population. I guess its similar to some of the militants in Iraq that hide in mosques and stuff; the US military knows where people are but cannot attack a mosque for obvious reasons. The sultan was also up in the Soekarno-Hatta clique when the independence movement was taking shape. The only other interesting thing we saw today was the bird market. Within the regular city market was a couple blocks of just birds. Pigeons, canaries, doves, tons of cages of all shapes and sizes, as well as boxes and boxes of grasshoppers and maggots for feeding. Wandering around, we also saw plenty of other animals for sale: squirrels, rabbits, fish, and lots of turtles. What Indonesians’ do with all these animals I don’t know. It seems too poor a country for keeping pets, but the cuisine doesn’t seem as adventurous as Chinese. Anyhow, that’s Jogja in a nutshell, or a day rather. The only thing I left out is the eight million people who are trying to sell batik or steer you towards a batik shop or gallery.

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