Funky Comadina

Thursday night - my final night in Solo - feeling brave, I stepped into one of the many cheap local food places that line the main street, and ordered the one thing on the menu that I didn't recognise. I asked what was in it, and the girl said "ayam" (chicken). So fine, I thought, you can't go too wrong with chicken. My meal came out - a bowl of murky fluid. "Ayam?" I asked again. And she laughed. I ran my spoon through the bowl and several little pairs of legs came to the surface. It was frog-leg soup. I was the only diner, and the owner's whole family was seated around the table beside me, eagerly watching and smiling. Big joke. But I played it cool, picking off those little frog muscles one by one, chewing and swallowing, until I had a plate piled high with bare bones. It really does taste like chicken. The soup broth was actually harder to stomach, but I wasn't going to be humiliated. I finished it off, placed my cutlery together, strided over to the register and paid. "Enak sekali! Terima kasih." (Very delicious. Thank you.) I went straight to the nearest mall, and ordered a meal from California Fried Chicken to cleanse myself. Later that night at Guesthouse Paradiso I stayed up watching Muslim melodrama with the young guys who work there, who found it hard to talk to me after discovering that I get paid 120,000 rupiah per hour working in a supermarket back home. Yesterday, an early train to Yogyakarta. Becak to my hotel. I dumped my things and left by taxi straight away for the city bus terminal. Once aboard a public bus, a man with his wife and daughter gave me lollies, and we exchanged mailing addresses. I'll be interested to see what kind of mail I will be receiving in the next few weeks, given that I've collected a few new penpals in my time here. One and a half hours with my knees tucked up beneath my chin - the woman beside me refused to move to another vacant seat because she was having too much fun talking to me - and we arrived at the village of Borobudur. From there another becak to the famous monument (at this stage I'm thinking that I should have just hired a driver from the hotel). The temple itself wasn't visible behind the enormous souvenir market that fans out from the entry gate, but I eventually found my way through. Borobudur is a Buddhist temple that was built in the 8th century, but only rediscovered in the last century, undergone extensive repair, and become Indonesia's most popular tourist attraction. It has four lower galleries that you walk around, each decorated on all sides by carved images telling the story of Buddha, with hundreds of Buddha statues lining the walls. Above this, there are several great big stone cages with Buddhas sitting inside them, and it is said to bring good luck to reach in and touch Buddha with the second knuckle of the right ring-finger. The whole thing is massive, and I spent almost two hours working my way through the galleries, winding my way upwards. When I was about half-way up, what seemed like several busloads of school-kids in bright orange t-shirts arrived, and they all ran straight up the steps to touch the caged Buddhas. I came to the top, but couldn't take any decent photos because bright orange t-shirts were everywhere. At least the kids managed to get plenty of good photos of me. I felt a bit too conspicuous to do the ring-finger thing anyway. Going back to Yogya, the guy on the bus charged me the Bulleh (white man) price, and I paid it like a chump. It might have been cheaper just to hire a car. Dinner at Superman's, and then I went out to see a wayang kulit (shadow puppet) show. There I ran into the same British couple I had eaten breakfast with in Solo, and again there were many more performers than audience members. Apparently such cultural events are government-subsidised, but it's amazing that they're still done to such a high standard and with such respect to tradition - even when none of the audience can understand the dialogue. Afterwards I went to the puppet workshop behind the theatre. The puppet-maker seemed genuinely insulted that I was trying to bargain with him, but eventually I bought a small Shinta puppet (Shinta is the female love interest from the Ramayana epic). It's actually too small to be used in performance, and it didn't come with the buffalo-horn sticks, but he assured me that it's better quality than the larger ones because it's made for framing. It was only thirty dollars anyway. No wonder he was insulted. He cut a bit of a tragic figure actually - he is a fourth generation puppet-maker, and his children aren't interested because there's not enough money in it. Such a shame. This morning I explored the Yogyakarta Kraton, which is a giant walled city in the middle of Yogya in which the royal family (all 25,000 of them) live. The Sultan himself lives in the inner Palace, and the museum there is full of everything relating to him and his ancestors. Even their boy-scout uniforms have a special cabinet. Plenty more school-kids were on excursion there, and they took more photos of me than they did of the Kraton. I read in the Jakarta Post today that the Sultan is currently involved in a 17-billion rupiah mobile phone scam, but my guide at the Kraton didn't mention that. From there, a becak ride to Taman Sari (Water Castle). It sounds like a dodgy theme park, but it's actually a maze of pools and underground passages built by a former Sultan for the enjoyment of himself, his wives and his concubines. It's all in ruins now, and it's been built over by a village. It's a very strange place, and if it weren't for the old guy who followed me around determined to be my guide, I would have gotten lost very quickly. Tonight I'm deliberating as to whether I want to see the famed all-night (9pm - 5am) wayang kulit performance at the Kraton. I imagine that it will be an experience to remember... Then again, those Sumatrans must be waiting for my call.