And the next morning we took a short walk past the Obama Fan Club. As you'll recall, Jakarta is where the current president learned socialism, Marxism, fascism, communism, colonialism, anti-colonialism, dictatorship, defeatism, lefthandedness, Islam, Islamofascism, sharia law, hatred for America, and general Otherness. He lived here for a few years of elementary school; we didn't make the short trip to the nearby school that has a plaque in front of it commemorating the event.
We did, however, come across his fan club on Jakarta's backpackers' row, Jalan Jaksa.
On Julia's advice, we didn't linger in Jakarta. We flew on Monday to Jogjakarta (also spelled Yogyakarta, Djogjakarta, and variants) and began the phase of the trip in which we stay in private villas. The villa [Pondok Terra, recommended] had its own private pool and garden.
We did, however, manage to stay in a nice little neighborhood and thus passed families going about their business whenever we walked anywhere. We called out hello, and sometimes got to answer "Dari mana?" ("[You're] From where?"] (Dari New York di Amerika.)
On Tuesday, we walked to the kraton, or castle, of the local sultan. I should repeat that we walked, which was not a terribly bright idea. It was very, very hot, and the sidewalks are uneven and crowded. [When we first arrived in Indonesia, a lead article in the Jakarta Post covered a protest of pedestrians against motorcyclists using the sidewalks as traffic lanes. We haven't observed pedestrians being hit at all, but they're not terribly well-respected. Parked motorcycles and cars, along with warungs (food stalls) and idling locals seem to crowd most sidewalks, forcing us as pedestrians to carefully step into the motorcycle lane and walk around them.] A ride in a becak (bicycle rickshaw) also would have cost only $2.
The palace was full of interesting statues [Indo: arca] and small exhibits.
The sultan himself is still around, and still enjoys some political authority. He's Sri HB X, the "HB" standing for some very long name that I'm too lazy to look up. [Update: Hamengkubuwono.] Unfortunately, he doesn't currently have any sons, and there's presently a split in the royal family. (This split results in rival admissions entrances to the kraton, one for Rp. 5,000 where you see very little, and one for Rp. 15,000 where you can see much more.)
Though the Sultan of Yogyakarta employs thousands of locals inside the kraton for ceremonial roles (including some soldiers) and preserves important local Javanese culture, it's unclear how he makes his money. It can't be by admission fees alone. Also unclear is what authority he has. (Yeah, we didn't pay for a tour guide. Oh well. The Internet can teach us.) An article in the Thursday Jogjakarta paper said either that he hasn't yet begun to think about which presidential candidate he'll endorse in the 2014 election, or that he hasn't yet begun to think about whether he'll run for office (president?) in 2014. Adam's bahasa indonesia reading ability is not yet very good, even with the help of a dictionary.
We saw our first gamelon performance, which was "spectral" (Bethany's term).
Lunch was at another mall (in a chain restaurant called Es Teller) where Adam voiced his disappointment that Indonesian food hadn't been as spicy as he'd anticipated, then proceeded, not two minutes later, to bite into a little green pepper that made him cry and temporarily made half of his mouth numb. Do not challenge the pedas.
We took a becak ride home with a driver who managed to pull into large busy intersections and just wait while chaos and large motorized vehicles swarmed.
The next day we visited the temples [Indo: candi] of Borobudur and Prambanam, driven around by a guide that was a big fan of American Idol (and not a big fan of Indonesian Idol).
In closing, some cool Javanese statue, puppets and mask:
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