We finally left the City-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named (Medan. Whoops...) and landed several hours later in the bustling metropolis of Yogyakarta (or Jogjakarta as it’s pronounced, rather confusingly). Our immediate impressions were that it was way better than Medan, at least as far a quick comparison of airport bathrooms can be trusted. The impressions held up upon further investigation.
It’s been a few days and I really don’t know what to say about the city, so I’ll just hit the highlights. Jogja is known as the capital of Javanese culture and also the epicenter of the batik making and sales. Batik, as far as I could tell, was some sort of traditional fabric made on a loom and colored using wax and natural dyes. Everyone who comes to Jogja buys batik, which of course ensures that there is absolutely no way to get a fair price or not get harassed by every local trying to get you into their “homemade, cheap, local priced” batik shop. The prime local trick is to pretend to be a guide at the sultan’s palace or other such site, demand no fee for their services, and then steer you blindly into their shop. We didn’t get nabbed but it was very, very annoying.
Other than that, the exciting parts of Jogja were the Sultan’s palace (the sultan here still has some political power), his water park pleasure baths, and some pretty cool museums. Probably the most awkward museum award goes to the Vandenberg Fort, the Dutch colonial fort in the middle of the city turned independence museum. We were talking to the ‘guide’ who registered surprise that we weren’t Dutch, as most European visitors to the museum were. This didn’t seem so odd until we had gone through hall after hall of dioramas depicting the independence of Indonesia from Dutch control, who had their capital in Yogyakarta and not Jakarta. Naturally, museums of this nature are rarely kind to the colonizer, especially one as unpleasant as the Dutch. This museum, however, went above and beyond. Diorama after diorama depicted the Dutch troops bayoneting Indonesians or depicting how the “merciless Dutch fighter planes downed the Indonesian aircraft bearing a red cross. And the main European visitors are Dutch?? Wow…
Anyway, we left the next morning, with another delightful 12 hour bus ride to East Java, which I spent trying not to cower in terror as our bus driver demonstrated that you can use the emergency brake on a vehicle that size to great effect.
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