The ballet don't you know
Trip Start
Jan 17, 2009
1
29
49
Trip End
Ongoing
Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia
Thursday, July 9, 2009
We
pulled out of Jakarta on the morning of the countries national
elections. The papers the day before had said that the alert level
was at it's highest so it felt good to get going. After a little
delay, we found our seats on the train and settled in for the 9 hour
trip. To be fair, it was really comfortable with loads of space and
even got a meal served, plane style! Once we arrived in Yogya
(pronounced Jog-ja), we found a relatively expensive hotel
(INR125,000) as it was a busy place and getting dark and had dinner
and went to bed
Garden res before the ballet
. The
next day, han went off and found a much cheaper and much better
homestay so we moved quick smart as we knew it'd be filling up again
throughout the day. The town is pretty nice looking with horse drawn
carriage and cycle rickshaw (front loaded) being the preferred method
of transport. The town is known as the cultural capital of Java and
our reasons for being there were Borobudur (a Buddhist monument) and
Prambanan Temple (a Hindu temple) both UNESCO world heritage sites.
Anyways, after making some bookings with the local tour companies we
went off to Prambanan to see the Ramayana ballet on the second
evening. We got there too late to see the temples up close but they
were lit up and we had dinner outside the ballet on a lawn
overlooking them and they looked superb
Ramayana ballet
. We were in a bit of a rushto catch the ballet (usual story for us and ballet) so said we'd get
a good snap after the show. The show was a pretty extravagant affair
with really good costumes and music being played in traditional
javanese style from behind the stage. The amphitheater it was played
in too was really good although after an hour and a half sat on the
concrete we were beginning to numb up a little. At the end we darted
outside to get that all important snap and just as we were lining up
the shot, they turned the lights out!! It would have been a nice shot
but not worth trying to find the fella with the key to the lights. We
moved on.
The
next day we got a tour bus to Borobudur for sunset. We'd heard that
this was supposed to be on par with any of the temples in the rest of
SE Asia and it was pretty spectacular
Ramayana ballet
. I'll let the photos do thetalking but the amount of detail thats carved on every piece of stone
is just astounding.
What
we weren't in in Yogya for was the Kraton Kings palace and the bird
market but we had a day to kill so we went anyways for a look. Apart
from a quiet walk around the laneways and a little look in a batik
art shop, we have nothing positive to report!
From
Yogya we booked the next part of the trip heading further east to
Mount Bromo. We'd been looking forward to Java after Sumatra because
we thought it was going to be all train travel but lo and behold, we
were back on a 10 hour minibus (that eventually took 13 hours)
because it was the cheapest and (get this) fastest way to get there.
