The train from Jakarta to Yogyakarta (pronounced Joag-juh-karta) was uneventful and scenic for a few sections. It was comfortable if not sparkling clean; my window was so dirty on the outside that it was a little hard to make out the detail streaming by. But I realized that even if westerners didn't wear such revealing clothes, I think Indonesians would still think we are crazy. And that's because of the crap American movies they show on the trains. These flicks are not even direct-to-video - they must be direct-to-Indonesian trains. The two I saw were both subtitled and the volume was down, so I couldn't follow them perfectly, but I don't think that was possible anyway. The first was about a family that moves into a house that just happens to have a playhouse that was used by devil worshipers. Isn't that always the way? There was a bad twin in a prison or insane asylum (it was hard to tell), and the usual overuse of pentagrams and swarms of beetles. The second flick was called Turbulence 3 - Heavy Metal, and it was even harder to understand.
Let's see, we had some kind of air security/anti-terror force (poor Gabrielle Anwar) watching a flight that was taking Craven, a goth heavy metal star, and his entourage and loads of groupies somewhere. But there was another Craven! And one of them killed the pilot (poor Rutger Hauer) and the other one saved the day by landing the plane. I still don't know which was which. Sad to say, these terrible movies were hard not to watch.
After 8 and a half hours of that kind of thing, I made it to Yogya. Yogyakarta is unique in all of Indonesia in that it is still headed by a sultan, specifically the sultanate of Hamengkubuwono. It is its own special province that reports to Jakarta, the capital, only on certain issues, unlike most of the other provinces in Indonesia. They're on the 10th sultan, and they seem to be quite happy with him. Before they got the sultan in the 18th century and before they got Islam in the 15th century, the locals were practicing Buddhism and Hinduism, and they built some pretty impressive temples and structures in their time. The biggie is Borobudor, the largest Buddhist monument in the world, built in the 8th century out of volcanic rock. The volcano Mt. Merapi is nearby and is still a deadly force in the area, creating new building materials in its own way. Borobudor is quite impressive, but the sun beating down on my traveling companion, Katie, and I was also impressive in its own way. Most of the visitors were young Indonesians, and they were sneaking surreptitious pictures of us, as well as asking if we would be in photos. I now see why celebrities have body guards. It is exhausting and weird to be stared at, stopped over and over again, and asked to be in strangers' photo collections. I did rather enjoy telling the 20 schoolgirls "Sama-sama" after they thanked us for the photo up. It means "you're welcome" and you should have heard the group "ooooooohhhhhh" after I trilled it out. One girl sputtered out her response "You...are....cool." A perk of celebrity, I guess.
I also visited Prambanan, which is collection of massive candi (the "c" in Indonesian is "ch"). Here, candi means temple, and these are Hindu. They were constructed around the same time as Borobudor, but were heavily damaged in the 2006 earthquake that did significant damage in the area. The original complex had 237 temples, but many were looted or collapsed in 2006 and, I'm sure, before as well. Putting them back together is quite difficult. They were constructed without mortar, and each piece of volcanic rock is a keystone, making every individual temple a big puzzle. The big, central temples are devoted to Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu. They each had temples devoted to their icon of transportation, bull, eagle, and swan, respectively. It's templetastic, but the scale of each building is easier to wrap your head around than Borobudor.
After a few days in Yogya, I started a two-day minibus journey to Bali. You may ask "why not just fly?" I asked myself the same thing a few times too. But it was considerably cheaper to do it this way, and it included a night's lodging and an early trip to Mount Bromo. Day 1 is best summed up as "Minibus 1 - Deathwish" in honor of the "Turbulence" oeuvre. I did not allow myself to look out the front window. It was too scary. Our driver was hellbent on passing every vehicle in front of us. Let's put it this way, I was relieved when there was *only* a motorbike heading straight for us when we were overtaking another car. Day 2 started at 3:10 am with a ride to a viewpoint for sunrise near Bromo. Then, we headed to Bromo itself to climb up one of its faces (there is a staircase for the steep part, I'm not that hardcore). There, I reprised my celebrity status upon reaching the top and had another photo session with the locals. This time, it was middle-aged Indonesian women who were fighting - fighting! - over whose camera was going to be used. At the top, you can look over and see the crater of Mt. Bromo, just belching smoke and stinking of sulphur. I felt pretty humbled by it, so I bought an offering of flowers from a local and tossed it to Bromo. You know the gods, better appeased than angered!
Back to the hotel for the lamest breakfast yet and a shower, then to Probolingo to catch the next minibus to the east end of Java, where we'd take the ferry to Bali. Our Day 2 driver was a mellow man of the roads, which was more comfortable but not good for making time. After we all took the ferry, including our driver, we got on another minibus and headed to Denpasar, which is the transport hub of Bali, but nowhere that anyone ever wants to stay. We arrived at 11:30 or so, and luckily, 4 others in my group wanted to head to Ubud. If they hadn't, I would have had to pay for a taxi by myself. As it was, we split a bemo (mini-minibus) and got there fast. Finding a room at half past midnight is never easy, and it didn't prove to be last night either. I crawled into bed at 1:30 am - that's a 22 hour butt-numbing day, if you're keeping track. I was.
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