Selamat Pagi from the island of Java!
We have been on the road in Indonesia now for 9 days on the island of Java and are totally in love with these gracious, lovely and all-embracing people. We touched down mid-afternoon on September 24 in the city of Jakarta, the capital of all Indonesia, a gritty, suffocating, yet energetic and eclectic pool of humanity, numbering 10 million in the city, expanding to 28 million when the surrounding Metro area is included. This city has gone by many names over the centuries, including Batavia (Dutch rule) and Djakarta (Japan occupation), which was the name that captured my imagination from my world geography classes. We spent our 1st full day wandering on foot through the streets of Old Town on the north side of the city, targeting the bustling port of Sunda Kelapa as our endpoint, wilting from the humidity and the 90 degree temperature along the way. From our hotel we first took one of the main streets, Mangga Dua, which was heavily congested with trucks and motorcycles, annoying us with the constant horn honking and choking us with their exhaust fumes. At the first opportunity, we found a side street that took us away to parts of the city we would never have discovered otherwise.
Where we ended up was a narrow unpaved road with shanty dwellings to our left and railroad tracks, ten deep, to our right. I am sure that the families and the children found our presence to be quite amusing, since there were no tourist attractions in the vicinity. However, since we see ourselves as travelers (vs. tourists), there was plenty to offer us in viewing the daily lives of these people, going about their laundry chores, feeding their children, hanging clothes on the fences overlooking the train tracks. We were worried that we were invading their space, but their smiles and openness assured us otherwise. We would throw out “selamat pagi” (good morning) and be met with the same along with acknowledging nods. Eventually coming to a dead end, with looks of dread on our faces at the thought of having to retrace our steps in this heat, we were waved into someone’s dwelling, ushered through their living space and out onto a narrow outlet that led us to an aqueduct and back onto a more normal path. We continued this haphazardness as we neared the port, ending up in a warren of narrow, winding dark alleyways with old 19th century wooden storage lockers serving as residences and sometimes places of business. Dead-ending once again, we were helped by the gracious inhabitants of this maze, eventually getting us back on track and into the light of day.
Our 3rd day started at 5:30 a.m. when we were picked up by Sukia, driven 3.5 hours to the west coast town of Carita to be spirited by speed boat, across the Sunda Strait, which separates Sumatra and Java, to Anak Krakatau. This volcano is the “son” of Krakatoa which erupted in 1883 with such ferocity that it completely disappeared, with the resulting tsunami killing tens of thousands of people on other islands in the vicinity. The volcanic dust thrown into the atmosphere affected the weather around the world for some time after. Anak 1st started surfacing in its father’s place in 1927, and now stands 800 meters in elevation and is an active volcano as was its father. After lunching on the black sand beach and snorkeling off the most recent build up from lava flows on the north side, we climbed 200 meters through sharp lava rocks and thick volcanic ash to a point where we watched the sun set, as white billowing emanations from Anak’s two craters drifted downward in front of us to the sea. Quite the smokescreen! It’s hard to describe the feeling of standing in the presence of this kind of power, knowing the history behind it and what might be ahead. We left it all behind the next day after spending the night camped on the beach, circling the entire island in our boat to see all aspects of the volcano, its spewing patterns and the remnants of the various eruption on the sides of the mountain, and then jetting back across the Sunda Strait to our hotel in Jakarta.
We leave you at this point of our first dispatch from Indonesia with our experience of the art of puppetry, a world renowned gift of Java. Before we left Jakarta we visited the Wayang Museum, home of the tallest puppet in the world (3 meters high), according to Aldy, a 4th generation puppeteer and shadow puppet maker, who met us at the door and took us on an unexpected hour long personal tour of the museum. He regaled us with the characters of many of the puppets ensconced behind glass, explaining that there are 2000 in Indonesian lore and he has mastered 800 of them, with a unique voice to go with each one. He proceeded to demonstrate this with great animation and two shadow puppets. We learned that shadow puppets are made from water buffalo skin and bones, colored with vegetable and plant dyes, with perforated designs in the skins made with pinpoint exacting punches, which he demonstrated later at his father’s workshop. We left this magical world of Aldy’s and prepared to leave Jakarta for Yogyakarta and points east, which stories will follow.
With much love and salutations, Stan & Maggie