2/21/10 - Puppets and Doughnuts? Yes, please!

Ahh, the first morning in weeks where we didn't have any official place to be.

The plan: sleep in.

The reality: 6:00 AM Christian rock opera.

At first I thought it was a concert because of how loud and peppy it was. Then we heard a few hallelujahs and realized it must have been a church. A very enthusiastic church. A very enthusiastic church that likes to get a verrry early start to their day. We didn't hear the exceptionally bad Indonesian karaoke singers wailing all night, so we had to be woken up by something. Nice try singing Jesus people, but we weren't getting out of bed for anything.

We laid around reading and relaxing until it was time for breakfast. Honey toast. Are you hearing this? We had wonderful delicious toast - NOT banana pancakes! Served with a small dish of fruit, we were in heaven.

Refreshed and ready to go, we set out for a day of walking around the city. It was, of course, the hottest day of the week. By the time we reached the palace area, I was already feeling the heat. That was ok though, because we were going into the palace first where it would be cool and refreshing (editors note: we never made it inside the palace).

While still looking for the palace entrance, we approached by a man saying hello, usual conversation (where are you from, how long have you been here), and asking if we wanted to see the shadow puppet workshop.

(Note: it seems very common here for people to randomly strike up conversation with people that pass by. We were stopped on a regular basis for chit chat.)

We told the man that we were on our way to the palace, but weren't sure where the entrance was, and we might go by the puppet workshop later. After asking about the palace entrance, he started leading us some where. I wasn't sure at the time if Steff knew where we were going (I later confirmed that she didn't). I knew I had no idea if he was taking us to:

A. The Palace.
B. The Puppet Workshop.
C. Certain Doom.

In case you're wondering, the answer was B. The puppet workshop. Which was actually really cool. The puppets are made from buffalo skin. Then the hundreds of decorative/symbolic holes are punched out, and he puppets painted. This entire process is done by hand. It was so impressive to watch how quickly the puppet makers create such intricate designs completely free hand. One of the puppet makers came over to tell us about the puppets and all of their meanings. This was very interesting, inspiring, and so on. But I think I would have gotten more out what he was saying if I wasn't hot, tired, and had a fan blowing in my ear.

We left the work shop, thanked the man for taking us there, and said we ("we" meaning :Steffany and myself) were going to go find lunch. We thought we had said our goodbyes to the man. We were wrong. He had now become "annoying man". Annoying man started to take us to restaurants... We tried to say we might just head off to the bird market... He took us to the bird market.

Other than the cats and dogs not having the best accommodations... The bird market was neat to spend a few minutes walking through. We didn't recognize 90% of the birds we saw.

After a trip through the market, we officially had enough of annoying man "guiding" us around and suggesting we go to his friends store to buy shadow puppets (or something, I wasn't really listening to him anymore). We pretended that we HAD to go back to our hotel VERY quickly. Then scurried away before he could continue to "help" anymore.

Yogyakarta has very long.. very bright.. very dusty streets. We started to feel like little flowers with our petals falling off, wilting in the bright sun with no water. We snagged the first becak that FINALLY came by. We attempted to not look too tired and desperate in an effort to haggle a good price. I think we need to work on our acting skills.

We wanted to try a new place for lunch, we really did. However, I'm the worlds pickiest eater, and Steff is a vegetarian, and we really really wanted to sit and have something to drink. We ended up back at Via Via. We also decided that if we called it our "hang out" it wasn't lame to go there for the third time. Right? Either way, a table of five drinks and two plates of wonderful fried noodles never felt so good. We took our dear sweet time there, and seemed to beat the afternoon heat.

I wanted to stop by the main city market we kept reading about. We didn't realize this was the same collection of stands that we had passed 20 times already. After not letting ourselves buy the really pretty batik dresses (we don't need them, we don't have room for them.. We dint need them, we don't have room for them ::repeat::), we went into a very dangerous place. The fabric store...

I think we could have spent all day, and all of our money, there. Everything was beautiful - everything! The entire front section of the store was batik prints. What were they trying to do to us?! We limited ourselves to cotton batik fabrics that were on sale. After we picked out four wonderful prints, we ran out before we started listening to the "buy more" devils on our shoulders. Scary stuff.

I was, once again, thirsty. We set off to find a Circle K (like a Duane Reade), but Steff spotted something better - a mall.

A mall back in the US would not have interested us in the least... But a mall in Indonesia, after being in little villages for 2 weeks - very interesting.

Indonesia might not translate all western ideas well, but the mall was spot on. We were greeted with cool air conditioning, cookie smells, Asian elevator music, and three floors of semi familiar stores. What is that down the hall? Starbucks? No. Better.

J.co.

J.co is our new obsession. It's the Asian love child between Starbucks and Duncan Doughnuts. They have coffee, frozen yogurt smoothies, frozen yogurt with a ton of toppings, and doughnuts. Doughnuts that are miniature works of art. Flavors such as Blue Berrymore (fluffy cream center, blueberry glaze, sprinkled with shreds of cream cheese). Our frozen drinks (the best we've ever had) also came with free glazed doughnuts (the best we've ever had). We were drunk with happiness. I could actually fill this entire blog to how much we loved it.

Steff: "We're going back tomorrow morning"
Megan: "There is no other choice."

The rest of the mall was equally fun. A Japanese styled version of the teen accessory store, Claire's. We bought panda bear in eggplant hair clips (don't try to figure it out, it doesn't make sense). Pizza Hut is more of a nice sit-down restaurant in Asia. They also serve shrimp crust pizza. McDonald's serves rice and noodles. We also spent a good chunk of time cracking up at English translated t-shirts that made no sense. I think the sales people were confused at our fits of giggles.

The t shirts almost distracted us into being late for the puppet show. Luckily we made it, and it was well worth the wait. The stage area was beautiful with all the puppets lined up (inserted in a HUGE piece of bamboo) on either side of the performance area. This is one of the big things to see in Yogyakarta. The audience (which turned out to be me, Steff, and maybe two other people) could sit in front to  see the brightly colored puppets and the small orchestra, or in back behind the screen to watch the "shadow" part of the shadow puppet show. We moved back and forth to both spots to get the full effect. The show was narrated in Indonesian, so we pretty much had no idea what was happening. There was chanting, people were talking, huge fight scene!, more chanting, dramatic music... huge fight scene!, talking, chanting, talking, fight! This went on for about two hours. I should also note that there is only one puppeteer/narrator. Who was awesome, and I assume exhausted by the end. Fun fact: on the weekends, hard core fans gather for an ALL NIGHT show. Crazy.

We were huge fans of Yogyakarta, but it was time to hit the road. After gathering supplies the next morning (a dozen j.co doughnuts), we said a fond farewell to Indonesia as we hopped a plane to Singapore!

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