Jogja

I’ll tell you short what I did before I came to Australia.

After Lake Toba we took a plane to Yogja; wish is a really cultural and art city, with lots of students.
Everywhere were art shops and of course they all want you to come and by a painting at their shop. People bargaining and asking high prices of tourist, lost of markets, lots of things to buy; a really energetic city.

I went the Happy tent to organise activities for children who have traumas from the earthquake. It’s amazing of how much damaged was made by the earthquake and how many people lost there family’s. Some people have trouble telling about it others are glad to talk about it with someone (they even have movies from it they want to show you)
The kids were great and they loved painting, making music, stuff like that; The only problem I had that was I couldn’t understand them (yes I have learned some words but I can’t make a conversation with them., so that was a bit hard).

It was nice to know some local people and really get into there culture. They showed me the nicest places of Yogja; such as

The Pranbanan (Hinduism temple)
The Borobodur (Buddhist temple) and
The Merapi (sorry don’t know how to write it; it’s the volcano that was about to explode)

In the city it was really hot but when you are out of the city and go a bit up in the mountains it’s already really cold and with the sun it’s a nice temperature. It was amazing to see the Merapi, because you saw it on the news before and it was so active and now you could see it in reality. (Wonderful to go for a walk there and see lots of monkeys)

The Borobodur was just amazing; it’s one of the miracles of the world; so I had to see it. It’s all about Buddha and the steps you take to get whole (Budha). If you touch the Budha you can do a wish.
There were almost no tourists, so that was nice and quite (I went with Dana and his friends; really fun to go and be with local people)

At the Pranbanan we saw the Ramayana ballet; wish was great. You came at night and look at the dancing and show and behind there you can see the Pranbanan, stars and moon; a dream…..hmmmm

We went to the castle and water palace, the have really nice old city parts were you can drive trough. So fun because they have those bejaks were they bring you by bike (you sit in front and the guy drives the bike; yeah I know terrible; just slavery, they have to work hard physically for you). I also went by horse and car; just great fun!

I went to the bird market (not a very smart move because of the bird flu in Indonesia); it was terrible to see all these animals in the small caches, they couldn’t even move. We saw all kinds of animals like bad, dogs, snakes, monkey’s and most of them were used for medicine or to eat; how sad is that…snik…..

The first week we stayed with my father in a really fancy hotel; it was great. After that we moved and stayed in a nice place with a small pool

After two weeks Yogja my sister came and we showed her around, than we took of to Semarang to visit a friend of Hinta.