This is the first weekend I actually spend the whole time being a tourist.  My room-mate, Erni, has a husband and daughter in Jokja (as the locals  call it).  So instead of flying back from Bali to Semarang we flew to Jokja.  Being a poor TEFL teacher in Jakarta, Marnix took the opportunity of having his Mom in Indonesia to join me in Jokja.  We had a ball.  Hesitant at first we quickly discovered how wonderful it is to see the city from a Becak.  We actually got very lucky because our driver turned out to speak English pretty well and knew all the ins and outs of Jokja.  We started of at the bird market.  We discovered that singing IS for the birds here.  They have all these beautiful birds who they use for singing competitions.  They actually train them to sing in certain ways and if they win you are in the money!

Next stop was the old water palace, the Taman Sari, of Sultan number 6, I think.  He liked to be a peeping Tom while his wives bath so he made this elaborate bath complex. Most of it went into disrepair and was hurt by earthquake but the above ground bath are still there.  Gorgeous. The Keraton, the sultan’s palace was next on the list.  Yokyakarta is a sultanate and actually is an autonom region, sort of a city-state.  The Sultan is and monarch and head of government.  It is by far the best run city in the country.  There is something to be said for benign dictatorship!  It is still corrupt but not as much as the rest of Indonesian government.  Their big hero is Sultan IX.  And for the leienaren reading this.  He went to Leiden and was member of Minerva.  Morgen!

The next day we went to Kotagede, a lovely little village known for its silver.  The silver was ok but most impressive was the tombs of all the sultans.  First of all, we had to dress in traditional clothing in order to enter the graveyard.  Our guide seem to be one step away from following his holinesses in the grave.  With all the reference given to their dead monarchs there is not much pump and circumstances in the way they are buried.  No elaborate tomb as we have for our European monarchs.

The highlight for Marnix this weekend was probably the Cobra and Python tasting which my friend, Iin, had arranged for him.  The blood drinking had to be canceled, though.  It wasn’t fresh anymore.  for me it was too blood chilling!

Start of our Becak tour

The Bele driving the Becak driver