Markets, palaces and becaks - on tour in Yogya

1st-2nd January
We wade through the shallows to the Bunaken boat for the first stage of a remarkably trouble-free trip to Yogyakarta in Java.. Having seen the ferries when we dock, I’m relieved to be flying and, after yesterday’s fruitless day of phoning, Garuda Air comes up trumps at Manado airport, finding us three elusive tickets for the last leg of our three flight journey.. Garuda also has executive lounges at each airport with free wifi, drinks and food so we are very happy travellers, but we arrive in Yogya at 7.30pm on New Year’s Day with no accommodation. There is a booking desk at the airport and the very helpful man there phones every hotel in our price range but finds only one with any rooms. Hotel Saphir is large, modern and, apart from us, caters solely for Indonesian guests, who are mainly Muslim. But there is a large white Christmas tree in the foyer and signs wishing us Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year : Salamat Natale and Tahun Baru – a greeting repeated throughout the streets of Yogya. Like the folks back home, the Indonesians treat the festive season as one big holiday, and the place is packed with families out to have a good time. It takes us over half an hour to check in but we are eventually directed to our rooms in the new wing – conveniently for the local families above a shopping centre complete with ice rink and bowling alley. The rooms are very comfortable but strangely lack any form of daylight – although they have gone to the trouble of installing a window but the shutters open onto an internal corridor so you can see other guests walking by. Welcome to modern Indonesia. This is going to be a very different experience to sleepy Bunaken.

Yogya is the historic cultural capital of Java. It has been home to the sultan of Java for many centuries and, without administrative power, the sultans turned their influence into patronage for the arts – primarily batik, silverwork, dance, gamelan music and puppetry.. We set off on a DIY walking tour to the Kraton – the palace area – which doesn’t look far on the map, but involves walking down Malioboro, the main shopping street on a holiday Saturday. There’s a rumour that the street is named after the Duke of Marlborough, but as the country only had British rule for four years, this is unlikely. It could also be “the street of flowers”, but there are little in evidence today. I’ve never seen a street so packed with people. There are shops, malls, markets, street vendors, food stalls spilling out onto extremely narrow pavements. At one particularly narrow point, where just two people can pass a food stall has set up seats and laid on a guitarist to entertain those eating. Madness!

Despite the crowds it’s a very easy place to be – we may be an unusual sight, but we are not hassled or seemingly viewed as out of the ordinary. But it does take us hours to get anywhere, simply due to the number of people. I can quite believe that Java – an island roughly the size of England, has a population of over 120 million. .

We seek airconditioned respite in C-Jo for iced coffee and the best donuts in the world, incredibly light with yummy toppings like mango, almond, oreo cookie, green tea and cream cheese (much better than it sounds.) They are so good we have three each. Back in the street we push on to the covered market – inside it’s a square kilometre over three floors. On the ground floor the locals jostle for clothes. In the middle of the chaos sits a woman in a burka nursing a baby. I smile at her baby and her eyes smile back through their letterbox opening. On the first floor there strange fruits and vegetables. Many of the vendors are elderly women. A 90-year old, bent double by her age, still wields a forceful machete to cut coconuts. We are adopted by a local man wearing a Bunaken t-shirt – he has spotted the one Robin is wearing and comes over to talk to us. His sister works at a dive shop and he visited her recently. He doesn’t want money, but this point of commonality means he can practice his English, so he guides us through fruit and veg and onto the spices, explaining what everything is. With him in tow, the stall holders are happy to be photographed and give us samples.

Back in the baking street, we take our first becak ride (the local cycle rickshaws). There are hundreds of becaks for local rather than tourist use. In fact there are no Western tourists here – we see less than 10 throughout the day. It’s an exciting ride, dodging motorbikes, scooters, cars and horse drawn carriages but when we get to the Kraton, the sultan’s palace, it’s shut for the afternoon. We are soon adopted by another unofficial guide, who stays with us for a couple of hours and takes us through the kapong (village streets), where we see batik artists and leather puppet makers at work, to the Water Palace which is undergoing renovation as a world heritage site, and onto the bird market. The Water Palace is cool and airy and, as the name implies, overlooks a series of swimming pools. Back in the day, the sultan used to look down on the women swimming in the pool and choose the one he wanted for the day. The current sultan, the tenth, has only one wife. His father had five wives, and his great grandfather had 44! The Kraton used to house only members of the royal family, and up to 25,000 lived there. Today the water palace is packed with teenage sweethearts taking pictures of each other on their mobile phones. The following morning we visit the Palace itself, but without the promised dance performance – cancelled for the holiday season – and with limited access as the sultan still lives there, it’s not nearly as interesting at the Water Palace

Despite Tim’s crash course in Bahasi Indonesia, we are fortunate that many of the people we meet speak some English. The language itself is relatively new –introduced on independence from the Dutch after WWII as a unifying language. There are 300 other languages spoken throughout the country. Our unofficial guide still speaks Javanese with his family at home. His mother could speak Dutch, but little of their influence remains either on the language or the architecture, apart from a great many pantiled roofs.

We move onto the bird market, an extraordinary place selling wild caged birds – kept for pleasure – fighting cocks, racing pigeons and chickens to eat, plus bird cages and, bird food – maggoty coconut and cockroaches. Yum! There are also animals for sale as pets – guinea pigs, cats, dogs, rabbits and a civet we see bought for Rp100,000 about £6.50 and a lot of money for a pet. Elsewhere there are snakes sold as food, and gekkos to make medicine. They go in a lot for natural medicine – later we see a month-old baby with a large leaf covering her head to cool a fever. After all this activity in the heat we need to cool down, and retrace out steps to a café where local musicians sit drinking beer and playing violin and guitar. A little oasis after the bird market.

But our Yogya tour isn’t over. We take a horse carriage to another part of town for a Ramayama open-air dance performance. Accompanied by the gamelan music that becomes very familiar over the next few days, the highly structured choreography tells the love story of Hindu gods. We are given a story sheet, but I have soon lost the plot. The colourful costumes and exciting fight scenes – with monkey gods and their troops sent to fight giants to win back the princess are very entertaining, and all ends happily every after. .