Just got back from another hard morning of long breakfast, nap and swim. It's about 1pm and had to leave the pool 'cos it looks like more rain. Surprise surprise. No water shortages here, just as well, with the humidity we're having multiple daily showers.
Sunday morning ruined my normal routine (life is just sooooo hard for me). Instead of breakfasting until 10, I had to be ready to leave by 9. *sigh* Fauziah and Diah and their husbands (and a couple of daughters) took us to the Sultan's palace. I've been slowly trying to gather information about the history of the place. This is quite fun, given that a lot of the literature we have is less than reliable in translation.
The basics are that the Dutch took over after centuries of other guys. Accurate summation huh? One of the reasons that a visit to the palace was interesting for us is that he is so beloved by the people. Yogyakarta is very clean, very friendly and all of the religions (of which there are many) get along really well here. It's so cool to see just how well they all mix. Anyhow, the reason for this is basically that they all love and respect the Sultan. What he says goes. So when he says to keep the city clean, the city is kept clean.
The Sultan is about sixty(ish) and has five daughters and no sons and one wife. This is a bit of a dilemma at the moment, one of his relatives will have to take over as it can only be passed down by male family members. His kids all went to normal public schools (as a matter of fact, one of Diah's daughters was in class with one of the Sultan's daughters).
The palace is about a kilometer long and was recently renovated in 1928. A lot of what we saw was older than our country's white history, which is quite humbling. Yogyakarta traces its history as a city back to the 700s.
Most of what we saw had to do with the current Sultan's father (and grandfather). Above is the crest of his father. All of the seals have several elements. A crown, earrings (symbolising wisdom) and the number of feathers on the wings tells you the number of the Sultancy (in this one it's eight I think). The symbol in the middle is the number 8 in sanskrit. I think.
The current Sultan's father had five wives, fifteen sons and a swathe of daughters. He was a boy scout, a scholar, a footballer, a general... Didn't waste much time. Everybody seemed to like him too. Official pictures show him very seriously, but all the photos seem to be of him laughing and joking and getting along very well with the "common people".
When we were looking at the past royal carriages we were amazed at just how old some of them were. 250 year old carriages with lots of little ornate bits, each one with a meaning. I took some pictures of these for Charry - there were lots of different types of dragons, all symbolising power.
The Sultan's palace is huge, and there are sort of four main areas in a T-shape. The first is the entrance bit with a variety of entertaining areas etc. and a coronation platform (pic below). The small seat on the left is for the son of the Sultan to sit at when the Sultan is "crowned". They don't actually wear a crown, but a special broach if we understood correctly. For the current Sultan's coronation this seat was empty. Interestingly the ear decorations that they wear make the Sultan look like a Vulcan from Star Trek, they also symbolise wisdom. Co-incidence? I'll let you decide (I did just finish watching a doco on the loch ness monster). What was even funnier is that the guide we had, who must have been the second oldest person in the county, made the same observation!
I say second oldest because we met the oldest. He is 100 years and 10 months old. He was a funny, spry old man who was quite a laugh. Couldn't understand him at all, but at the same time we could! He took a photo off the wall showing him in 1937 as a thirty year old man. Quite a guy! Most of the guides and workers here are volunteers, it is considered to be the greatest honour and privelege to work for the Sultan.
Anyway, back to the palace, the two sides of the T are for the sons and daughters who aren't married. One entire side is empty at the moment, with no sons, and that is the part that you can wander around. Below is a picture of the Sultan's house. Apparently he was home that day, but the door stayed shut. Oh, something else of interest - he loves cats. And therefore quite a few people here love cats too! Diah has 10. No typo there.
Some of the palace still showed evidence of the recent earthquake. Unfortunately, I think, the modern renovations take away from the overall look. As do all the bits the Dutch added. Below is a section of railing that had something to do with the calendar, which is so confusing that we just kind of nodded and smiled as it was explained to us. I'm sure some of the words were just mis-translated.
Happy looking face huh. Marriage ceremonies are interesting too. One of his daughters was married just a couple years ago. Ooh, lots of thunder, about to have a doozy of a storm I think. Last night we had so much lightning, it was spectacular! Anyway, back to being wed. One of their customs here has to do with touching the ground. You're not meant to let your child touch the ground until a certain age, this means mothers have to hold on to their kids for ages, no chance to eat snails and stuff I guess. Well, when the Sultan's daughter is to be wed she is carried to the place in one of these:
And then the groom has to carry her from the carriage to the ceremonial spot. Fortunately for future wives of Sultan's sons it doesn't work for the opposite gender. Speaking of the ladies, we watched about half an hour of a who knows just how long it goes for local dance thingy. Talk about slow. I mean, really, really, really slow. It took ten minutes just to do an intro, this included the Sultan's full name, which is really, really, really long. Then the dancers walk up, really, really, really slowly. They must have absolutely amazing leg muscles because every movement is super slow and really well controlled. It's kind of like watching tai-chi. Underwater. In slow motion. With a 256k modem. It's really that slow. I'm sure it's also beautiful or something.
There was lots of other stuff, but the lightning is getting intense and the power goes off periodically so I'll wrap it up quickly. Below is a picture of the Sultan's temple. Each roof is for a different religion, all under one roof in harmony. Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam I think.
Christians are also welcome here (pretty small population of them though). Dad asked about Christmas. We heard ... 
Anyway, back to the palace, the two sides of the T are for the sons and daughters who aren't married. One entire side is empty at the moment, with no sons, and that is the part that you can wander around. Below is a picture of the Sultan's house. Apparently he was home that day, but the door stayed shut. Oh, something else of interest - he loves cats. And therefore quite a few people here love cats too! Diah has 10. No typo there.
Some of the palace still showed evidence of the recent earthquake. Unfortunately, I think, the modern renovations take away from the overall look. As do all the bits the Dutch added. Below is a section of railing that had something to do with the calendar, which is so confusing that we just kind of nodded and smiled as it was explained to us. I'm sure some of the words were just mis-translated.
Happy looking face huh. Marriage ceremonies are interesting too. One of his daughters was married just a couple years ago. Ooh, lots of thunder, about to have a doozy of a storm I think. Last night we had so much lightning, it was spectacular! Anyway, back to being wed. One of their customs here has to do with touching the ground. You're not meant to let your child touch the ground until a certain age, this means mothers have to hold on to their kids for ages, no chance to eat snails and stuff I guess. Well, when the Sultan's daughter is to be wed she is carried to the place in one of these:
And then the groom has to carry her from the carriage to the ceremonial spot. Fortunately for future wives of Sultan's sons it doesn't work for the opposite gender. Speaking of the ladies, we watched about half an hour of a who knows just how long it goes for local dance thingy. Talk about slow. I mean, really, really, really slow. It took ten minutes just to do an intro, this included the Sultan's full name, which is really, really, really long. Then the dancers walk up, really, really, really slowly. They must have absolutely amazing leg muscles because every movement is super slow and really well controlled. It's kind of like watching tai-chi. Underwater. In slow motion. With a 256k modem. It's really that slow. I'm sure it's also beautiful or something.
There was lots of other stuff, but the lightning is getting intense and the power goes off periodically so I'll wrap it up quickly. Below is a picture of the Sultan's temple. Each roof is for a different religion, all under one roof in harmony. Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam I think.
Christians are also welcome here (pretty small population of them though). Dad asked about Christmas. We heard ...Sorry about that interruption, one absolutely collosal bolt of lightning went off just overhead, enough to shake the room, cut the power and make car alarms go off all over the place. Fortunately this blog auto-saves. I went down to the nice little atrium with my book and had a lemon juice (sweetened with syrup of course) until the storm blew over.
No idea what I was saying. Oh yeah, there is a church (christian) just here that was pumping out hymns that were recognizable by tune if not by lyric. There are christmas signs around too, although it's not really a holiday as such it is a public holiday day off sort of thing. They're currently putting together a ginormous ginger bread church down where I just had my juice.
Cool huh!
Anyhow, I've pretty much lost track of what I was going to say! Maybe I'll recall it later. Might not blog tomorrow, the days will be more boring now with Tari working so much. I think we're going to one of the big temples on Thursday night and we've been invited (threatened) to attend a traditional ballet performance at some stage too. I might do one more before we leave, but if you don't hear from me until then I'll see you all when we get home (some time on Sunday, but who really knows!)
Oh, before I forget I should put on public record that the people Tari's attending this conference with are (so far) wonderfully amazing people. They've all given of their time, money and jobs to essentially help out the less priveleged. Some of them are amazing characters, and for me it was really cool to sit at a table with people from all parts of the world, different cultures and religions etc. and there they were, bagging each other off Oz style =) I hope to get to know a few of them a bit better before we go, I'll be gate crashing some of the dinners, but it's pretty obvious why Tari enjoys doing all these overseas trips, there is genuine affection between them all.
If any of you have any questions please speak now and I'll try to find out before we go!
My apologies to Biggles for missing our routine Sunday appointment. I'll make up for it sometime.
Sim.
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