Mount Merapi

Well, after blogging yesterday morning, I figured that it might actually be the last one I did. Had a nice Sunday morning, (as you read) and managed to get onto Skype with a really good connection, it didn’t drop once! Was good to see my family and have a decent chat, though still looking forward to actually getting home. Realised that yesterday I said Mad Cow restaurant, it’s actually Cow Mad. Makes more sense now huh? =) I also need to remember in Indonesia to say “medication” instead of “drugs”.


We got settled in for a nice lazy afternoon when Tari’s mobile went off about three times with different offers from people of things to do. We’ve worked out by now that you HAVE to do something when people offer because word seems to get around otherwise!

Among the options were Shinta and Wulan suggesting a trip up towards the mountain because they knew that I wanted to see it and hadn’t been able to due to the haze and cloud cover. Also they have a special museum up there that Tari would enjoy.

So at about 2pm we were picked up in the funky Honda Jazz again. This time I took a photo of the dashboard mascot, thought Slippers might be interested...

 
Of course, then we had to talk about our friends back home. We related the wedding confetti and rice stories =) Wulan has a new baby nephew so we talked about the fun of helping look after other people’s babies too and how it has all the nice bits and then you get to leave and still have a good night of sleep! (Hope Charlotte and MacKenzie are still sleeping well!)


The radio has all sorts of music on it. From Mariah Carey to Indonesian music that sounds like Mariah Carey to... um... more Mariah Carey. As mentioned previously there’s a bit of a thing for slow balladdy 80s music, though some of it is progressive 90s style. Part of it, I think, is because they can probably make out some of the lyrics in the slow songs. Part of it is also that they have bad taste in music. Too harsh? You come over here and listen to the radio then.

Mt. Merapi is so close to town, there’s a road just out of the uni that drives pretty much straight there. Because it is almost always wrapped up in clouds, it gets a lot more moisture than anywhere else here at the moment. The girls were complaining again about the dry weather and how it’s so unusual and that every year it seems to get worse. Up on the mountain though it looked lush, green and jungly. Amazing difference.

 
Apparently up there is a favourite place for people to go after dark. It’s 5-10 degrees cooler and very pleasant. Drove with windows down instead of AC going. (Must resist Microsoft joke.) I noticed one of these street signs and can’t remember if I blogged it last time we were here. I find that it’s particularly apt when you’re in a taksi. Some of those drivers are just insane. I mean, the traffic is already nuts, with people going left, right, backwards, bikes weaving in and out of everything else. This sign pretty much sums up my feelings the entire time:

The roads on the mountain are twisty, turny and all over the place, it was not uncommon to have a five way intersection with no signage whatsoever. Now I know what visitors to our place in Selby think. I have no idea how they navigated to where we ended up, but they managed to get us to a museum that had lots of artwork, lots of batik and lots of history. There were two prices for entry, International: $5, local: 25,000 Rp.


The advantage of the extra money you spend on the International ticket is that your guide speaks English. This was good, because otherwise how would I have found out about the cultural dance and costuming of the last few hundred years.

We weren’t allowed to take photos (girls may say a heartfelt “awww”, boys, just go along with it), but the museum was built in a series of jungle encroached, volcanic stone buildings. Many were below ground level so it was wonderfully cool. It was odd in several places to see “Tari” written. Over here it means “dance” and so MY name is the one that is uncommon.

So much history here, this was mainly about the royal family so it had lots of stuff about women and dresses and clothing and stuff. I did my best to stay interested. You’ll have to ask TJ about it all though, because I’m afraid I didn’t take much of it in for some reason. I do recall two things though.

The batik clothing patterns actually mean something; our favourite was one that you wear for “a small but consistent supply of money in life”. Of course there were others for wisdom, long life, fidelity, fertility, wealth etc.

One of the stories I remember was one of the princesses who was drop dead gorgeous (that has nothing to do with me remembering it), being wooed by the king who was fabulously wealthy etc. However, many of them were polygamous, including this guy, and she refused to marry him on these grounds. Caused quite a scandal at the time.

Once we were out of the museum we were allowed to take some photos on the grounds. It was very Tomb Raider/Indy Jones scenery. None of the statues came to life and there were no massive rolling boulders, but with a few more tourist dollars I’m sure it’s just a matter of time. It must take a lot of work to stop the jungle growth from encroaching too much, as it was there were root systems everywhere!

 

In many places it was like walking through those curtain bead things that they hang in front of doors. The thin little roots would just be all hanging down from the ceiling. Here’s a picture of us both to prove that I was there too!
 

And yes, you’ll have noticed that I am (relatively) clean shaven. I’ve been a good boy on this trip and kept reasonably neat and tidy. We found out at this point that Shinta is a bossy photographer. Stand back one step. No, left. No, just Simon left. No! Too far! We stood in the right spot eventually. (Tourists! What can you do?)


After the tour we had a cup of special tea that reminded us of Mum’s special spicy Christmas drink. It was a special formula that guaranteed us health etc. Definitely had ginger in it as well as other spices. Quite nice I thought. Mum, you need to make up some blurb to go with yours now!

Shinta then drove us to a spot that had a pretty good view of the volcano. The most disappointing thing for me about this whole trip was that getting sick stopped me from going up there. It’s a five hour hike that starts at 3AM and they don’t run it all the time. By the time I’ll be up to it physically we’ll be gone =(

Well, at least I got to see it. The topography is so cool up there, not like what we get back home, which is mostly erosional and different to New Zealand’s fjord and ice-crushed landscape. I’m sure there’s a reason for the lack of glacial erosion. Let me think for a while... I took a few shots, but it was pretty hazy still, and I waited to get a shot where the cloud and volcanic smoke were cleared, well, mostly cleared.

I’ve been a fan of volcanoes since I was little. I remember I was sick once and Mum got me a National Geographic magazine that had Pompeii and Krakatoa in it. Lots of diagrams with cutaway shots of how volcanoes form and work etc. One of my favourite Masters projects was looking at tectonics etc. on other planets.

 
You can see how lush the jungle is around the cone, but notice that the west face is mostly cleared. That’s the side that gets the majority of lava flow, and Jogja is to the south, which is why they don’t stress about it. Apparently most eruptions head to the north and west, they seem to tell you this a lot, not sure if they’re repeating it to convince themselves as much as anybody else =)


There was some massive bamboo there too, but it looked a bit too wilty so we didn’t do our Crouching Tiger routine. Although we really wanted to.

It’s hard to get the scale, but that’s a big fence/wall thing in the foreground. The bud bit on top is head sized. You can see a head in the shot above near one of them. After telling us repeatedly how safe etc. it was you get to walk past one of the volcano shelters as you go to the clearing to take photos.
 

Handy that it’s locked up huh. Also handy that it was mentioned that some people died in one last eruption. Even down in the bunker of concrete and steel they burned to death. I’ve seen enough movies to know that you can just drive right over lava anyway (thanks Pierce Brosnan) so I’m not so worried. As long as you have some sidekicks (preferably attractive female ones) you’re guaranteed to survive, although you may rip your shirt at some stage. Fortunately I’m wearing an old shirt from the up-market Target at Fountain Gate. I’m thinking maybe I’ll have to do an advanced degree in something geologically relevant. I just don’t think I’m ever going to hear “Is anybody in this room an astrophysicist!?”


We had a spot of tea at a locally famous place as the sun began to set. They like things very sweet here so it was a lump of cane sugar in the cup that you pour your tea over. You basically just let the sugar dissolve until it’s sweet enough for you, then remove the leftover crystalline lump. I fit right in (yes Mum, here I don’t get looked at funny if I ask for *2* teaspoons of sugar). There were two menus, one International in English and one local in Bahasa Indonesian. The prices were more expensive on the English menu, so we let Wulan do the ordering.

On the way back home we stopped at a supermarket to do some quick snack shopping. Amongst other things we saw that there were fish tanks with BIG live fish so that when you get fresh fish for dinner you get FRESH fish for dinner.

I also discovered a way in which I could become very rich! Bear with me, because it may take some time, but I’m willing to persist at it. My grocery bill came to 44,820 Rp. Now they have notes over here of 50,000 Rp, 20,000 Rp, 10,000 Rp, 5,000 Rp, 2,000 Rp and 1,000 Rp. They also have coins of 500, 200, 100, 50, 20, 10 and 5. Now obviously 5 Rp is a phenomenally tiny amount of money. It’s only in grocery stores where you pay by weight for fruit and veg that you get amounts that aren’t rounded off. In most places things are just priced to the nearest note value, 1,000 Rp. Sometimes you’ll get it down to 500s. Well, now that I’ve cut another short story long, the register didn’t have coins. The check out chick went wandering away and came back after visiting with several people, including the floor manager, and handed me 6,000 Rp change.

Tari has also noticed that they just can’t be bothered with the coins. So, my cunning get rich extremely slowly scheme is just to always make sure that my grocery bill tallies up so that I get more change than I deserve. Brilliant!

Anyway, I’m going to go and eat the extra packet of lollies I bought to make sure that I went slightly over the amount that would ensure I got more change back. And no, I don’t need the flaws in my plan pointed out, thank you very much.

I’ll post this next time the internet is up, but until then, take care,

Sim.