Exploring Yogjakarta.

Yesterday was one of those days that comes clean out of nothing.

We had no plans at all for yesterday because when we went to bed I still had a pounding headache and thought it best we leave the day free, but I was up by seven and Georgie wasn’t far behind me. The place we are staying in Yogjakarta is a home-stay as usual but it’s not a traditional one like we normally stay in it’s a modern home with a few extra rooms upstairs, newly built, cheap and clean with free breakfast and a friendly family, tucked away down a winding narrow alley just off of the main street Sosrowijayan.

We had our breakfast and sat reading on the shared balcony for an hour or two before I decided we should go explore, Georgie was well into her book and didn’t seem to keen but after a few days lying low and being in a new place I was getting twitchy, a few tickles soon broke her concentration and we were off…

We still had no real plan so we set off down the main street, we passed dozens of stalls and shops selling the usual guff but the difference here was that nobody tried to sell us anything, nobody said “looking looking” or “hey you, where you from?” we were free to browse… We have been to just about every market in south-East Asia and never have we been left alone like that, it’s something that wears you down when it’s happening but you miss when it’s not there.

We reached the end of the long busy street – maybe a thirty minute walk and sat under a tree while we decided what we should do, a local guy wandered over and started to chat to us about the sights of Yogjakarta and usually this would make the spidey senses go crazy but he was actually genuinely just being friendly, when he walked away he had left us with nothing but information and he didn’t once try to sell us anything!

We got a drink from a stall and again got into conversation with a smartly dressed local bloke who again just wanted to arm us with facts and information about his home town.

After being told by one of our casual guides that the bird market recently had a few cases of bird flu we thought it probably best we didn’t go there so instead headed for the water castle, not entirely sure what we would find there but we heard there was a good view from the top and I do love a good view.

On the road to the water castle I noticed a man sat on the street making rings, one of mine is bend badly out of shape so I sat down and asked (with an amazing array of hand signals and what little Indonesian I know) if he would fix it, he took the ring and put it to his bar to bash it into shape but my big fat sausage fingers were more than a few sizes too big and the ring just slipped off the bottom, undeterred he got out a tiny hammer and went to town on it.

While Mr Ring was doing his thing Georgie spotted the guy sat next to him was selling fresh tobacco… So I got stuck into some of that too. The fella looked old with a deeply creased face and barely any teeth left but he was one of those people that laughs uncontrollably at anything,

He made me a sample cigarette from one of the pots of tobacco I though smelled good and then shrieked loudly with laughter as I smoked it, nodding like a connoisseur off all things between a rizla I started to try to get down to price, again this took many wild hand signals and he laughed like a drain the whole time. Finally we understood each other, 1000 rupiah for a handful and some papers… That’s 6 pence! At that price I couldn’t say no even the giant blunt he had rolled me for a sample would have cost close to a pound in England, I told him I wanted 5000rp worth, a big bag but he didn’t really understand he just thought I got the price wrong and started waving a 1000rp note at me so I came at him from a different angle, I asked for one of every different type he had… This of course caused him to fall about laughing but eventually we got there and I had myself a big bag of dirt cheap fresh tobacco.

He posed for a picture with me (the whole time laughing) and asked if we would take him a copy, we agreed of course and left for the water castle.

The only way to the water castle was in fact past the edge of the bird market, but we had come this far and it wasn’t like we were going deep inside to feel up some prize pigeons so we headed down the narrow alley past hundreds of beautiful cages filled with songbirds and men squatting around checking their form. Picking a bird definitely seems to be a man’s game.

The water castle is a large old ruined building that is still visited often but is nothing more than crumbling bricks really, it looks out over all of Yogjakarta and from the top it’s easy to see the boundaries but when you get down its a maze of old ruins and peoples houses separated by the narrowest of alleyways if at all, underneath is a large underground Mosque where the sultan used to hang out apparently and that’s in much better shape.

We got a cyclo back to our home-stay and cooled off for a while, I printed out a picture of the tobacco man and Georgie had a little siesta. When she woke up we wandered back down to the water castle to give the old boy his pictures but unfortunately he had gone home, so we left them with a drink seller who sat nearby and seemed thoroughly entertained by the whole affair earlier…

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