Due to some miscommunication, I ended up having a free day
in Jakarta that was originally supposed to be filled with school visits.
Considering I was initially going to be working 15 days straight, including my
travel days, until my one free day in Bangkok, I wasn’t overly upset to have
another free day. The only thing is that
I didn’t then have a plan as to what to do.
So I asked at the concierge if they do any tours, and like the
Shangri-La the first time I came to Indonesia, they work with a tour company
that offers various tours. They included
the two tours I had already done, and the only other really appealing tour was
a day tour that included a trip to the National Monument, a batik shop (where
of course I couldn’t resist getting a couple of items!), a miniature park of
Indonesia, and the Museum Indonesia.
This tour was a little more comfortable than the one I took in Bali
where the two ladies that were with me didn’t speak English. There were two ladies with me today, too, an
aunt and niece combo, but they were from the Philippines and spoke excellent
English, especially as one of them had lived in Chicago for a number of
years. It was so much less awkward this
way! (And hey, if you think I’m being
linguicentric, it’s not that I expect everyone to speak English. Those Czech ladies, I thought they might
speak another European language, as many Europeans tend to be multilingual, so
I offered Spanish and French to them with no luck!)
Aside from being a symbol of the country’s independence,
this monument has a history of the country hidden beneath the ground on which
it was built. Several diaramas depict
the country from its origins of its people being Mongolian migrants to the end
in which it gains independence from Japan and Holland after the Second World
War. I took a few photos of those that I
thought were more interesting, noteworthy, or had significant historical value,
such as when city names were changed or regimes changed. It’s interesting to see the profession of the
country, and it’s also interesting to read it from a local point of view. For example, at one point in time, Jakarta
was originally called Sunda Kelapa and was then changed to Joyakarta (you’ll
see the photo of the description about it).
But there is no scene depicting the time when the Dutch changed the name
to Batavia nor when the Japanese changed it to Jakarta because they couldn’t
pronounce Joyakarta. You see a history
of uprisings against the Dutch, and you get the impression that Indonesians
were fairly successful at keeping them at bay, yet the Netherlands colonised
the region for about 350 years, so the uprisings couldn’t have been that successful, though I have no doubt
that many were killed in those battles and that perhaps certain cities or
regions were more successful at maintaining some level of independence than
others. That is why, readers, you must
remember that history is never objective.
You can try as hard as possible to be objective when you write it, but
it will always have some level of bias.
It was also interesting to learn about some of the
populations on the smaller spice islands who were able to navigate by their
sense of smell for the spices that became so much in demand in the West. Imagine not needing a compass or having to
navigate based on the skies; you could simply smell where you wanted to
go. I’m just amazed by such an adaptive ability;
I hadn’t heard of anything like that before.
I did also learn where the name “Soekarno-Hatta” came from
for Jakarta’s airport. I knew that
Soekarno was Indonesia’s first president, but I didn’t know who or what Hatta
was. Turns out he was their first
vice-president.
This is not a park of miniatures but a park that allows you
to see all the main parts/islands of Indonesia in one shot. There are more than 72,000 islands, so you
couldn’t really represent all of them, but it was interesting to see the very
subtle difference in styles of fabric and architecture of homes, as well as the
ways these homes were decorated. In the
first photo of the homes, you’ll see 3 large horns decorating the roof, and
apparently houses were built this way to indicate how many daughters you
had. So this family would have had 3
daughters. On another island, we learned
that if your husband died, they would place him in your bed, and you had to
sleep with him for a month before he was buried. I can’t think how morbid and frightening that
would be—not to mention dangerous if the body starts getting eaten by insects
and stuff. It’s not like they had air
conditioning in those days to keep the body cool! After you were finally able to bury the body,
it would be placed in a decorative casket and raised up to the top of a large
rock that had holes in it, and the body would be moved into one of those holes
for all eternity. Large rocks, like
you’ll see in my photo, were meant to be used for one family of multiple generations. I also can’t imagine how difficult it would
be to get those bodies up a ladder into those holes. The tour guide showed a photo of one funeral,
and it didn’t look like they were using any sort of pulley system. I’m hoping I just didn’t notice it!
The tour allowed us time to shop for souvenirs. I wasn’t about to buy anything since I’ve
generally stopped doing so because I thought I had bought everything I’d ever
want in all my travels—but then I saw instruments…danger zone alert! There were these beautifully painted maracas,
but the size and shape of an egg. I
couldn’t resist, and besides, I got them for $2.50 each, so how could I
resist??
There isn’t much I need to say about this as you’ll see
everything that really needs to be seen in the photos, and little description
is necessary, so I think I can contain it in the photo captions. One thing I should mention, though, is that
while in many parts of Indonesia, batik is the main style of fabric art, in a
few places like Bali, the art of weaving is more practised. In some cases, it
even looks like their styles are influenced by Indian textiles. Lots of what I saw also demonstrated
differences in wedding attire across the country. It’s pretty neat to see the different types
of jewellery and head ornaments, aside from the fabrics and clothing styles.
Anyway, I love that I still get to learn new things the more
I travel to Indonesia. It’s an
interesting country with wonderful people and tasty food, my two main
attractions to any country!
