Yogyakarta

here comes a feeling you thought you’d forgotten
chairs to sit and sidewalks to walk on

those lyrics from vampire weekend’s horchata are pretty much summing it up for me right now. thrust from a month-long stint in resort paradise straight into the messy, smelly, friendly city of yogyakarta in java, indonesia.

now, i know i say i don’t like cities, but after only a day here i’m in love with this one. the locals are either actually friendly or friendly and trying to con you (which isn’t actually that difficult to avoid); the food is delicious and cheap–my favourites so far are “gado-gado” which is basically fresh veggies in a delicious cold peanut sauce and of course tempe, soybeans in blocks usually deep-fried which tom claims are the “best meat imitation he’s ever had”. ah, meat eaters are so funny; they assume that everything that taste remotely like meat must be trying to imitate it. well, at least he likes it.

our new friend toto showed us a nice little restaurant and bar where we–you guessed it–ate and drank; an entire meal for both of us with two tallies (large beers) for under 10AUD. life is good. it is funny, though, paying say 9,000 for a beer… but 1AUD equals 8,100 indonesian rupiah. while we ate he explained that muslims, chinese and christians will celebrate each others’ holidays together; and later, we witnessed it in a massive parade celebrating muhummad’s birthday which was the day before yesterday, and chinese new year which was a couple of weeks ago. scores of cultures were involved in the celebrations and everyone was happy. get with it, gaza strip!

today we’re taking one more day to wander around and go shopping (i only have one outfit i can wear right now if i want to be culturally sensitive: no bottoms above the knee, and no low cut tops or short sleeves) then we’re off to see some temples, etc tomorrow and the next few days. soon we’ll head east to lombok as well.

miss you all! wish you were here.