November 10th in Indonesia is "Hero's Day" so we arrived to pageantry and traditional music at the Yogyakarta airport, presented by the airport employees and a proud local veterans' group. This reminded us of Canada's Veteran's Week and Remembrance Day, and later at our hotel we watched the Macron hosted Paris gathering to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of the signing of the First WW Armistice between the Allies and Germany.
We added the Yogyakarta visit between two jungle experiences just in case.... and, then we read about the nearby UNESCO Borobudur Temple, the largest known Buddhist Temple globally, and we decided to visit it on our second day.
We wandered Yogyakarta back-allys the first day on our way to the Amri Gallery, showing the work of Prof. Dr . Ki H. Amri Yahya, who teaches at the Yogyakarta Univertlsity. Amri's large-scale art works were inspiring!
Inadvertently, across the street was the National Museum. The Museum was closed, but in a series of anti-rooms the students from a local Leather Polytechnic had a two-day exhibition (Nov 10 - 11) of their leather materials, project designs, finished projects and two theme rooms, one with stencils and another with historical leatherwork panels with mythological characters in action. We were the students' enthusiastic focus of attention for the hour we were there, as there seemed to be only one other couple viewing the work. The students were particularly giggly about Bob's translator ap, which enabled us to read the mythological text panels in the small room containing the historical pieces. The students were curious about opportunities in Canada for leather production careers, but we were regretfully unable to help them. Walking back to the hotel, Yolanda remarked on the lack of myth in our lives, and the joy and colour they can bring to life; Bob cited myths we draw on when a conveying a lesson is needed.
Prior to Borobudur Temple, our driver Tomo took us to Merapi Volcano for a morning birding walk. Bob conferred with a New Zealand birder we encountered there that we had seen "the usual suspects" for the area. The birder told us about her upcoming volunteer work in Australia with the D.O.C. (Department Of Conservation), which we had read about in preparation for our January-April 2019 trip. The mountain air was fresh and the jungle ravines were diverse with trees, vines, towering undergrowth and a few abandoned wood structures being reclaimed by the jungle. Tomo explained that dwellings could not be built within 10 Kilometers of the volcano due to the eruption losses in 2010.
The Buddhist Borobudur Temple, from the 9th Century, prior to the spread of Islam, is a UNESCO World Heritage site and an architectural wonder. We scoured the frieze rows telling the story of Buddha on the first three terraces and soon saw themes repeating. Reconstruction of the jungle-scrambled frieze blocks was questionable in some areas, and Bob wondered about future a.i. being able to virtually re-assemble the blocks.
Some of the frieze themes were music, nature, cooking, craft production, meditation and devotional pageantry. A few unique blocks were carved with 8th Century SE Asian Archipelago out-rigger sailing vessels, and in one interesting six-losenge "cartoon" sequence a woman was preparing a fire and cooking a bird! Yolanda was pleased to find a frieze with a loom-like object being set with heddles, and another with a spun fleece and bolts of cloth. The musical instrument friezes included instruments we had seen at the airport arrival, on our street walk and in a live presentation at our hotel: string instruments, wind instruments, drums, symbols, a xylophone-like instrument, and many clapping hands.
The temple upper terrace contained filigree stupa domes with enclosed buddha figures. We absolutely enjoyed our afternoon at the site, but could have done without being directed away from the exit to a 15-minute maze of craft stalls and food carts, which further exhausted us in the heat and humidity and unfamiliar sights and scents. We arrived back at Tomo's car just as the afternoon rain commenced.
We have come to expect that almost every day we will have an unexpected experience. Yesterday's "unexpected" was arriving at an artist open space in Yogyakarta, after having walked to textile shops for some batik meterage.
A local audio electronics club were just finishing their creative installation of 20th Century Indonesian gramaphones, radios and instruments: Audio Insights was the show title. Their thoughtful show backdrop was large-scale portraits of people associated with the broadcast industry: a d.j., a songwriter, a puppeteer, a singer, and a comedian who sang his jokes via radio broadcasts woven into traditional songs without losing the rhythm. Bob was right at home. One senior fellow approached us proudly with a show poster and talked a bit about the show vision and invited us to the 8pm opening event. We had just been through a torrential rain, and were soaked to our knees, so unfortunately didn't plan to return.
We are looking forward to some unexpected experiences in the next few days in the West Java jungle Ujung Kulon.
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