Revealing details of Candi Sambisari

This 9th-century Hindu temple was rediscovered 

in 1966, centuries after it was buried some 5 meters 

below ground by ash from a major volcanic eruption!

Its main building is adorned by 

stone carvings such as these

...and pride of place within it goes to 

a large lingam and yoni! ;b

It's hard for a Malaysian to not suffer from ancient monument envy when visiting Indonesia, particularly central Java.  It's bad enough that this neighboring part of the world is home to the largest Buddhist structure in the world and that Borobudur truly is incredibly magnificent.  But when you also throw in another ancient and magnificent monument that's located around 50 kilometers away into the equation, it does feel like this area has an almost unbelievable as well as amazing surfeit of monumental riches.

Like Borobudur, Prambanan is a UNESCO World Heritage-listed site.  And like that over 1,100-year-old Buddhist temple, that which also dates back to that historical period also has subsidiary temples along with the main one.  And if all this was not enough, consider that there are a number of other temples that are similarly ancient -- plus architecturally and ornamentally similar -- located to the northeast, southeast and west of the Prambanan complex!

To be sure, they are smaller than Borobudur or Prambanan.  But a visit to such as Candi Sambisari -- which also dates back to the 9th century AD, and was only re-discovered some five decades ago -- can whet the appetite and get the blood flowing on a day when you know that you'll also be visiting Prambanan later that day! 

In 1966, a local farmer's hoe hit a carved stone when working on his land located close to the small hamlet of Sambisari.  Upon investigation, the artifact turned out to belong to an ancient temple which lay meters down below ground.  Uncovered and excavated, that which has come to be known as Candi Sambisari is now completely visible -- and its main temple's inner chamber accessible, and contents openly revealed, to the public.       

Unlike Candi Pawon, the contents of its inner chamber have remained intact.  So, like with Candi Mendut, one is able to see what lies inside.  But, this being a Hindu temple rather than a Buddhist one, no statues of Buddha are to be found within it.  Instead, pride of place goes to -- and no, I am not kidding -- large, stylized representations of a phallus (specifically, that of the Hindu god Shiva) and vulva/vagina!

I have to admit: My initial, innocent thought was that the lingam (as it's known in Sanskrit) was a container, whose tip was removable, upon which a holy statue or relic would be revealed.  But once you find out what it actually is, not only will you realize that that's exactly what it is but, also, that there are a number of other Shiva Linga outside in the surrounding grounds: more precisely, four located in each corner of the rectangular compound and another four at the cardinal points! ;b

Drinking alcohol in Indonesia

A plate of Indonesia's iconic gado-gado

 

The bottle of Indonesian beer I had with that dish ;b

 

The kind of food I'd rather have a non-alcoholic

drink with rather than an alcoholic one :)

 

In my six days in Indonesia, I only had alcohol twice.  Actually, let's make it more impressive: the only alcohol I drank over the course of the more than two weeks in total that I spent in Malaysia and Indonesia last month consisted of two bottles of pilsener -- not because I was going out of my way to abstain from alcohol when in those two Muslim majority countries but, rather, because there are so many deliciously refreshing non-alcoholic drinks available there!

The other thing about Indonesia, as in neighboring Malaysia, is that so much of the local food strikes me as going better with non-alcoholic drinks such as fruit juices, teas or coffee than anything alcoholic.  And in Indonesia, I pretty much exclusively ate food that was recognizably Indonesian in nature (except at that one memorable afternoon tea at Yogyakarta's Phoenix Hotel!).

 

The afternoon after my German friend and I paid a visit to the kraton though, I found myself badly craving cold beer.  It wasn't because of the food I ate at lunch that day (gado-gado with some prawn crackers thrown in, as it turned out).  Rather, it was because our walk from the royal palace to the area of the city where the restaurant we had decided we wanted to eat at -- which also was home to a few batik factories and shops that my German friend was very interested in checking out -- turned out to be considerably longer and under a more mercilessly strong sun and uncloudy sky than we had thought would be the case! 

I know that alcohol is a diuretic (like tea and coffee too, actually), so it theoretically isn't something you should drink when you're feeling dehydrated.  But theory be damned in this case because a cold beer tasted ever so good when we finally did make it to the restaurant (which, unlike some other Indonesian eateries, did have alcoholic drinks on its menu)!

In such conditions, the bottle of Bintang beer refreshed as well as relaxed.  (I'm sure a rest in the shade and a fan blasting our table helped too.)  While I normally prefer ales over lagers, and draft beer to that in bottles or cans, that big bottle of chilled Indonesian pilsener really tasted very nice indeed -- and so much so that I opted to have another the next day in similar conditions (that is, over a meal at a restaurant that we had walked a bit to get to)! :)

Hello Kitty reigns supreme in Yogyakarta?!

Hello Kitty balloons for sale along with others

on the streets of Yogyakarta :)

Very pink and Hello Kitty-fied vehicles line a Yogyakarta lane! :b

 

While strolling about in Cologne with my German friend a few years back, we came across a bunch of Hello Kitty items on display in a shop window.  In Hong Kong (the home of such as the world's first Hello Kitty pop-up supermarket, and where nary a day goes by without my making a Hello Kitty spotting of some sort or other), this wouldn't be that unremarkable a sight.  But in Germany, it was so unusual that it caused us to stop in our tracks and gape for at least a few moments at its very existence!   

 

All in all, I reckon it's easy enough to conclude that Hello Kitty is (and her fans are) more easily found in Asia than Europe or any other continent.  I've been told that South Asia is a kawaii desert where few fans of the cute cat character are to be found -- but, since I've never been to that part of the world (at least not beyond a couple of its airports), I can't personally vouch for this.  What I do know for a fact is that I've seen Hello Kitty products wherever else I've been to in the world's largest continent: including Japan (but of course!), South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam and Malaysia (where quite a number of Hello Kitty items can be found at my family home alone!).   

 

Still, all this didn't prepare me for how mega popular the furry feline character looks to be in Yogyakarta -- or maybe all of Indonesia!  It's not just that, like in Hong Kong, one will invariably spot Hello Kitty's visage on a clothing item, bag or such when in a crowd or that many a private car has a large Hello Kitty decal on its back, sides, front or all of the aforementioned.  Rather, there's also the fact that a popular tourist item is a T-shirt emblazoned on the front with the words "Hello Yogyakarta" and the kawaii character's face (along with some misspelled words that confirm that it's unlikely to have been a Sanrio-approved product)!     

Nonetheless, all these previous spottings didn't prepare me for the sight that greeted my German friend and I on a quiet lane that we found ourselves walking along soon after exiting the kraton.  For after a morning viewing traditional cultural dances, portraits of Yogyakarta royalty and such, pretty much the last thing we'd expect to see in the area would be a line of Hello Kitty-fied vehicles which looked to be old Morris Minors or Volkswagons that had been hollowed out and tranformed into pedal-powered transportation as well as painted very pink indeed! :D

Traditional dance performances at Yogyakarta's kraton that come with some surprising elements

Puppet Ponyo taking in the traditional dance performance

at Yogyakarta's kraton (and swaying a bit to its music?!)

 

Beautiful the maidens may be but

armed they also are! :O

 

A dance involving a princess who shoots arrows

at demons that threaten her :O

 

For many people, the highlight of their visit to the royal palace of Yogyakarta involves the taking in of a cultural performance held at the complex's inner pavilion.  Depending on the day, it could be such as a gamelan concert or a wayang kulit (shadow puppet) show.  On the day (a Sunday) that my German friend and I visited, we were treated to a one-hour-long performance of three traditional Javanese dances to live music courtesy of a gamelan orchestra.

 

If truth be told, I was initially less than enthused by the dancers, who were beautifully clad and not without talent but whose dance moves were excruciatingly slow.  And it didn't help that, as befits Central Javanese court dance conventions, the quartet performing the first dance were expected to keep their faces expressionless, communicating more through ritualized body movements and stylized hand gestures.

 

At one point, I got to finding the activities of the birds that were flitting about in the rafters to be more fascinating than what was happening on stage.  But then I noticed a flash of light below and realized with a start that the courtly performers were waving krises about in the air and even pointing it at one another!  With my attention squarely now back on the dancers, I got to recognizing that the particular dance being performed involved a battle between four heroines: not at all the kind of subject matter one would have expected of an artistic number whose pacing gave it a dream-like feeling, and actually caused some members of the audience to fall into a slumber!   

 

His hairy legs gave away the sex of the long haired, masked performer who had the stage all to himself for the next dance.  Any hopes that a male dancer would have faster dance moves than the female dancers who had preceded him though were soon very quickly dashed.  And when his dance ended, the audience numbers thinned considerably as quite a few people decided they had their fill of performing arts for the day!   

 

Too bad, really, as I reckon that the show's organizers had saved the best for last: with the final dance in the set being the performance of scenes from the Ramayana involving a beautiful princess repelling attacks by demonic individuals with a bow and arrow.  The fastest paced of the three dances by far, it also -- surprise, surprise! -- was the most exciting and interesting.  And contributing to the fascination was seeing a traditional dance based on an ancient religious epic poem coming across like it could have come out of a contemporary feminist trope!     

On the subject of gender (roles): it's interesting that the set of traditional dances chosen to be performed exclusively featured unmasked females and masked males, with not a single unmasked male dancer in sight.  Also noticeable was that all the gamelan musicians were male while -- if I remember correctly -- all the vocal accompanists were females.  

 

While the division of labor along gender lines might have been expected of a Muslim society (which Yogyakarta's predominantly is), the significant roles accorded to females came as a bit of a surprise.  Still, the biggest eye-opener for me may well have been how halus (refined but also "soft") were the observed actions of a good many of the male as well as female performers.  Indeed, as I joked to my German friend, if not for the abundant and coarse hair on the legs of the second dance's sole performer, I honestly would not have been able to tell if the dancer concerned had been male or female! ;b          

The kraton -- not kraken! -- of Yogyakarta

The most visible face of the Sultan of Yogyakarta's palace complex

Buildings new and old can be found within what's effectively 

a walled city that's home to some 25,000 people

Among the more interesting items on display in the kraton

is this clock with numbers written out in Jawi

The mind works in strange and mysterious ways.  How else to account for my thinking of the monstrous kraken (of Norse mythology and 1981 movie Clash of the Titans) whenever I saw and heard the word "kraton" -- which actually turns out to be the Javanese word for a royal palace: as in, the kraton in Yogyakarta that's more formally known as the Keraton Ngayogyakarta Hadinigrat and is the main seat of the Sultan of Yogyakarta and his family.

Considered to be the cultural and political heart of this central Javanese city, the kraton is a collection of buildings, some of which date back to 1755-1756, but many of which look and are considerably newer.  Some sections of the palace complex which continue to be regularly used by the hereditary ruler of Yogyakarta (who also serves as governor of the modern Yogyakarta Special Region) and his family are closed to the public.  But a sizable area of the royal compound is open to the public and functions as a museum of sorts that also includes a space where traditional cultural performances regularly take place.        

While it's the main tourist attraction in the city of Yogyakarta, the kraton pales in comparison to Borobudur, located only some 40 kilometers away -- but then pretty much anything would, really.  Actually, the fact of the matter is that the kraton also visually is no match for many royal residences in other parts of Asia such as Beijing's Forbidden City, or even castles of regional strongmen in Japan such as that of Himeji and Matsumoto.

Unlike all of those places mentioned in the previous paragraph though, Yogyakarta's kraton is still utilized today for what it was built for.  Consequently, it makes for an interesting place to visit in terms of what it can tell people about present day matters as well as historical ones, and the adjustment at times of tradition to better suit contemporary expectations and preferences. 

As an example, consider my discovery that the present Sultan, Hamengkubuwono X, discontinued the polygamist tradition of Javanese royalty and has had five daughters -- but no sons -- with his consort, Ratu Hemas.  Even more daring may be his proclamation in 2015 that his eldest daughter, Princess Mangkubumi, will succeed him -- rather than any of his male (but more distant) relatives.  

On a more trivial note: I also was surprised to find that in certain parts of the kraton, the wearing of a hat (or, in my case, baseball cap) by women as well as men is forbidden; this particularly since my general impression previously was that these days in many Muslim areas, the preference is for females to cover their heads rather than keep them uncovered!  But, then, it also was true that in all of the portraits of royal females on display in the kraton, none of them were depicted with head coverings even though it does seem to be the case that the Yogyakarta royal family has been Muslim for centuries.

Not your usual bicycle sightings in Indonesia ;b

A higher and more difficult-to-ride-than-usual bicycle 
being ridden over in the vicinity of Yogyakarta's Kraton 

Riding around on a bicycle built for two 

in the grounds of Prambanan

What is it with Indonesians and novelty bicycles?  On my German friend's and my first full day in the central Javanese city of Yogyakarta, we decided to walk from our hotel to the Kraton that is the official residence of the sultan and current political ruler of the area (after being told by hotel staff that parts of the city's main thoroughfare would be closed off to vehicular traffic that day).  As we approached the place, what caught my eye the most, aside from the palace architecture itself, was the sight of a few folks transporting themselves about on some really interesting looking contraptions!

The bottom of those vehicles looked like regular bicycles but the actual contraptions had extensions installed to make it so that their riders were considerably further from the ground than would have been the case if they had been atop a regular bicycle.  Yet those who had deigned to ride on them looked pretty comfortable for the most part atop them and were languidly, and happily, manouvering them back and forth along a section of paved road close to the official entrance of the Kraton!

As if this wasn't novel enough, a few days later, we spotted a group of kids happily riding on bicycles built for two like in the Daisy song -- which I felt compelled to sing on the spot to my German friend who was not familiar with it!  And for those who don't are unfamiliar with it: it's a simple song but one I find pleasantly romantic and very memorable... and maybe you'll feel that way too after hearing this rendition of it that comes courtesy of the legendary Nat King Cole! ;b

Spectacular sunset views on a day of super high visibility as well as high heat

Every so often, nature and humans combine 

to create a beautiful sight 

No photo-shopping was involved -- honest!

 Instead, what really helped was 

my camera having a 30X optical zoom :)

A photo taken with far less zooming ;b

This past week has seen the Hong Kong Observatory posting "very hot weather" warnings for a number of consecutive days and my finally succumbing for the first time this calendar year to having the air conditioning on more often than off when I've been in my apartment.  Then early yesterday, came news that slightly cooler weather would be on the way next week -- but so too would lots of rain and Hong Kong's first typhoon of the year.      

Consequently, rather than stay in air-conditioned comfort indoors all of today, I decided to venture out for a meetup.com group excursion this afternoon that was billed as a hike but, really, was more of an easy ramble on entirely paved paths from Tiu Keng Leng MTR station to Lei Yue Mun and Sam Ka Tsuen via the Junk Bay Chinese Permanent Cemetery.  And finding out that visibility today was at the 45 kilometer mark over at Sai Wan Ho (just on the opposite side of Victoria Harbour from where we would be this evening) made me look forward all the more to taking advantage of the day's fine -- even if hot -- weather!    

At Lei Yue Mun, the group spent some time exploring the area near the abandoned quarry which lies under the shadow of Devil's Peak -- where, the last time I visited, I saw a hobbyist having fun flying his drone.  After leaving it, we found that we were just in time to join the sizable number of photographers who had parked themselves in the vicinity of the area's Tin Hau Temple to snap shots of the sun setting way out west.  

Just a little over two months ago, I had taken some sunset photos I felt pretty good about over at Kennedy Town's Western District Public Cargo Working Area.  But I actually think that the snaps I got this evening are actually better -- with the sun not only looking big and clear in the pictures but also combining with the surrounding clouds to give a more vivid impression and bathe the area by the horizon in a spectacularly warm orangey-red glow!    

Here's the thing though: while it was orangey-red there in the west, out east, we were actually bathed in cool blues that same time!  Don't believe me?  Then, go back to the top of this blog post, and compare and contrast the view found in the fourth photo from the top with the three others! ;b