TOURIST TERRITORY

(photos from in and around Yogya, Indonesia)

- Riding through rice fields at sunset while a smoking volcano looms over us.
- Amazing bamboo scaffolding.
- Indonesian driving style: casual carelessness.
- Riding to the southern coast and swimming in a natural-spring pool that is completely covered in green slime. Chicken battles in the pool are very very short.
- Saddam Hussein is still a fashionable icon here.
- Having a campfire on the beach and being joined by a really drunk guy who is always laughing strangely and cooks us some casaba in the fire. For some reason one of his friends that joined us kept asking us not to hurt him over and over.
- The beach on the southern coast is really windy, the waves are huge, and the current is so strong it is a no-swimming beach at all times.
- Exploring an abandoned resort on a cliff, until we get kicked out.
- Karaoke-ing in a giant club shaped like a pyramid that is completely empty.
- Visiting Taring Padi ("Fang of the rice plant"), the radical political print-making collective. Yusuf showed us a bunch of his giant woodblock prints that take him a month to carve each one.
- Getting some street musicians to play Metallica for us.
- "Roti bakar" = like grilled cheese but with chocolate and strawberry jam inside instead of cheese.
- Doughnuts here are a gamble, especially when they end up having cheese on them. Probably the worst-tasting thing I've had in Indonesia.
- Trying out all the homemade liquors in Yogya that are basically the lowest grade alcohol mixed with something else, like coffee or ginger tea.
- The admission price for foreigners at Borobudour Temple is marked up 1000%.
- Playing a round of Exquisite Corpse while lounging on the top of the largest Buddhist temple in the world.
- An interesting thing about riding in Indonesia has been that cars/trucks/buses are in the minority, after scooters. And they actually behave like it, being more likely to yield to other traffic.

Learn Indonesian:
"Lagi" = Another/more.
"Satu" = One.
"Dua" = Two.
"Tika" = Three.
"Mpat" = Four.
"Rima" = Five.
"Nam" = Six.
"Tugu" = Seven.
"Telapan" = Eight.
"Su belan" = Nine.
"Su pulu" = Ten.



MP3:

• Exuma - Monkberry Moon Delight

A band's place at last.