Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
Although its “proper” name is Surakarta, most people refer to this pleasant city in Central Java by its nickname: Solo.
Every Sunday morning the city’s main thoroughfare – Jalan Slamet Riyadi – is closed to motorised traffic, so residents can enjoy “various leisure activities”.
These include dancing and exercising in the street, plus a nicely informal market that stretches long and thin, along the roadside edge of the footpaths.
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Much of what once comprised the Hindu temple site at Prambanan is still in ruins…or no longer present, at all.
For many centuries makers of other structures pillaged building materials from here.
On the afternoon of October 19 2024, we were just a short drive away from Yogyakarta in south-central Java.
Our feet stood on a very large site; also standing upright were 16 carefully restored/reconstructed temples and shrines.
If we had arrived 1,100 years earlier, we would have been surrounded by 240 of them!
The “biggest/tallest/central” 8, however, do all now stand tall again.
In 2024 Prambanan is certainly one of the world’s “jaw dropping” temple sites.
The tallest temple – pictured above – is Shiva’s.
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I took the photo during a wayang wong performance in Yogyakarta’s Kraton – the Sultan‘s palace complex.
Yogyakarta, in south-central Java, is the only Indonesian region where the local monarch (its Sultan) is thereby the actual regional head of government.
Yogyakarta’s “royal” form of wayang wong – aka wayang orang, which literally translates as “human wayang” or “human puppet” – has a long history, and is highly refined/stylised.
Its “characters” are played by human dancers/actors, but their performance style is more than slightly akin to that of the puppets they have supplanted.
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Q: where would you find the world’s largest Buddhist temple?
A: in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation.
Beautifully sited on a lush plain, between volcanoes, Borobudur is in Central Java,
Java is “our” planet’s most populous island…but is far from its most frantic/frenetic.
My photo was taken at 3.41 pm on 18 October 2024; the prevailing mood was “a relaxed state of high anticipation”.
A few raindrops gently fell, while we waited for our appointed time to ascend the temple steps.
(visitor numbers – and their access and behaviour – are now strictly regulated. Borobudur’s hitherto “laissez faire” regime had been rapidly destroying what the too-many, too-careless tourists had come to see)
The prevailing mood and the rain’s intensity were about to change…dramatically!
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Wonderful Indonesia’s wonderfully-unlikely description refers to Tangbukan Perahu.
This post’s title is quoted from that volcano’s Wonderful Indonesia webpage.
Tangbukan Perahu is just one of Indonesia’s many active volcanoes, but this one is uniquely accessible.
A sealed road allows cars and buses to drive almost all the way up, to within a few easy walking paces of the main crater’s rim.
Tangbukan Perahu rises more than 2000 metres above sea level.
It dominates the local countryside – countryside which it has in large part shaped and fertilised.
Tangbukan Perahu has also, intermittently, delivered terror and death.
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Most visitors still refer to the pictured, particularly well-preserved/restored precinct as “Old Batavia”.
The independent nation whose flag now flutters there prefers to call it “Old Jakarta”.
My photo’s vantage point was Cafe Batavia, on Taman Fatahillah – Batavia’s main square.
The photo looks across to what used to be the administrative hub of what was then – 18th century CE – the greatest trading centre in all of Asia.
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….are still vital to inter-island trade in Indonesia.
Not coincidentally, Indonesia has more inhabited islands than does any other nation, and many of them do not have deep-water ports.
Jakarta, of course, has a modern, deep-water port.
Tanjung Priok – that “new” port – is not merely a replacement for the “old” port.
Sunda Kelapa is still a working port; if I had pointed my camera in another direction, I could have taken a photo that included very many more wooden-hulled boats, plus a huge number of lorries…
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Raja Ampat’s most celebrated viewpoint is the hilltop lookout on Piaynemo (aka “Pianemo”) – a relatively small island near the southwestern end of Waigeo – the archipelago’s biggest island.
You are looking at just part of the 360 degree panorama.
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..a Bird of Paradise, at least.
The silhouetted individual is a Red Bird of Paradise, which was displaying/dancing in the rainforest canopy high above us, late in the afternoon of 14 October 2024, on Waigeo – the largest of Raja Ampat’s four “main” islands.
The silhouetted circumstance “robbed” the bird of its brilliant colours – or, more correctly, it robbed my eyes’ and my camera of their ability to discern those colours; we were looking up, straight into the sun.
Even so, you can surely see why humans have for so long hunted these amazing birds, for their feathers and plumes.
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