All the world seems to have traffic problems.
These two girls took us through the narrow streets of Kota Gede, historic suburb of Yogyakarta in the center of yogi’s silver industry. It has a maze of narrow streets lined with traditional wooden houses and hundreds of silver shops.
The three people on our tour who live in Silicon Valley, California, but are originally from Vietnam we’re just thrilled with the durian fruit. Durian is a fruit is a healthy fruit that is so stinky it is not allowed in public places nor hotel rooms. I can’t figure out if it smells so bad why you’d ever want to eat it but they insist it’s delicious, so they kept sending me several pictures of Durian fruit.
I would love to try some of the street food but as you can see a lot of this is homemade or wrapped by hand or empty soda bottles and water bottles are filled with liquids. Too scary to even try. And the cleanliness of these markets are far from germ-free.
Our tour guide Eka wore a hajib. She had a beautiful piece of jewelry threaded through it, with embroidery near the cap. It was so pretty I really wanted to buy one. I realized I would never wear one so what was the point.
We followed the two young girls through all these old, narrow streets to a large Besar mosque complex.
Men were actually praying in these buildings and we were not allowed to wear sandals up to the entrance of one of the buildings nor go into it. Of course one of our group didn’t read the sign. When I see the sign it apparently wasn’t very clear since it just mentioned sandals.
Locals come to this Temple all dressed up in matching outfits for their whole family to take pictures for special occasions. The Bulgarians were impressed and kept getting in those pictures with them.
Someone was shooting a movie with these girls but I have no idea about what.
I am still shocked to see smartphones in the hands of every person in the world.
Samples of how families come all dressed up for a photographer to take their pictures.
The gamelan music is the official Indonesian music. After a few days of constant music, it was feeling like we were being hypnotized with it.
CLICK
We spent a lot of time learning how to play songs ourselves and I must say we did sound pretty good. Tom took over after I left the same instrument.
CLICK.
CLICK. The instrument had seven different tones and I kept wanting to play number seven. Sadly, the song we were playing did not include number seven.
This was the sweet and patient instructor from the part of the city called Kota Gede. All the musicians were from this area and volunteered to play. They are serious about not letting this form of music fade into the past.
More local food of the same. But the views were fabulous.
What a crazy way to transport all that stuff.
I could not take enough pictures of this batik art gallery.
I loved it all and was going to buy one when I recognized that I had two hanging over the cabinets in my own kitchen already. When Mom and Dad went to China or Vietnam they came back with two. Dad built frames for them and I’ve got them hanging in the kitchen. One is of fish in the other butterflies. I appreciate them more now that I know how expensive they are and how much work they are.
Another five star with a balcony. I love it.
I went shopping at a huge mall next to our hotel looking for a coffee mug which I did not find. However the stores were upscale stores and one of them was for young girls to take selfies. Mind blowing.
Too funny seeing those ladies in burkas sitting there!
After a bus ride to dinner we saw this show which was an hour long — my most miserable hours of this year. Barely statyed awake and was thrilled when I realized it was 8:00 because I knew the show was only an hour. At 8:15 I figured out the show hadn’t started until 7:15 and I still had 15 more painful minutes to go. AAUUGGHH!
Apparently jet lag was still in full force for me.