Big Buddhas & Muslim Weddings.....

Okay Im past Phuket,and on Ko Phi Phi now. Lets see.... I last left off as we were leaving Surabaya after two pretty insane last days. The next day was not so good. After buying train tickets to Yogjakarta (Yogja) Halims friends deceide to drive instead. So we had to take the tickets back and rushed to the bike shop to meet his crew. 6 or 7 of us piled into a fairly small car for what we thought would be an 5-6 hour car ride. We left around 3 and got there around 12. Nuff said. Traffic, food and prayer stops we finally made it. The reason Halim took us was so he could go to a wedding and we could go to Borobudur. It worked out. After giving Matt and I our own room, he woke us at 7 to give us a ride to the bus station too. Supercoolguy. The bus ride to Borobudur was long, hot, and surreal. The bus driver had no speedometer and a hook and latch held most of the doors closed. The whole time i was sitting on some weird tank that was getting really hot.


Borobudur was amazing though. A huge monument to Buddha in a land dominated by Muslims. Apparently its the largest Buddhist monument in Indonesia, maybe the world.(?)As with any tourist spot in Indo we were of course bombarded by people selling everthing. Evertyhing.
Each layer of the huge stone monument was surrounded by Bodhisatvas and story boards. After walking around each layer we made it to the top. Killer view, but way too many people. I think that we had more pictures taken with us than i took myself. We were freaking celebrities at the top. People were even trying to sneak pictures with us in them. Pretty funny. The way down was just as bad. The exit of the park was of course a maze of shops with people selling more stuff. You guys getting the picture yet. After taking a tuk-tuk to the bus stop we somehow found our bus, got better seats and were dropped off at a completley different station. Hmmm. Time to call Halim.

He told us to meet him downtown at some hotel, he found us eventually and we were whisked off back to the hotel, for one of the most surreal moments of my life. He insisted that we attened his friends wedding. Besides not knowing anyone, having no decent clothes or gifts, it was a traditonal Javanese Muslim wedding. Dressed in my finest backpacker clothes we entered the large university auditorium blaring traditonal gamalon music.
People were dressed in their finest traditional attire and food was everywhere. The tradition goes that you enter, get in line, shake hands with about 8 people , eat and leave. Now that i think of it it reminded me alot of my freind Russsels funeral. So we did just that. Stood in line, the only "bules" within a kilometer distance and walked up shook the bride and grooms parents hands and also the bride and groom. But when i say shake its not what you think , its more of a two handed light light brush of fingertips by one another. Definetly one of the stranger moments of my life. The whole time some guy is announcing in Bahasa and Javanese dialects all the invities to the party. Next was food, a feast fit for Kings & Queens , cliche but true. We ate with the commoners, the whole time just waiting to get kicked/dragged out. I mean the bride and groom looked right into our eyes having no idea who we were and still smiled! Enough about the wedding though, after about one hour, it was time to go, Halim was leaving and we were staying. The first time in quite a while with no one to help us out.


Heres where it gets weird. j/k. That night we wandered the Yogja strip and eventually ended up passsing out 5 mins into "The Beach".
The next day we had the bright idea to go the beach. Another bus ride from hell, the guy stopped for anyone who waved. Long ride, and ripped off as we would find out on the way back. The beach itself wasnt too bad it was just windy as hell and the water was treacherous. Ate some noodles and drank a coconut only to turn right arond and go back to town. The rest of the day was spent looking for Batik shirts, which we eventually found. They are actually quite nice designs, Matt sure loves his. Seeing the batik paintings and processes to make them were pretty cool as well. The rest of our evening was consumed with a Javanese Puppet show, which was intersting and extremely boring all at the same time.
After leaving the show Matt and I were talking in asinine voices when he broke his sandal, right in front of the sandal guy. Matt really had no leverage on the situation as you can imagine, so he bought his second pair of sandals on the trip, but not his last. No bargining that time. My rainbows are still rockin. Back to the bed only to wake and leav to Bandung in the morining.


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