We decided to watch the Ramayana plays on one of the nights, and tourist being tourist, we naturally cannot escape the potential rip-offs that usually comes with such cultural shows. It’s not so much of the show itself, rather the establishment basically forced us to have an “authentic Indonesian” buffet dinner which was packaged together with the impending show.

Authentic Indonesian buffet it was not. Basically, food there was terrible. But having paid for it, we just had to grit our teeth and could only look forward to the show. Meantime, while having dinner, the cultural establishment had kindly provided some authentic Indonesian music called Gamelan to entertain us throughout the entire dinner service. Now, I’m not sure if you know what the music really is, but being exposed to it for hours on end can be rather nerve-wrecking for the ears.

Performed by a bunch of veterans as showcased above, I had to let out a loud guffaw when Silver Bullet suddenly commented:

I have no idea where that came from, but it was funny as hell, especially if you had noticedhow old these veterans really are. One can see the number of teeth were visible when they smile with their mouths open. I still laugh to bits whenever I think about it!

Sometime earlier in the day, we also got ripped-off at some park by some crazy lady who said she knows things because (quote unquote) she meditates all the time, she talks to goddesses and she is goddess. She basically just sprang up on us when all we wanted to do was asked for directions. She immediately left the people she was talking to initially, held my hand and then took us around in a circle (literally!). She then had the nerve to asked for a fee to be paid to her for her 10 minutes of yakking and showing us nonsensical stuff that was made up of her own imagination. She had this crazy look with her dyed-red hair, pretty crossed-eyed and, if you were to ask me, she doesn’t seem right in the head…

After being royally ripped-off and walking several meters away and out of her sight, Silver Bullet spontaneously mimicked her actions which resulted with me bursting out into hysterical laughter, accompanied by tears no less! It was so gut-wrenchingly funny that I made him repeated his act once again for me to take a picture of the silly face while we tried so hard to swallow the rip-off “authentic” Indonesia buffet that was served before the show:

I just realised my husband has never looked so glorious before this! :p

Having been to Jojga several times over (now 4x to be exact, with 2 trips with my parents when I was younger given my dad is a bit footloose), many of the sights are, unfortunately, nothing new to me. Spending 5 days in Jogja was also a tad too long, in my opinion and most sightseeing in and around Jogjakarta can be done within 3 and half days.

We did the mandatory touristy thing like going to the Prambanan(currently recovering from the 2006 earthquake with some restoration works), Borubudur, Mount Merapi and several other sights… for the life of me, I’m struggling to remember the what, where and when! I remember Mount Merapi being lusciously green and has one of the most beautiful landscape around. This time round though, the land was barren and was pretty much left in devastation from the 2008’s eruption. Hence, there was really nothing much to see here.

I still love Prambanan, though. The entire temple is surrounded by a rich history of Hinduism surrounding Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu. For some reason, I find the entire story intensely sexy and I have always been intrigued by it for as long as I remember.

@ Prambanan

@ Borubudur

(of course, there will always be some belligerent visitors who just refuse to read signs!)

We also took a long scenic drive to Dieng Plateau and with a lot of time on our hands, even drove up all the way to Solo (3 hours away from Jogja) to visit a Candi Sukuh (Erotic Temple) located high on top of a mountain. The view going to both Dieng Plateau and Solo was breathtaking, but it was pretty much spoilt by the fact that it would not stop raining! It was, however, worth the journey, although in my opinion, just once is quite enough.