Indonesia

1:29 PM

Pictures are worth a thousand words?

One of the royal bathing pools. This pool was for the women and children. The royal family would be washed in this, essentially an enormous bathtub.

Local women painting batik. Some batik designs are drawn on the fabric with hot wax to prevent bleeding but this one was drawn with normal fabric pencil. It can take hours to complete a design like the one on her shirt, and then the shirt might sell for only $10. It's a tedious art that I feel can be under appreciated. Batik is not easy!

Snuck my camera into the batik shop... Portraits like this can sell for $100. They might take days to complete. All of these are hand drawn, not traced or copied from somewhere else.

Overlooking one of the many temples we visited. A UNESCO world heritage site located in Solo City, each of the upside down bell stone structures used to hold a small Buddha statue. The temple was crafted almost entirely by laborers.

Civet poop coffee! Said to be the most expensive coffee in the world, Kopi Luwak is made from covet cat (kind of like a monkey cat mix) droppings. The cats eat the beans and then the acids in their stomach treat the beans to make an extremely dark and smooth coffee. Very strong, but don't add sugar or milk to appreciate the full flavor, aroma, and texture. (I sound like such a coffee aficionado!)

One of the royal family's pet birds. He was very old and seemed very sad. Forlorn looking body. But at least he wasn't caged. Then again, he wasn't singing.

My favorite part of the trip was meeting some of the other YES Abroad students that have actually been staying in Jogja since October! Julianne and Darlene accompanied us to yet another temple. It was strange talking about their years with them. I enjoyed it though, it makes me so excited to share my experiences with my very international group of friends!

The story goes: a suitor built all these temples for his lover before sunrise so she would marry him, but she refused and ever since then her spirit was locked in one of the temples. Indonesians are very superstitious people, so we weren't even allowed in some chambers of the temples due to spirits.