Yogyakarta Visit – Nomor Dua

So this past weekend I went to Yogyakarta again. I really do love Yogyakarta. I’m glad when I do research I’ll be staying there. Which, by the way my current plan is to work with Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta for my research. Hopefully they’ll still want me once I get a grant. 😉

So ya… We left friday at 1:30pm for Yogya after a trip to the coffee plantation! Let’s start there. The coffee plantation was fun. They produce coffee luwak there. Anyone know what that is? Oh it is delish coffee friends. It is also pooped out by a cat looking animal.

A Civet (American name) or Luwak (Indonesian name) – Coffee Luwak Makers

Besides seeing the ADORABLE Luwak we also went for a walk around the plantation. They export all of their coffee beans from this plantation which rounds out to about 3,000 tons a month. Crazy huh? They also employ about 1,300 people to work this plantation. And you know, the Luwaks. So what is coffee luwak. You’re dying to know huh? SO… what they do is they feed the luwak coffee beans and the luwak are particular about their beans; they will only eat the ripest and the best quality beans. Then they poop it out.

Luwak Poop!

Yes. They eat it and then poop it. Then the beans are placed in the sun to dry, then broken apart, then (thank goodness) removed from their shell and (HOORAY) cleaned. Then the beans are roasted and sent to you and me to enjoy. So, why is this coffee worth drinking? Why would you drink poop coffee? Because it is delicious. More on this later. After the walk about the plantation we got in a “train” to see more of the plantation. It was a car shaped like a train. Very cute. We drove about and saw how beautiful coffee plantations are.

Yes… I realize I write this as you are forced to look at a bucket of poop. But here come some pictures of pretty things for you!

Coffee Nursery

The View

The COTI and LTC group

After we drove around in the trains for a while we were showed the resort on the plantation. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. It was interesting… the rooms were nice and big. But why? So they had publicity photos (yes they took pictures) of bule at their hotel? Hoping we would come back? I dunno why. What I do know is we ran out of time and couldn’t drink and coffee while we were at the plantation. That was a bummer.

Then we went back to LTC picked up our bags and met our drive to take us to Yogya! Yay! First on the agenda was meeting Bu Juliana’s friend who is a pastor and a human rights activist. Why did we meet him? I’m still a bit hazy on that. We didn’t really get to ask him any questions about his work. We kind of just sat around and chit-chatted. No matter. We got to Yogya and we met a new nice person. All is well.  Following this Emma, Julia, and I went to our hotel. The name of the hotel is Tiga Lima (yes 35 to those who speak Indonesian). It was very cheap and very nice.

Our room at Tiga Lima

We got the deluxe room. Which meant it was about a whole $33 a night. I love Yogyakarta. Oh right, it was a little more because we put that extra bed you see in the room. That way all three of us could stay in the room. It was nice to be together. Then it was only $11 a person. Nice. Friday night we also went out to what may become my favorite restaurant in Yogya: Nanamia. It is western food and their pizza is good by American standards. I ate a whole pizza Friday night. It was called the Hawaiian. Very tasty. I think next time I’ll get the Nanamia special though. That pizza is amazing. After, it was too early to sleep so we went to a cafe named Cafe Chokolat. You can imagine what the sell. I had a nice hot cocoa with a chocolate spoon! Hooray! Then we all had a good, albeit cold, nights sleep. The aircon in the hotel was crazy. We turned it off the second night. I think we’ve all adapted to the temps here. It was too much. Then Saturday we went to Borobudur!

The stairs up to Borobudur

This Hindu temple was WAY up there on my list and so I’m so glad I got to go and I didn’t have to go by myself. Emma, Matt, and Megan have already been. A couple of times in some cases. So I was glad Julia went with me while Emma, a fellow nerd, went on a book finding and buying adventure. The temple was nice. Especially since my UKSW library card got me the local rate of $3 and not the foreigner rate of $18. Any student can get a $9 rate but it was sure nice to be a “local.” Julia and I put on our mandatory sarong and walked our way up to the temple. There were some stairs, not to many but then you could see the gorgeous temple in the distance. I was very excited. This temple as reliefs on all levels, over 1,400. The temple leads people through three levels of Buddhist cosmology: Kamadhatu, Rupadhatu, and Arupadhatu. The world of desire, forms, and formless respectively. It was beautiful. Here are a few pictures. There are more on my facebook.

Borobudur

A relief

The Stupas

Saturday night we went out to dinner (Matt, Julia, and I because Emma had plans) to an Achenesse restaurant. I had the martobak and curry and it is so yummy. I highly recommend. Emma came and joined us and we decided after dinner that it was again too early to turn in and we went to a coffee shop to get a quick coffee and hang out. It was nice to just sit on comfy couches and talk with people. I really do like all the COTI kids. Still! haha. They are wonderful.

The next day we checked out, left out bags at the hotel, and went shopping! We went to a big batik store and got lots of nice things. It was fun walking around the Malioboro area and shopping for things. After shopping at Merota Batik we went to the Malioboro mall. This is where we got the glory of all glories: Coffee Luwak. We went to Cafe Luwak (shocker that they sell coffee luwak right?) for some deliciousness. I ordered a 100% coffee luwak and a 5% coffee luwak. The difference was amazing. The 100% coffee was so smooth and has no bitter after taste. No wonder it is the most expensive cup of coffee in the world. Yes that is right. I have had the most expensive cup of coffee in the world. It was smooth, had no bitter after taste, and was just nice. The 5% was ok. There wasn’t anything special about it. But I needed to try it because it helped me decide souvenirs. Yes, that is correct. Three of you will be getting poop coffee. Who? I cannot tell you. But I have made up my mind and I know who is getting it. Three of you will be getting the most expensive cup (that is right they come in single servings) of coffee in the world as your oleh-oleh (gift you bring back for people when you travel, even just to another city). As James Shirmer would say: YOU’RE WELCOME. After a nice coffee break we went down to J.Co (a Starbucks alternative) so Julia could get some non-poop coffee and we had some donuts. We then went and bough Monggo Chocolate. Very nice chocolate made by around Yogyakarta and usually features wayang kulit characters on its wrappers. Love it.

Eventually we made our way to DayTrans to catch out ride home. DayTrans is a lovely company that will drive you between Yogyakarta and a bunch of cities. Including Salatiga. It is a comfortable and inexpensive way to travel. One way costs 40,000 rupiah or about $4.20. Worth it for the three hour drive. It has nice seats that recline, shades, aircon, and they give you a little snack box if you travel at 6pm. Which we have done both times because it is the last car out and we want to spend as much time in Yogyakarta as possible. The ride home was nice and we made it safe and sound and I fell asleep pretty fast.

Now I sit at Frame with my chocolate drink and wifi having a lovely day. I presented for our FGD or discussion group today about an article on female dalang. Even if I forgot a lot of words people said it went well because I knew a lot about what the article was talking about. Yay. Oh have I mentioned that COTI has themes by week. First was education.. or politics… or I don’t know. The first 5 weeks blended together as a mass of education, politics, religion, and more education and politics and religion. This past week, week 6, was about the environment… hence the coffee plantation visit. Now this week it is culture! HOORAY! This is my week. The theme I submitted. Yesterday we had a speaker about culture and discussed arts and culture. Today we discussed reog (a dance form) and wayang kulit! We even got to play gamelan today. It was AWESOME. I forgot how fun it is. It was fun to be thrown back into it. It was like riding a bicycle. And now to finish my lovely day… MORE CHOCOLATE.

See y’all later.