Day: August 7, 2012

Cirebon

/ klynnetree / Leave a comment

The lineage of Siti Jenar

Our trip to Cirebon was interesting. Very interesting. Not good, not bad. Just interesting. First we had our journey on the night train. Holy cow was that train cold! It was the coldest vehicle I have ever been in. And I’ve taken a night train in Russia in February. This train was FREEZING! I couldn’t sleep it was so cold. I was warned it was going to be cold. So I brought a cardigan. Not a parka! Besides the freezing temps and the man sitting near us with the cough from death land, the train was ok. We got into Cirebon at about 4am. Luckily there were a bunch of people out and about preparing to fill up for the day before the sun rose. It made it safe to walk from the station to our hotel. Even though it was incredibly close it would have been a bit sketchy to walk at maybe 1 or 2am. The hotel was fine. Nothing special. It was a place to sleep and it was clean. Really all you need right? Also breakfast was included. Hooray. So only 3 short hours after checking in we got back up and ate breakfast. A nice spread of bubur (rice porridge), nasi goreng (fried rice), fruit, chicken, and other breakfast like items. It was nice. Even better because it came with the room.
After food we hopped onto an angkota and headed off to grave hunt! More research for Emma’s MA thesis. It was interesting. It always is interesting to go grave hunting with Emma. I learn things about how people treat their dead, how they worship specific people, etc. and I even learn a thing or two about conversation and interviewing in Indonesian from Emma. All in all a good time had by all. Except for the trash. The trash made me sad. There were piles and piles of trash surrounding the grave yard. I know it is a cultural thing but to me it just seemed disrespectful. Even more so than the loads of trash in the river that made it smell of rotten eggs. Cirebon was kind of dirty now that I think about it. Definitely more so than Yogyakarta or Salatiga.
After seeing the grave of Siti Jenar we went to another large grave complex, Sunan Gunung Jati. It was interesting because of the multiple layers of influence including Chinese influences, but sadly full of beggars. Which is always an awkward situation. Do you give money and then be swarmed by everyone else? I only had so many small bills on me. Do you give to children and support the industry of creating children beggars because they pull on your heart strings? What would you do? We played it on a case by case basis and did not give money to the 5 or 6 children following us around. It was hard.  On a silver lining note the view from the top of the graveyard was beautiful.

View of Cirebon

After Sunan Gunung Jati, we went to one of the best places ever invited in Indonesia. J.Co. The Indonesian starbucks. Why is it the best? It always seems to pop up right when I NEED a coffee. Emma and I stopped here for much needed caffeine and we got huge bottles of water from a store nearby. It was glorious. We drank coffee, relaxed on a very hot day, and made plans to batik shop! Which we did. We got in a becak and drove off to a street with a couple batik stores.

Megamendung Pattern from Cirebon

We really wanted something with the cirebon pattern, the megamendung pattern. I got a nice shirt in red and a scarf in green and gold. I am head over heels in love with the scarf. I may not even wear it. I may hang it on my wall as art. It is green. Like my jingju doll and my fan from Japan. I could great an Asian wall of green. And gold actually… all three have gold too. I’ve really started to like gold here. Go figure.
After shopping we decided to drop stuff off at the hotel and head out for dinner. Since we accidentally skipped lunch. Oh well, we had a donut right? We asked the guy at the front desk for a recommendation and he came through. We had Nasi Lengko and it was so super yummy. It has cucumbers, tofu, tempeh, rice, and peanuty sambal. So darn good. I should have had two. I did not, however, because we had a night fair to get to! That’s right. We went to a night fair at a mosque after dinner. Boy were we looked at strange, but more on that later. The night fair also had a book fair where Emma went crazy! She got ten more books. Ten! Adding to her mass amounts of bookness on this trip. Which I totally understand because if they had a wayang or even an arts book fair I would have gone crazy too. We then walked around and looked at the rest of the goods and the snacks that were available for everyone breaking their fast. We got two sesame balls. Then our tired buts headed back to the hotel. We had been up for a very long time.
The next day we planned on going to the keraton. I say planned because we got there and it was closed. Oops. It said on the front door that the museum was open on Sundays at 8am and it was 9am. However, sometimes things just don’t go as planned. So we went and found a very beautiful Buddhist temple. The men we met in the temple were very nice too. They gave us a tour, talked to us about their religion, and showed us a lot of the temple. It was a beautiful place filled with kind people. We also tried to get a fortune but apparently Buddha didn’t believe us and neither Emma or I got a fortune. Oops.

Inside the temple

Following the temple we went back to the hotel to back up. Our train home left the station at 12:20pm and we wanted to make sure we made it. We did by the way. We took it to Semarang and then hoped in a travel back to Salatiga. This train was much better temperature wise… but NOT better people wise. I would take a death cough over the parents we sat in front of on this trip. The parents (two moms) would rather sleep on the train than watch their kids. They ran wild the whole time including PUTTING PLASTIC BAGS OVER THEIR HEADS. I tried to take it off the kid once and the mom saw and thought I wanted the damn bag. No, I don’t want the bag I want to not watch your child die. “Oh I’ll take care” said the mom. Ya right, you’ll sleep and then smack your kid when they touch you. Jerk. Bad Parenting 101 on that trip. I will be a better parent times 100,000,000. Holy crap. That was a hard feeling to shake once we got off the train. So what did we do? Went to Frame coffee shop to drink coffee and shake some bad parenting anger off us. We also had to finish our final papers because they were due at 9am the next day. Mine is finsihed. Not perfect… but done.
Oh! Also, about the people looking at us strangely. We did see other white people in Cirebon but not that many. By the way people looked at us in this city you’d think we were purple. Wow, did they stare. Also, yell out. HEY MISTER. We got that a lot. It was just very odd how much people would stare in Cirebon. It was more noticeable than anywhere else. Very odd. Very odd indeed.
That is about it for Cirebon. I leave Indonesia very soon. Monday to be exact. I can’t wait for the program to be over at this point. Five hours of language study a day is A LOT of language study. However, I am not ready to leave Indonesia. There is still so much more I want and need to do. Can I have a grant now so I can come back ASAP? K thanks.