A photography trip to Old Banten

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Inspired by my friend Wasti’s beautiful photographs, I decided to join a weekend photography tour on June 8th, 2013 to learn about long exposure by Chaerul Umam. The location took place in Cilegon, an hour and half drive from Jakarta. I and my niece Nina had a rented car with a driver and left for Cilegon on Saturday morning. Once arrived, we attended a brief session on basic of photography and long exposure, followed by a lunch at the Sundanese restaurant.

After lunch, we headed towards Anyer beach, about an hour from Cilegon. I had not been here for more than ten years and used to visit this place for a weekend when I used to live in Jakarta. Nothing much has changed. The road condition has not improved much either. Our learned skills were soon tested when we had to put all the knowledge into practise at an abandoned pier. Thankfully, with the guidance of Umam, we managed to get a postcard look a like shot of the sunken boat and abandoned pier. After lunch, we headed to Carita Beach to catch the sunset. We were taken to a semi mangrove beach which I had not visited before, and this time, Chaerul let us trying our skill without much guidance. Thankfully, it was still fresh in my mind and I was able to apply those knowledge into practice. Voila, I got my sunset shot of the beach using long exposure. We had dinner at a fish soup restaurant which was tasty before heading back to our hotel.

The next day after breakfast, we headed towards a fisherman village at Old Banten, which used to be the capital city of Sultanate of Banten (where my ancestor came from). Interestingly, when I looked up internet for the history of the place, there was a linkage to Cirebon as the Sultanate of Banten was actually founded by the son of Sunan Gunungjati (who founded Cirebon). Similar to Cirebon, Old Banten used to be an important port during its time especially for spices, silk, ceramics, gold and jewelry. Unfortunately, as of today, it’s difficult to see the remains of those glory days.

We visited a fisherman village called Lontar which is the center of its activities for many fishermen coming from other parts of the country: Indramayu, Demak and even Makassar on their wooden boats. When we arrived in the morning, there was a fish auction going on near the pier. All fishermen came with their catch and waited for the result, which was an interesting sight as I had not seen a traditional fish auction before.

When I started taking my photos on the pier, we noticed a few men went into the water, surfaced and went inside the water again. When asked what they were doing, the man said that he took the sea weed from the bottom of the seabed. This was the way how the locals made their living he said; they were no longer made a living from the sea. Most fishermen came from other region. They were kind and offered me coffee as it was scotching hot and they said coffee could avoid from getting a headache. It’s not polite to not take their offer, so I did and enjoyed the coffee anyway.

The men explained that the adjacent island had been digged for its sand, being exported to Singapore - which left nothing much to the local community (I thought the Spore government has banned import of sand from Indonesia? anyway, I didn’t bother argue with them). Just like any other remote places in Indonesia, the people are very friendly and not reluctant to share the story. I thought this was the highlight of the trip besides being able to take those post card like quality - thanks to Chaerul Umam. They offered me if I’d like to go to the Inner Badui, a traditional tribe residing in the inner of Banten. My answer was ‘you bet’ - but I was not sure if I could take the challenge i.e. walking a few hours into the jungle and sleep in the locals’ house with mosquito nets. By the way, visiting this tribe is on my list as they remained untouched from the modern world: they don't own any electronics and still believe in traditional way of living (we occasionally spot them in Jakarta, reached on foot, because of their distinctive traditional outfit).

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