Out of Indonesia and into Singapore!

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Hello, hello!

So since leaving Lombok, we have flown to the island of Java which is home to most of Indonesia's population. We spent a couple days in the city of Jogjakarta before heading on to the capital city of Jakarta.

In Jogja, I spent a lot of time (and money!) visiting temples in the area. The first set of temples were Hindu and Buddhist temples that were built in the 9th century. Originally there were 250 temples I believe all in one area but an earthquake in the 11th century knocked them all down. They were later rebuilt by the Dutch in the late 1800s but the temples were incredible. Firstly, the original design and construction was fascinating - the temples were built out of stones that are shaped like puzzle pieces that have female and male parts so originally these massive temples were built without concrete or anything. Touring the temples, I learnt about Hinduism and my guide was eager to tell me lots of history and Hindu stories. I loved it! That night, I went to the the Jogja 'ballet' which was a dance performance to traditional music of the story that is depicted on the stones in the temple. It was pretty interesting to watch and the story was crazy since there were a million different characters and I never really understood WHAT was going on. The main gist was about someone stealing a princess... how original 😊

Our other adventure in Jogja had to do with the 'Batik mafia'! So apparently, in the city, there is a Batik mafia that buys (? or steals? or somehow acquires) Batik paintings from artists and then sells them for 10 times the price to tourists like us! So what happened was that before knowing this, Tory and I were lured into this gallery where they served us tea and fed us all of these lines about how the artist (the man touring us around) was inspired by life events, like when his sister got pregnant, he was inspired to paint this painting of a pregnant woman depicting the emacipation of women, etc etc etc and that the money from the paintings was given to an Oxfam charity and that he didn't care about the money, he just cared that his art was loved. BAH! I bought it hook, line and sinker and almost shelved out SO much money for a painting (because they truly are beautiful). What we found out later was that he wasn't an artist at all and the paintings were all copies, not originals and that the money definitely did NOT go to charity! So anyway, long story short, we started telling other tourists about this scam so they wouldn't get ripped off and the Batik mafia man found out and followed us yelling that were were cheap, and that our mothers were cheap whores! EGHAD! We were slightly freaked out and were glad to hightail it out of there!

That night, we took a night train to Jakarta where were walked around for a bit before heading to the airport. I'm glad we didn't spend too much time in Jakarta - it was a massive, dirty, busy and LOUD city. There are so many motorbikes, cars and these three wheel scooter things without mufflers or exhaust pipes. The air pollution was awful and were were SO dirty from being in our clothes and all day and all night and all day again. At the airport, we looked like such homeless wrecks! hahah

Anyhoo - coming to Singapore has been like taking a breath of fresh air. This place is INSANELY spotless (there is a HEAVY fine for littering) and orderly! The public transit is a dream and everyone is beautifully dressed and clean. We're staying in a hostel and are planning to tour around tomorrow. It's really expensive compared to what we've been used to in Indo so we'll only be here for about two or three days. Then it is off to Malaysia! I will write again after exploring Singapore and hopefully I will find a computer that has a working USB port so that I can put up pictures.

I hope to hear from you all if you have time - send me an email!
Lots of love,
Celia x

p.s. the day we spent at the airport trying to get off of the island of Lombok, I read the book "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls. It's an incredible memoir so add it to your summer reading list!

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