Selamat sore and good afternoon. We couldn’t find any excuse to avoid a blog of our summer adventures in Southeast Asia, because internet cafes only cost 50 cents an hour. We hope you enjoy our posts, and feel free to contact us if you think of any way to improve them.
First, let’s set the stage. Amos arrives in Yogyakarta, Indonesia on June 3rd. Emmy arrives on June 4th. “Ma’af,” says Emmy, “I got the dates wrong.” Jetlag notwithstanding, this first week we explore two major cities in Central Java, three temples, and one active volcano.
Emmy is unflappable after a year of Indonesian life, but the first thing that left Amos termangu-mangu (bamboozled) was the driving. Wrong side of the road, and we don’t just mean the lanes are switched like in England. Lane dividers mean nothing. Street lights are rare, stop signs nonexistent. Merging and crossing vehicles intimidate their way through oncoming traffic. Cars are in the minority—instead you swerve around an entire family perched on a motorbike, becaks (rickshaws) and horse-drawn carriages moving 20 mph slower than the rest of the traffic, giant yellow dump trucks, tourist buses barreling down alleys half their size, a moped towing a lifetime supply of hay, and a bicyclist balancing a 25-foot bamboo pole on his shoulder and a baby in his other arm. Amazingly,there is order within chaos. The traffic moves slowly enough that no matter how many drivers pull into oncoming traffic at the same time, there is always plenty of time to slow down, beep your horn, and screech away with a lock of the other person's hair between your teeth.
The family vehicle: a two-seater motorbike. Little Suzie sure is doing a good job in the driver's seat. And Precious Princess #2 sure has a great view!
On the morning of Day 1 Yogyakarta, Emmy and Amos met their excellent guide Ujik for a tour about traditional herbal medicine or jamu. First stop: a cramped outdoor market, where various roots, leaves, and unidentifiables are ground up to make a potent brew that tastes delicious after we learn that yellow turmeric cures constipation, cinnamon helps diabetes, and white turmeric battles kanker. We lick the brotowali root, and immediately discover why that means “bitter” in Indonesian. After grinding turmeric and cinnamon together to make our own jamu, we discover the true meaning of Indonesian traditional medicine—the blind massage parlor. Amos’s masseur could not see his squeamish expression, but he did spend a long time twisting Amos’s leg hair in awe.
Who knew traditional medicine could be this sexy? That's one hot jamu seller in the market.
Amos gets down and dirty with the turmeric. Hopefully it'll get everything flowing smoothly again.
To cap off our day, we visited Borobodur, the largest Buddhist temple in the Southern Hemisphere. It may be a World Heritage Site and the number one tourist attraction on the entire island of Java, but it just wasn’t quite as titillating as the blind massage.
Borbodur: not as good as his blind massage.
We have explored Emmy’s favorite restaurants in Yogyakarta and Solo, two neighboring cities where dinner costs $1.50 (for Amos, $3.00), even if that dinner is… cobra! For less money than Amos paid for a Warren Country school lunch, you can watch a live cobra hiss, flare, get decapitated, skinned, chopped and grilled into tasty cobra skewers (satay). And of course Emmy and Amos drank the cobra’s blood and intestines, mixed with Red Bull. It’s a special jamu that increases virility and circulation. The jamu also contains a slimy, black, oval-shaped organ, but we couldn’t identify it—a semi-literate cobra veteran searched for the word for 20 minutes in our dictionary, and finally decided it was the snake’s “Peru.”
The cobra flares.
Amos and little Suzie watch as Cobra man squeezes out the snake's blood.
Enak, Indonesian for delicious!
Believe it or not, we didn’t drive two hours to Solo just to drink cobra blood. The purpose of our trip was to see erotic and exotic Hindu temples amidst the tea plantations in the foothills of the holy mountain Gunung Lawu. While Candi Sukuh is better known for fertility symbols (including a two-foot phallus that the British removed), we loved Candi Cetoh because of the thousand-foot ascent through tea plantations. The climb was so steep that the two big bules couldn’t make it up on one motorbike. We hired a local and his more powerful motorbike to tote Amos to the top, but in vain. Emmy and the entire local population laughed shamelessly as Amos trudged the last hundred meters on foot.
Emmy and Amos pose at the gates to Temple Candi Sukuh. 600 years ago, unmarried women had to climb these steps without tearing their sarong to prove their virginity.
Check out that wingspan.
Emmy posing behind a statue at Temple Candi Sukuh. Not as spectacular as the one the British stole.
Amos got a little overheated at Candi Sukuh so we cooled off at a waterfall in between temples.
Amos and his ojek driver.
Amos had no dignity to lose after his climb of shame up to Temple Candi Cetoh.
Emmy climbs up Candi Cetoh's symmetrical entranceways.
Emmy admires the view on the way down from Candi Cetoh. 
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