Travel Tales II
OOoh Miss Kumi just struck me at all the right notes^_^. If you need a reminder, this is Miss Kumi. 
This is a pretty small pic though. I am not a fan of Kumi’s. I just like her song Chase. She’s pretty slutty in manner of appearance and her songs remind you of Ayumi Hamasaki. Nothing very original. So just listen to whatever that fancies you, really.
Anyway, I mean to continue my tale of Yogyakarta today. Right, we arrived in Solo at night and drove to Yogyakarta which was about an hour away. One of the things that you might notice as soon as you arrive there are the number of KFCs. There’s about one in every corner of the street. And they are all big, like warehouse sizes. Some are even stand-alone buildings. And the buildings themselves were impressive. They carried traditional Javanese designs, a bit like the Chinese pagodas. Real nice. There’s also a lot of McDs, but KFC outnumbered them. I didn’t go to any KFC though. I prefer the local treats heh. I tried the bakso.
This is basically chicken soup nood
les with large fish balls in it. Nice indeed. If you ever get a chance to try it, please do! This can found all over Indonesia I heard. However, if you’re in a big city like Jakarta, you might want to be careful. Some notorious vendors made bakso out of rats to cut cost due to price competition. *shudders* I think you can tell the different between chicken and rodents, right?
The ‘akad nikah’ was on the second night we’re there. It was really something. I mean, the house was too small for guests so they set up chairs on the narrow street outside. The arrangements of the houses in that area itself is interesting. Anyway, here’s what I meant.
Took us a while to get there and we were well, fashionably late as you might call it. After all, we’re technically from the bride’s side and we came all the way from Malaysia just to attend this wedding. So the hosts quickly offered us seats. In addition, our seats were directly in front of the house where the ceremony was taking place. Besides, it wasn’t our fault we were late. It was our driver’s fault. Stupidity doesn’t even begin to describe him. He was slow and clueless and on our way to the wedding he stopped to ask directions about almost every five minutes or so. Gaaaah. We’re foreigners after all. How would it look like if we suddenly burst into someone else’s ceremony (of a different country too!)? Yes, exactly.
In the end, he won the term ‘not how many’ which is a direct translation of the Malay version ’sik berapa’. The full term is ’sik berapa gilak’ which usually means that person is not very reliable/edaquate/good in certain aspects eg. financially, academically. But ’sik berapa’ on itself only means stupid in this context. Fortunately, the next day, we were assigned a different driver.
Anyway, the night’s ceremony was pretty traditional. Considering it was only an akad nikah. But the outfit was pretty. 
This is how she looked like that morning. After that breakfast we went sight seeing. Back to the night’s festivities. This whole wedding goes like this. I think this is generally how people there do it. After the whole akad nikah is done with, the couple and the parents of both bride and groom stood at the dais there. There’s even seats for the parents at both sides of the dais. Then when they are settled, family members and close relatives will start off to greet them and congratulate them. Then the rest of the guests will create a bee-line towards to the couple and the parents to shake hands and congratulate them. After they are done with this, they proceed straight to the food. The food are served buffet style so you will have a line coming from the guest seats, going to the dais, and on to the buffet counter.
Very interesting. Because here, the guests don’t personally walk up to the bride and groom. Except for the ‘tepung tawar’ ceremony. But even then, only family and relatives get to do that. In every aspect of the Malaysian Malay wedding, the couple is ‘untouchable’. They only communicate with you by waiting outside and bid you good bye as you leave. Then again, not all couples do that.
So I think this is very good. We should try this. Hehehe. Oh and the food. The food was good. They have soup. That’s different. And the satay was niiiiice. I’ve never had satay quite like that before. And the dessert was ice cream. That night it was yam ice cream with a couple of jelly slices in them. Usually you eat the jelly cake and ice cream separately. But this one they put the jelly slices at the bottom and put ice cream on top. I don’t have a pic of it but I do have a pic of the rice. 
Classy. We took some pics that night heh. And the mother of the bride was really traditional, with hair in her big bun of a hair hehehe.
The next day is the wedding or ‘bersanding’. I think the procedure is pretty much the same. Again, we were slightly late. But we didn’t intend on coming early anyway and we got a different driver so yay! Mr. Not How Many got on our nerves. We’re glad to be rid of him. After all, we paid good money to hire them :P. It was actually a double wedding. The groom’s brother was also included in the wedding although he and his wife were married about a month ago. Just wanted to make it more official I guess :/.
The ceremony was amazing. It was held in this open air hall which is actually a Hindu museum sort of place. A wedding in a museum! There were lots of those ’signs’ outside the hall. Mostly congratularoty messages from friends and family from both Yogyakarta and Pontianak.
The costumes were…wow. I mean, wow. 
I just can’t find the right word for them. Especially the groom’s. He wore earrings damnit! And there were many flowers. They really went all out in this wedding. After all, Bibah is their only daughter. The parents were no less amazing. 
Its been proven! The lady in the Mustika Ratu logo does exist! And her name is Aunt Tirta!! She’s the one holding Sarah’s shoulders. Honestly, she really does look like the Mustika Ratu lady. She’s so much fun. The dangdut song was the background music throughout the wedding and she danced as she greeted us and made us dance with her! Hahaha!
I really like the theme of that day. They all wore traditional clothes. The women in pink, the men in black. There’s also a real keris on the back. S
ee? I even took pictures with their reception girls. I just like their whole costumes I think they weren’t so happy that I interrupted their lunch hehe. The way to the dais was filled with relatives and you have to shake hands with each of them. Its kinda weird. But nice, heh. Coming from Malaysia, we must have looked like tourists to them. Hehehe. 
The food was also buffet style. With ice cream and jelly again hehehe. After some more dancing and taking pictures we went back to the hotel and went out againt to do some sight seeing. Aunt Tirta wanted to join us but she couldn’t leave the on-going ceremony. Aaaww.
So! We went to that Chandi Borobudur! Yay! The one with the stupa things. I didn’t really touch the one you make a wish with, but I did touched one of them. The actual one was swarming with too many wishful visitors :P.
The stupas, or the large bells where there’s a buddha sitting in them were placed in three levels. the highest one being the biggest bell. Interesting stuff.
I’m trying to achieve peace by meditating here. Ohm…
After all, that’s what all those buddhas are doing hehehe. You have to admire the little details they put in each buddha statues. Buddhas facing different directions have different hand gestures. Pity most of them have no heads. The whole thing used to be underground due to constant volcanic eruptions nearby. The archeologists actually dug it up. The volcano is still active and recently it had been releasing smoke. Better be careful heh…
Please don’t mind the font |:{. Its custom made.
I think I’ll stop here for now hehe. I have stuff to do before bed. Tomorrow I will go to the gym. Yay!
Hope you guys are not entirely bored out by my tale of travel hahaha! Ta’ra!
