Ramadhan, a new kos, jalan-jalan

Hey peeps, sorry for the delay in udpates, been having too much fun. Probably the biggest news is that I’ve moved out of my previous ‘homestay’ house into the coolest place imaginable. After almost a month on the previous place (in Pogung Baru), I’d had enough cos the I

bu kos (the woman who runs the place and looks after people) was waaaaaaaay too overprotective, asking me where I wanted to go everytime I walked out my door into the kitchen. Also, there was a curfew, and although it was supposedly at 11pm (not too bad), wh

enever I got home after 9 the place was often completely looked… kinda problematic. Then, in the last week the owners decided to take in a new friend… a HUGE rooster, which lived on the other side of my window, about a meter away. Combined with the 3am get-up time to eat breakfast for ramadhan, the 4am wake up time of the rooster, who doesn’t like to sleep until 6pm, and crows whenever he’s awake, and all the other problems, I promptly started house hunting again. I decided that the Pogung Baru suburb was too sterile, not enough interaction between neighbours, so wanted to be on the other side of Kaliurang road

, which is closer to uni anyway. 

Here’s an introduction to house-hunting indonesia-style. 

You can find various types of accomodation: homestay; where you live with an indonesian family, but have your own room. Usually pretty luxurious, the families are rich.

Kos; which can range from almost a homestay, but with more rooms, to huge places, look almost like housing complexes. They are usually strictly all girls or all guys, with a guest room at the front of the house for guests (usually also the limit for ppl of the opposite sex). These either have a bathroom inside ur room, or shared. They also range in curfew limits from 9pm to no curfew at all, and provided services etc. At some, breakfast or wifi internet might be included, might be furnished or you might have to pay more to hire furniture.

Kontrakkan; which is where you rent a house with a group of friends, highly variable in price.

Kos’s are far more popular in jogja, than the other types because they tend to be cheaper, and they provide a group of similarly-aged uni friends. The process of finding a kos is getting into the suburbs and walking/riding, and asking everyone you see whether they know of a vacancy, then you get to see the room/s. the decision/negotiating/payment process usually takes place over a cup of hot sweet tea and cake. There’s no bond here, but the asking price is usually a minimum of 3 months upfront, but can also be 6 months or a year!

After a few days of looking, I came a

cross an enormous pink place, and a few guys there said that if I came back the next day I should be able to meet the owner and ask if there are any rooms. The fact that there were guys means it’s mixed, which is pretty rare. I wasn’t particularly looking for a 

mixed one, but strangely 2 of the 3 vacancies I looked at were in mixed kos’s. so I came back the next day, the owner was re-painting a room… I pretty much said I wanted straight away, so this is my new house! 76 people live here! It’s crazy!! Because most of the people I’d seen here are guys, I asked how many girls there are…. 

Thanks to me, the female population has just incresed 100%! There’s 2 of us! Everyone has a door that opens outside, with a bathroom within the room, so it’s very 

private. Almost all are students, and although most of them aren’t here at the moment because of the end of ramadhan (idul fitri) holidays, it still seems pretty busy. 

So, about ramadhan… the last month has been the fasting period for muslims around the world. As indonesia has the largest muslim population, this is a pretty big festival here. And I thought, as I’m living here, I might as well give it a go and get in on the festive community feeling. It means that you get up at about 3am for breakfast, then go back to bed. I find sleeping immediately after eating very difficult, so when I’m tired or have a 7am lecture, I just skip breakfast. From the time of the early morning azan (call to prayer), around 4am, til sunset at 5:40pm, muslims aren’t allowed to drink or eat. It all depends on how deeply religious or committed the individualy is, as to how extreme they go. I have many muslim friends who don’t really do it, or do it randomly for a few days now and then. For people who do hard labour, they’re supposed to still drink, but I think there are plenty of people who would say that the work is not hard enough to warrant drinking. At buka puasa time, when the fasting stops, hundreds of roadside stalls set up around the city, especially around the uni’s. you can buy all sorts of yummy juices, icy fruit soup, little cakes and banana snacks, fruit, coconut drink, and other things I don’t know the name of. I’ve been fasting (for food only) for most of the time, except when travelling and my friends want me to try different food which isn’t in jogja. I tried half a day without water, gave me a huge headache and didn’t feel good. You sweat so much here, and the roads are so dusty and polluted, I dunno how people can not drink every day. It’s the 28th of september today, the last day of fasting is the 30th  or the 1st. there’s gonna be lots of parties, lots of eating and celebrating for about a week. My birthday is on the 2nd, so I imagine that everyone’s going to be feeding me lots. Also, because there’s about 2 weeks of holidays for most students, almost everyone has left jogja to go home, pulang kampung, to spend idul fitri with their families. It’s like how australians always try to be home for christmas. 

On Thursday after a forestry class I was talking to one of the students who I had vaguely met previously. He started telling me about his research project on the coast, where he’s finding out about how to us pine trees to stop coastal erosion. 

I said that I really like beaches and that his project sounded really interesting, so he said he’d take me the next day! We left jogja at 2 on Friday, and travelled south west for about 2.5 hours… it doesn’t sound far, but it’s a very long way sitting on the back of a bike. All of your skin shakes and jarrs…. You can’t feel it when you’re moving, but when you get off it feels so weird! It’s like pins and needles, but all over. I guess it doesn’t happen in city driving because it’s slower. Hery (that’s the guy) said when we left uni that we’d go to his house first… a bit confusing, cos we left jogja in the opposite direction to where he told me he lives. Anyway, we drove and drove and drove, went through Purworejo city, which surprised me cos that’s where one of my best friends lives, and he always talks about it. After another city or 2 we entered a village, and stopped. It was his parents house! Not his jogja house! That was a bit awkward! So met the parents, and as it wasn’t long til the end of fasting we waited around and ate there. Then we kept driving for about half an hour to Ambal, a little town about 2 ks from the coast. There’s a kontrakkan house there (remember from the house hunting lesson?) which is rented by a group of people who work with an extensive forest rehabilitation project, in conjunction with the local community. Apparently lecturers from my uni (UGM) occasionally stay there to check up on the projects, and so do the students doing research. There were about 6 others there, we just chatted about uni, the local area, then watched a James Bond movie. I had to train my ears to understand english again! Although english is used here, it’s usually sparse in conversation, only with my australian friends do I often speak english. Also, I told Ape (my friend from purworejo, who I have classes with) that we had passed through his city, and he invited Hery and I to go an visit the next day.

I slept on a bed with one of the female researchers, after we had both agreed that we were definitely tired. The bed was quite different! The structure was made from very narrow metal, and the bed base was flattened bamboo. The mattress was thin, and made from some dense organic thing, meaning the whole bed was very hard, and whenever you moved it creaked like crazy. Also, indonesians have a fear of sleeping in the dark, so we slept with the light on. Yay! In the morning I went to the local market with Sul, another girl who lives there and does some housekeeping and cooking. This was seriously a rural village! Although, still got its own quirky innovations. Ok, so a becak is a pedal powered form of transport, similar to the rickshaw in india, but here the driver sits at the back. In ambal, they’ve further complied with the national aversion to exercise, and stuck an engine at the back, where the pedals normally are! It’s a suped-up speedy becak, allowing a speedy arrival at the market through the coconut palm groves. The market was nice, lots of ladies sitting on low platforms, surrounded by huge baskets of chillis, oranges, apples, mangoes, corn, cabbages, leafy green veggies, potatoes, carrots, garlic, onions, spring onions, rice, noodles, chicken, tempe, tofu, everything necessary for the daily cooking. I was probably a lot taller and whiter than anyone they’d seen for a while, so I guess I can understand all the pointing and whispering… after Sul got all the food (and cigarettes from the little shop next to the market, for the guys back at the house), we walked back. Then Hery and I went for a ride to a few of the beaches. They’re black sand, not white because the source of the sand is volcanic rock. He is researching about the best environment, amount of water and distance to plant the pine trees to prevent erosion.

From where we were standing, there was 4km on either side of planted trees along the coast, all planted by the local communities. We went through chilli and corn plantations to get to and from the beach, then travelled a few ks more, and entered another large village farming area, this time for watermelons. We were there at harvesting time, people were filling up trucks with hundreds of the things. 

On the way back to the house in ambal we had chicken sate (yes, I eat chicken here because if I didn’t so many people would be offended when I refuse the food they offer), which is a specialty of the town. Sate in most of the country uses peanuts in the sauce, but there they use soybeans, the basis of tempe and tofu. The taste was similar, just not as crunchy. Had a shower back at the house, then went on our way to Purworejo to meet Ape. His friend Aang came along too, who I’d already met in jogja, I think he studies nuclear engineering at UGM. They live in the same house in jogja (not coincidentally, on purpose), went to school together in Purworejo and both managed to get high enough scores to enter UGM. So Aang was in Purworejo anyway because of idul fitri. We drove to Ape’s house and talked about the adventures in Ambal, while eating fresh mango ^-^!! After an hour or so Hery and I were planning to leave, went into the dining room to say goodbye to the parents, and the table was laid out with food! So there we were, eating again! 

Ape, ape’s mum, sister, me, ape’s dad, aang

After that Hery and I went to Glagah beach, maybe half an hour from that city. He’s got research activities there too. This area is so nice, I can’t believe it’s not full of tourists! There are heaps of little motels, lots of beaches to walk along, and a really pretty lake area where you can hire a boat and driver, and there’s recently been wave breaks built so that ships can enter a new port. Also, there’s heaps of dragon fruit farms. The plant is a type of cactus, whick is grown upa tall stake, the seedlings and fruit are both really expensive. I wanted to try one, but they had all been sold… I don’t know who to, seeing as there were barely any tourists.

After that, we returned all the way to jogja! A very long trip, but much fun. I spent the night hanging out with my kos mates, singing along while guys played guitars. I’m going to jakarta on Friday to meet a friend, doing my own version of pulang kampung, going home for the holidays. 

Oh yes, here’s a random bit of information… indonesia has the best stuff to get rid of ants, and its such a good idea! The chemical which kills them is mixed with what I guess is chalk, and made into chalk sticks. Then, wherever the ants are, you draw a few lines on the floor or wall, when they touch it they get sick, and when they touch other ants they get sick too, after a few hours it kills the whole nest! It’s quite a cool invention.

Ok, it’salmost time to break the fast (get it, break-fast, haha, except it’s more like dinner time). Hopefully I can upload this soon, been having internet complications.

Cya!!