After Bali, I went back to my hometown, Yogyakarta. Before this trip, I managed to push 2 of best friends to join me in Jogja. They were Robert and Nurman. I told them the beauty of Jogja, Borobudur and Prambanan, and about the fact that Jogja is the 2nd destination for tourist after Bali. Well, I did told them the truth about Jogja, but honestly….. I’m not sure that this small city could satisfy them.
Being friends with them for almost half a year make me realize that tourist except Indonesia has different preferences. When I think of indonesian tourist, I’m thinking about Malioboro and Bringharjo. But when it comes to foreigner, they dont like shopping or souvenirs. They prefer sight seeing and doing activities, which is not that much in Yogyakarta, or at least the ones that I know of. Not to mention, when I flew from Singapore to Jogja, I chatted with a French guy sitting next to me and he said he just gonna spend a weekend. Eh? It seems a weekend is enough to explore Jogja. So I asked Eline, a friend of mine who teach bahasa to exchange students in our campus. I simply asked her to ask her foreigner friends about what to do in this city, where to rent bike, ect…..
And there we were, arrived in Jogja, so disgusting, so tired, no money (we slept on the beach the night before). For the first day, all we did was simply sleeping. The next day I prepared nothing but the temples for them. Eline told me some places, so just in case they asked, I know what to answer and where to go. Fortunately, Nurman also had things to do in his mind, about the mountain climbing and wayang kulit. So I think I’m gonna be just fine.
I was wrong, it was not fun. It was GREAT!! Apparently Nurman and Robert enjoyed being in Jogja so much. Maybe because we had a rough time in Bali with all the robbery and other stuff, Jogja seemed to be a good place to rest. As for the activities, it was so simple and easy. I didn’t know that they were easy to pleased.
First place we went was Internet cafe because they need to work on the stolen credit card. After that we went to the biggest mall in my city to get some groceries for breakfast and they were so excited because they found some European bread and butter and cheese. Eh? They could find even better one in Singapore. They bought some bread, milk, kiri, and…… they made me a simple snack called ‘kiri gretchen’. For those who know 3 of us will know how special that snack is. I gave them more respect after the snack. I did asked them, why they so excited about bread and stuff here, whereas in Singapore it is more complete. The answer was so sweet, “because it feels like home here”. Owwwhhh…. Maybe because they stayed in my house which really is a house. Oh, and because of them I knew that some bread are actually hard to chew. I thought it was badly made, hahaha…
As for the evening, we spent some evening just chilled out at the balcony with beer and music. I didn’t drink though, just sat with them and talked about random things. That was so much fun, I never thinking about hanging out in the balcony with drinks and music could be so much fun.
Now that I think about it, we spent the rest of the evening in starbucks (yes people, indonesia has Starbucks),had sisha in one of the local coffee shop in Jogja, and we also talked there. I mean there’s nothing else to do when we had coffee and sisha isn’t it? We even chatted outside the mall after getting some groceries. Yeah….. We chatted a lot here. Nurman even said that he feels that 3 of us getting closer here. Maybe because we’re always together in Jogja or because of the robbery and all the bad things that we’ve been through together. I don’t really understand about that, as far as I know, both of them are my first friends in Singapore so I already feel close to them.
Besides chatting and buying groceries, we went shopping. I know that for some people, especially foreign tourist, Bali is a better place for shopping than Jogja. But since they got robbed in Bali they don’t have much options. When I saw them shop, I sense 'revenge’. Well after almost 1 week not having money, what do you expect?
One day, I went with them to 'the basement’. This is actually just a room made by my dad for Shifa to play. There are play stations, games, comics, novel, UNO, and some other games. Apparently they love playing playstation, so we brought the playstation all the way to our house and spent the night playing DOA. Wow!! I never see someone playing fighting games as good as Robert. He knew all the combos and counters. I gave him one more respect point for his fighting skill. One more thing, he’s amazed to see my games collection. He said the price of playstation games are expensive in Germany. My respond was “Tee he he… Welcome to Indonesia!”
After the groceries, the shopping, and other routines, we went to Borobudur and Prambanan, the most famous tourist attraction around Jogja. They have gone to Cambodia before, so this ones were okay. Owh now I’m really curious about Ankor Wat. Thanks to them I found out that foreigner has different ticket box with AC and coffee and tea. But the tickets are way more expensive too. Borobudur trip was cool but Prambanan was more interesting. It’s not because of the Temple, but the visitors. Most of the visitors were local and only a few foreigner including my friends. So both of them became center of attraction and there were many visitors that asked to take picture with them. It started with a group of students from west java, then the teachers, then random girls. Hhwwaaaa….. They were idol. Of course the one that was asked to take the picture was me. It was fun, Nurman was a little bit nervous because he chatted with some teachers using bahasa while Robert was a little worried because the last time he surrounded by children, he lost his card. And me, I enjoyed it!!!
So that’s a wrap. Six days passed so quickly and most of the time we spent doing daily routines, shop, playstation, watch DVD, go to cinema, visit some temples, go to Internet cafe, have a coffee and sisha. Whoa, when I think about it, most of our days spent like local student rather than tourists. Except for the temples, the plan for mountain, wayang, and jazz were cancelled because we choose to do the local student’s routines. It was similar to Bali, every time we made plan, we ended up doing something slightly different. But that’s one of the reason I love being with them. It’s just spontaneous and unpredictable.
I had so much fun with them as always. I think I worry to much about how to please them, I forget that they are my friends and it is always fun to do anything with friends, no matter how small that thing is. Just like when we’re still one big group in Bali, no matter how many unfortunate events that we had, I enjoyed every second of it, because I was with my friends
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