Solo

This past weekend I went to Solo with two teachers from my school.  One of their boyfriends lives in Solo as a teacher, so she went to meet up with him, and the other teacher and I just wanted to explore Solo and the temples around.

We took the train at 7 am, which would have been fine if I hadn’t decided to have a house party the night before, and made everyone stay up past 4 am.  Needless to say we were exhausted on the train and passed out nearly the whole time.  When we arrived on Solo, we found a nice little place to stay where were the only ones.  It cost $6 between us, so can’t complain on that front.  Basic, clean and nice, with mandi showers (which is where you bucket shower by dumping buckets of water over yourself).

Flowers at our guesthouse

We spent the first afternoon walking around Solo, checking out some traditional clothing called Batik and also checking out markets.  The best was the bird market, where they had thousands of animals, mainly birds but also some bats, owls, we saw a monkey and some dogs and cats, some snakes and squirrels, chickens, hens, crows ravens, sparrows, etc etc.  Its not the best conditions for the birds, but I’d never seen an own up close that I can remember, or even a bat almost 2 feet long, hanging wrapped in itself.  There was also some adorable dogs, very well kept and clean, which were starving for attention so we pet them and hung out with them for a while.

Little stone masturbating man

We ended up going to a “open green” area of all dead grass and watching kids play on the carnival rides set up and did some shopping at the makeshift market they had set up.  For dinner we met a couchsurfer and two of his friends to eat and then go to the night market.  We sat next to Warong Cobra, where you could pick your cobra, they kill it, skin it, and take off the meat which you can have fried up or made as sate (on a stick).  It was interesting to watch them kill and de-meat the snakes, but we didn’t want to try eating it. 

Temples in the hills

After dinner we walked to the night market, which had some live music and loads of local crafts for sale.  They sell some pretty hilarious stuff in these markets so it’s always fun to check them out.

Stone carvings at the temples

The next day we spent touring the temples about 40 kilometers out of Solo and up into the hills, where the weather was nicer.  After spending a couple hours not being able to rent motorbikes, we took the bus, in the wrong direction and had to get off and loop back through Solo on the way out.  Luckily for us, performers get on the busses and sing songs and play their little instruments so it was an entertaining ride.  One band even got off with us and helped us onto the returning bus.  We then asked them for special songs to play that we liked and made sure to tip them extra (instead of coins worth pennies, we gave them 5,000 rupiah, about 50 cents)  They were really appreciative of us and our enthusiasm.

One of the fountains at a temple

The temples were really beautiful and had views overlooking canyons filled with little villages and tea plantations.  It was a great afternoon and we ended up missing the buses back to solo and took the motorcycle taxis all the way back.  We then caught the 2 am train back to Surabaya on Monday morning and were back home, ready to change, clean up and head to work for the day.  

Jump fighting on top of the mountain

On a side note, for the past week I was fasting for Ramadhan, to try to experience a piece of Indonesian culture.  During Ramadhan, the people of Islamic faith abstain from food or liquids (not even water) for one whole month.  Obviously if you are sick, pregnant, breast-feeding, too young (though children at 5 or 6 start full fasts) etc you don't have to fast.  It wasn't as hard as I though it would be, but I had to completely change my lifestyle.  I slept in until the last minute and stopped doing anything remotely physical.  I only wanted to try it for a week to see how it was, because this week I'm back to eating at normal hours and hopefully back to the pool and gym.  I was the only person out of 3 who made it the whole week (we had three foreign staff attempt the fast).  I won a free dinner :)