Location: Yogyakarta, Java
Our first full day in Yogya. The schedule included:
• The Sultan's Palace -- tour
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| Entrance to the Sultan's Palace This is after you get through the vendors who swarm around you at every step on the way in and out. |
• The Water Castle -- tour and visited a few shops. I bought a batik wall hanging. Very traditional colors and design --rice field scene.
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| Entrance to the Water Castle - built 1758-1765 |
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| One of the pools within the Water Castle |
• Back to the Sultan's Palace for a dance performance
• Silver Works -- factory production & sales location.
•. Batik Factory -- factory production & sales location. Bought a sarong to wear to the Taste Travelers Indonesian pot luck that we will be having at Gatlin's in July.
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| Yards of batik hanging by the dying vats. |
Lunch was a huge, and delicious buffet, which was held at Dr. Adam's son's house. The food was some of the most flavorful we've had -- it included a big appetizer that is normally presented at only at ceremonies -- which I guess they consider out visit to be special enough. It had a tall mound of rice, shaped into layers, each layer going upward was smaller and then there was a cone shaped layer on top. Surrounding the "mountain" of rice was: cucumbers, soy beans, peanuts, shredded meat, and a few unkowns.
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| Special appetizer for celebrations only. |
The food was all good, but the real high-light was a dance performance conducted by some of Dr. Adam's grandchildren and other kids in their traditional dance classes. They were adoreable -- ages 3-9! Dr. Adam started dance traditional classes at age three.
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| The kids were so cute. |
I don't think that I mentioned earlier that Dr. Adam is not well. He had a stroke two years ago and never fully recovered. He has a degree of paralysis on his left side that causes problems for him to walk and he gets exhausted easily and quickly. His speech is ok. He longs for the days when he was more active, but is stoic and comes off as very much the family elder. He is only 69. Siti (that's a phonetic spelling), his wife, is very tiny -- I tower above her. She's not much bigger than Maddy.
MJ. and I went for a shiatsu massage after the day's program was over. An experience like none I've ever had! You lay on your stomach and the masseuse walks all over your body -- back, hands, feet, arms. They crack your joints and dig into your back with their toes. It was not a gentle, feel good, relaxing massage, which is what I was looking for, but it was quite the experience.
Hope I'm not paralyze when I try to move tomorrow.
Dinner tonight was at 7:00. We eat with Dr. Adam at a table in a room that looks like a kitchen, but is adjacent to where the food is actually prepared. Tonight was rice, tofu in a coconut curry sauce, chicken legs or maybe it was wings, vegetables in light sauce something with hard boiled whole eggs in it and another dish of unknown contents. It's all good, but many things could use more spice or flavor enhancement.
My eating program seems to be working for me -- I'll try most anything that looks like it's been really cooked. I'm avoiding most raw things. The juices look good, but I know they add water to many of them and I'm not confident of that water's "heritage" so I've been avoiding it. Most people are drinking it with no I'll affects, but I'm holding off.
By 7:30 Dr. Adam is done for the day. It was raining tonight, so MJ and I stayed in and wrapped our host gifts.
PS: MJ's feet and legs were kind stiff after sitting on them all through dinner -- she was in a rat-avoidance position.
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