My trip to Jogja, part I

This is my friend, Fera, that I often mention in my blog. She invited me to spend a few days before Christmas with her and her family in their town, Jogjakarta, which is an hour flight away, in central Java. (Sentul is in western Java.) They were very sweet people, and they tried to show me different traditional things about Java. I had wanted to see a shadow puppet performance, but that didn't work out...but I still had fun visiting Jogja.

Below is a brief outline of some of the highlights of the trip. I had too many photos to post them all into one post, so that's why there are 2 different posts about my trip. Enjoy!

This was an ancient "water palace" of former sultans from hundreds of years ago. We took a tour of the palace grounds, which weren't that fascinating, and learned all about the sultans. Basically, the sultans were polygamous perverts.

Fera and I walked to a waterfall one day. It wasn't a gushing waterfall-more like a trickle-but it was still fun to see it.





This is kind of a dumb photo, but there were monkeys above our heads along the trail to the waterfall, and I'm giving one a piece of trash to feed on. He enjoyed it. :)

Fera took me to a mountain overlook in hopes of seeing a volcano there, but it was too foggy. Bummer. So, instead, I was trying to figure out why these huge, peach flowers bloomed upside down...?

Another day, we went to see some ancient temple ruins. Actually, the temples weren't ruined from being old. The ones in this photo were ruined from the earthquake in Jogja 2 1/2 years ago. There were about 8-10 temples still standing, like the one in the background.

I climbed up on part of some temple. It wasn't as exciting as my face makes it seem, but I did see a dead bat inside.

I also frequently mention Detty in my blog, who also lives in Jogja. One day, she met up with us at Fera's cousin's house. This is the snake that Fera's relatives said was a nice snake that "wouldn't bite me". That's because it COULDN'T bite me, because its mouth was taped shut. I don't like snakes, but I think this is wrong. So I screamed and ran in the house until the relatives put the snake back in the bag. (Fera took this photo for me. Thanks, Fera...) Detty's wearing the snake and taunting me, trying to get me to wear the snake, too. No thanks...

This was Fera's little cousin, who played with the snake like a jump rope. Scary!

After everyone put the evil snake away, they offered me some fruit from their trees as compensation for my trauma. I'm eating a small, soft, spiky fruit called a rambutan. You have to peel them with your fingernails, and you eat the inside, which tastes like peeled grapes. They almost qualified as compensation. Almost.