Yogyakarta – Water palace, Kraton, Prambanan (Sun, 6 Mar)

We gave the Kraton area one more chance in the daylight. Finding the entrance to the Kraton coming from the south is no small feat and the people we asked were giving contradictory directions but we found the Taman Sari (Water Palace) and visited it first. The guide explained us that this used to be the sultan’s water park and swimming pool, built in the mid 18^th century. It was abandoned after an earthquake destroyed it in 1865, with most of the lakes and gardens occupied now by houses, but the main swimming pools have been restored and are still there. Two enclosed swimming pools would be used by the sultan’s many wives and children, while the third one would be used only by the sultan and the wife that he would choose to accompany him by calling from a balcony.

Of course, the tour around the Water Palace ended in a batik and leather puppet workshops and galleries, where we were expected to buy something. Batik is the art of dyeing textile with all kinds of patterns and pictures and it seems to be a local specialty in Yogyakarta. Leather puppets are used for shadow puppet theatres, which depict Ramayana (the most important mythical story in South and South East Asia). The puppets are cut and carved out of buffalo skin. We managed to get away without buying anything although it was really difficult after all the convincing that we should support the local handicraft culture and that things within the Kraton district are cheaper because there are no taxes.

We then finally found the main entrance to the Kraton just in time to catch the gamelan (Southeast Asian classical music) and local dance performance there. Gamelan is played on various instruments many of which look like a mix of xylophone, gong and drum. The harmonies and rhythms of gamelan are rather different from western classical music and therefore it sounds for us sometimes a bit like cacophony, but the whole set up really looks impressive and sophisticated. The dance performance was quite interesting – there were only three dances, but in total it lasted about an hour. Dancers and their moves were very mellow and slow, but quite enchanting.

While we were waiting for the performance to start, some locals would go around the audience with children who were perhaps only 5 or 6 years old and encouraged the kids to have conversations with foreigners to practice their English. The children were quite shy and could not talk much yet, but taken their young age, they were brave and smart enough.

After the show we looked around Kraton and its museum. It had some nice items, but overall we did not find it breathtakingly remarkable.

From there, we headed towards Malioboro, which is the main street of Yogyakarta. It has a lot of bazaars, which seemed very popular among locals in a Sunday noon. So it was quite crowded there. We had lunch in the neighbourhood and made plans for upcoming days.

We decided to go to see the Prambanan temple that afternoon, as it could be reached with the TransYogya bus from Malioboro. It’s about 17 km out of town and the ride there took about an hour.

There are actually a range of temple complexes around that area, but we went to see only the most famous of them. Prambanan temple complex was built in the middle of the 9^th century some 50 years after Borobudur. It used to have 200 small (about 14 metres high) temples around it and 10 bigger temples in the middle. Most of the small temples have been destroyed in the earthquakes, but the bigger temples still stand there or have been restored. Out of those temples, there was one temple for each of the three main Hindu gods and one temple for their “vehicles” (Brahma’s goose; Shiva’s bull Nandu and Vishnu’s big man/bird Garuda). The galleries of the inner walls of the temples depicted different stories, most importantly of course scenes from the Ramayana. Our guide gave us a lengthy overview of the different symbols and figures around and provided his own quite interesting comparison of different religions (Hindu, Islam, Buddhism and Christianity).

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Yogyakarta (Sat, 5 Mar)

We arrived to Yogyakarta in the early afternoon. We had read from LP guide that it should possible to get to the city centre from airport by a local city bus (Trans Yogja bus service, somewhat reminding of Bogota’s Transmilenio) and decided to give it a try. The bus was rather cheap and organised, but we had to change busses at some point. This seemed a little complicated, but doable. At some point the bus stopped and the driver walked away. Apparently, his shift was over. After about 10 minutes another driver came and we continued the journey.

We looked for a hotel around the Prawirotaman area and found a more or less decent guesthouse after checking out a few places. We found out that most of the attractions and museums close already in the afternoon, so there was not much to see right away. As the night had been a little short, a nap seemed the best thing to do.

In the evening, we went to wander around the Kraton (Sultan’s castle) area. Around the southern Alun Alun (square), families would ride around on bicycle rickshaws and tandem bicycles that were decorated with colourful lights. This seemed to be a lot of fun for locals. However, in general Yogyakarta, as many other of Asian cities, is not particularly charming after dark. So we didn’t stay long. We had a dinner around our hotel and called it the day.

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Singapore – Botanical Gardens, Book launch (Fri, 4 Mar)

We spent the morning reading and sunbathing at the poolside next to Nakul’s and Priya’s condominium.

We went to our good old Bukit Timah campus for lunch. The campus looked generally the same as it used to be, except that the canteen had had some face lift and to our regret, our favourite Japanese food stall was not longer there. We had a coffee at what used to be the Thinking Corner, but is now “Sapore” – it looks slightly different, but the menu is pretty much the same as it used to, only the prices had increased slightly.

After the lunch and coffee, we went for a walk in the Botanical Gardens. It’s a nice and large park just next to the law faculty. My favourite part of it is the Orchid Garden. So we spent quite some time there admiring the beautiful orchids.

We went to listen to a lecture by prof. Simon Chesterman, who is the program director of NYU@NUS. He talked about his new book on intelligence (spying) activities and legal principles that are or should be applied to them. It was really interesting. And as any event in Singapore, it was of course followed by a buffet dinner.

We headed to Holland Village from there to raise a glass for our course mate Nancy, who was getting married just about that time in the other side of the world in Mexico. Geraldine, who was the program coordinator at the beginning our studies joined us. Congratulations to Nancy and Rodolfo!

We wanted to go and have a look at the city also from the new casino. So we headed there, but since we only had our ID cards and not the passports with us they wouldn’t let us in. Nevertheless, we manage to find a way to take an elevator to the top of the building and have a look at the city and to say good bye Singapore for this time.

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Singapore – ACM (Thu, 3 Mar)

We took it easy in the morning and didn’t do much until noon. We had lunch at the riverside with our NUS course mate Alexandra, who has been working in an international law firm in since the time of our studies. Again, it was nice catching up.

We spent the afternoon in the Asian Civilisations Museum. It is another great museum, which contains a lot of interesting information about various nations, cultures and traditions that had somehow influenced Singapore. Even though I had been to the museum twice before, it was still very interesting for me. We attended a guided tour of the museum given by an Australian lady, who knew the museum and its artefacts very well and could give a brief, interesting and informative overview of everything. E.g. I got to know, why samples of calligraphy are presented in Islamic cultures in the place of paintings – it is because according to Islam Allah’s creations should not be reproduced by men. She also explained the mind-boggling system of Hindu gods very simply – the three mains gods (Brahma, the creator; Vishnu, the preserver; and Shiva, the destroyer) and all the other Hindu gods are in fact different aspects of one single god.

After visit to the museum, Felipe went to see the NUS choir, where he used to sing, while I went for a walk to Chinatown. I quite like the Chinatown in Singapore, because it’s not as crowded or dirty as in Chinatowns in many other big cities. It’s also a great place to buy souvenirs, but we still have half of the trip ahead, so I did not concentrate on shopping yet, because it would be burdensome to carry stuff with us in backpack for another month.

We ended the day with a nice Indian dinner at home with Nakul and Priya and some of their family friends.

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Singapore – MacRitchie Reservoir and National Museum (Wed, 2 Mar)

When studying in Singapore, we had always planned to go to hike in MacRitchie reservoir, but the time ran out before we did that. So we had included it into out “to do list” this time.

MacRitchie is famous for its nature trails and in particular for its canopy/tree-top walkway. Unfortunately, the walkway was closed for renovation right now. Therefore, we only walked around the water reservoir and rainforest for an hour.

We headed to lunch to Wee Nam Kee – it’s a small eatery close to Novena MRT. It does not look very particular, but it’s famous for its Hainanese-style chicken rice. We had been there a few times before and knew what to expect – their chicken rice had never disappointed us and we were very with happy with our lunch this time too.

We headed to the centre then and decided to go to the Singapore National Museum, which was another item in our “to do list” of places we did not manage to go to when we lived here. It is a really nicely set museum, having a large history gallery and living galleries dedicated to Singapore history, fashion, food, photography and video art. It had interactive audio guides and videos, etc, very complete and interesting. The only problem with the museum is that it has so much and detailed information that it is difficult to grasp it with one visit, especially because it did not seem to have an overall outline, which would give an idea about the level of detail with which the different topics are covered.

In the evening, we visited Franca and Chizzy and had dinner with them and their sons. Franca was our course mate at NYU@NUS and it was really nice to catch up with her. Franca had ample experience in Singapore before joining our programme and thanks to that she was recently admitted to Singapore bar. She has now opened her own law firm and seems very happy with how things are going. At the same time, Chizzy is excitedly building up Akaraka, an NGO that sponsors children in Africa to continue and finish their education. (www.akaraka.org.sg).

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Singapore – Zoo (Tue, 1 Mar)

The zoo is one of my very favourite attractions in Singapore. It has a really nice setting – no bars or cages. So it looks almost like the animals are in their natural environment and not in captivity. The Singapore zoo has a great selection of primates. I could spend hours watching the apes; they are just like humans, only with fewer complexes. There are also very impressive white tigers (i.e. albino tigers), giraffes, rhinos, giant turtles, komodo dragons, etc, etc. We spent more than half a day there.

We had dinner with a Singaporean gentlemen Joseph, who has given courses on Singapore success stories in Estonia several times and who was also a useful contact for me while I was studying in Singapore.

After the dinner, we walked around Little India and ended us in a bar on the 70^th floor of Swissotel, which has some awesome views over the city.

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Singapore – NYU convocation ceremony (Mon, 28 Feb)

We walked around the main shopping street Orchard Road in the morning. It was still the same flashy and swanky, except that there were a few new and even swankier buildings.

We had dim sum dumplings for lunch in a nice Chinese restaurant in Wisma Atria, where our friend Real had taken us once when were studying in Singapore – really good food.

In the afternoon, we walked around the business district and Marina Bay. The latter area was under construction when we lived in Singapore. Now, they have opened a casino, hotel and a sky park in this area, plus a museum on the side. The complex has three towers and a ship shaped construction on top of them, while the museum looks like a cross between a flower, Mickey Mouse white gloves and a spaceship. The whole thing looks interesting, but in my mind, not particularly beautiful.

We attended the convocation ceremony and dinner of the fourth year of the NYU@NUS students in the evening. The ceremony was similar to ours – it had speeches by the dean of the NUS law faculty, the president of NUS and the Singapore General Attorney, video greetings by NYU professors, speeches by the graduating students and the hooding ceremony of the students. The students’ speeches were almost as witty and nice as the speeches of Jordan and Wangui in our year. It was nice to see that this patch of students seemed to have had as good time as we did.

We had good chat with some of our previous professors and with the graduating students over the drinks and dinner.

After the dinner, we walked along the riverside – the Boat Quay and Clarke Quay. We dropped by from the bar called Pump Room, which always has some nice live music and which used to be one of our favourite places to hang out.

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