Dragons & Flags

I think we pretty thoroughly celebrated Indonesia's Independence Day. Visiting the entire country in one day and watching a ceremony at the President's house is about as much as you can ask a person to do, right?
We started the day by attending the flag raising ceremony at the Bureau of Statistics. It was impressive to see all the staff dressed in their matching batik and although I didn't understand the Director's speech (given in Bahasa), I'm sure it was very inspiring. Next, we headed over to "Taman Mini", which translates to "Mini Park", where they have buildings representing the style of each major region of Indonesia. It's all centered around a lake, so you drive/walk around the perimeter and tour the country! Inside the park there are also several museums, but the only one we visited was the Reptile Museum--lots of big snakes, crocodiles, and a Komodo Dragon! In my experience, zoos traditionally allow you to look at animals through glass/cages, but here they brought the snakes out, letting anyone who wanted to hold and touch them. I did my photo-op with a couple pythons, but I drew the line at going into the cage with the Komodo Dragon! Jake, however did not. He was eaten. Just kidding. After the park, we heard there would be a parade on one of the main streets in Jakarta, so we went looking for the celebration. We kept wandering and weren't seeing anything, but a few people directed us towards the President's house. Apparently there were ceremonies that you could try to get a glimpse of from the street. Well right was we got there, they were allowing a few people to go inside to fill seats set up just outside the gates and we got to go in! We got to see marching bands and some awesome dragon-costumed dancers, followed by a procession of members of all the different armed forces and the flag-lowering ceremony to end the day. Of course my camera battery died right as we got there, but I felt really lucky to be able to see all of it! To cap off the day, we decided that any really good birthday should be celebrated at Benihana, where we toasted Indonesia reaching retirement age.





Mmm...ya, I'll stay here, thanks.

Happy 65th Indonesia!

Back from a great weekend in Bali...it was beautiful and relaxing. My first time to see the Indian Ocean! We were looking at hotel options for an IHME conference next year, and checking out the awesome resorts was my pleasure. We also spent some time in Kuta, the tourist hub of the island. There were lots of restaurants with Western food that I'd been missing and bars with cheap drinks that played American music, which made for a fun Friday night. My favorite part of the weekend was Sunday afternoon, when I took the guide book's advice and headed to the southwest tip of the island to the best beach I've ever seen. It was a postcard come to life and I spent an amazing few hours staring at the waves and lounging under an umbrella.
Tomorrow (Tuesday, August 17) is Indonesia's Independence Day. It's a public holiday and while apparently there are usually various ceremonies and games, I think it is going to be more subdued this year since it falls during Ramadhan, which started a week ago.



Door from the villa straight to the beach.




One of many temples. (Bali is mostly Hindu)
Daily offering set outside of most stores and businesses.


My favorite beach.

:)

I am currently in Bali. Have died and gone to heaven.

Don't take my word for it.

For a second opinion on my tales, check out my coworker/co-traveler Jake's new blog as well.

Work and play.

The trip to Manado was great! It really was a very different part of Indonesia...different climate (more beachy, tropical), different food (spicier!), different predominant religion (Christian). The things we got to do with work were really fascinating. We saw the steps involved in processing the recently collected data from the census. It's an unfathomable amount of work--personal data on 240 million people--I cannot imagining organizing that! We also went out with some surveyors collecting data for a household survey. It was interesting to see the interviews being conducted, but just as interesting was being in people's homes. That was my favorite part of these past few days--getting to spend a lot of time with people from here and having chances to talk with them about customs, cliches, college experiences, anything. Some of the staff from the office out there were around our age and on Friday, we all took a little boat over to Bunaken Island, where there was amazing snorkeling. I swam with fishes, ate a coconut, and loved it! That night, we went to dinner at a restaurant that had karaoke performance-style: anyone could get up onstage and sing a song with the keyboard player. Well, unfortunately, I was up there singing "From this Moment On", by Shania Twain. Fortunately, two of the other girls I was singing with were really good and I just held the mic far away from my mouth. (There will be no pics of this event!) Saturday, we did some more touring around, including a visit to a sulfurous river where the water temperature was so high that they boil corn on the cob in it. I was also introduced to tempura battered sliced banana. Yum!


Super interviewers
















View of the ocean floor from the glass bottom of the boat




Sulfurous river

Blue water, here I come.

At the airport ridiculously early to go with our boss to Manado, on Sulawesi Island. We'll be visiting a provincial office of the Statistics Bureau to see some household survey data being collected and processed and generally observe what they do at these smaller offices.
Also, there is supposed to be amazing snorkeling nearby! I'm excited to see a totally different part of Indonesia.

*Yogyakarta (see previous post)

The first weekend away.

This weekend we flew to Yogyakarta, on the other side of Java. We didn't spend much time in the city, but left from there to see Borobudur, a Buddhist temple built ~800 A.D. After that, we went to a smaller town nearby, where we found ourselves in the midst of a monkey war! We stumbled upon a bunch of them in the road and I thought they were so cute until they started fighting with each other, which was scary! From the town, we hiked to Chandi Sukuh, a Hindu temple built in the 15th century. That was also neat, but my favorite part was the walk there. We wandered along a road through a valley with a few villages and hills filled with crops and people working in their fields. The scenery was incredible and the people were so friendly. THIS was the Indonesia I've been waiting for...amazing. I'll let the pictures do the talking!


Borobudur

The babies!

Gorgeous.

Chandi Sukuh