Dad comes to town

By Erin Kite s16
Australian National University

Last week I had Dad here in Yogya for five days, and it was really good to see someone from home. Of course, getting him here got off to a rocky start cos the transfer car that I was told I could join in order to get to the airport had left without me, despite me getting there early. So I had to grab a lift off a friend on his motor bike in order to meet Dad at the airport. I think it was one of the rare times here that I have actually showed frustration with a person, and I think they were talking about me on the way back in the car to the hotel. But maybe that's just me getting paranoid by only half understanding other people's conversations whilst carrying on my own.

The day after Dad arrived, we went on a tour of Prambanan and the 'hidden temples' on the back of motor bikes. Of course, this was an attempt by me to freak Dad out, but unfortunately for me he was quite alright about it. To be honest we were going quite slowly, so it would have been impossible for us to have an accident. All the traffic was passing us, including trucks. Anyway Dad really loved seeing the Indonesian countryside, (which of course I knew he would - ha ha I'm so clever) and didn't really mind being on the back of a motor bike cos he said it was cooler. As for these 'hidden temples', I'm not so sure how 'hidden' they actually are, cos a whole bunch of desa officials have already taken them over in order to extract more money from the unsuspecting tourist. Well I guess we weren't really unsuspecting, in fact it didn't suprise me at all. They have landscaped, reconstructed, and at one, in a really tacky touristy kind of way, have spelt the name of the temple with flowers on the garden around it. Now I'm sure, like me, when you think ancient Indonesian temple, you think ruins, maybe a few statues, with grass growing freely in the empty spaces, especially from something called a 'hidden temple.' Yeah? Well this one in particular looked like floriade colliding with history, or a badly attempted reconstruction of history, which of course no one really knows anything about, except for a few Javanese superstitions. But Dad enjoyed himself and that's the important thing.

The next touristy thing we did was Borobudur, where the bus dude tried to rip me off, assuming that I was again, another unsuspecting tourist, which pissed me off. Then we got swamped by hordes of primary school kids arriving at the famous tourist attraction to practice their English with foreigners. It was really quite funny cos at one point we got surrounded by at least 60 kids wanting to know what our names were and where we were from. To boot, Dad got the full Indonesian experience where random Indonesians, want their photo taken with you. They don't ask for your name, or anything else about you, they just want their photo taken with you. I still don't quite get it, especially coming from domestic tourists. But of course it wouldn't quite be a complete Indonesian trip if we didn't get lost. Well actually, I got us lost, seeing that I was the one that was meant to know where we were going. I thought the bus we caught would terminate at the place where we got on. No no, it was going to continue an hour west of Yogya to the western terminal, and if I hadn't cottoned on eventually, that's where we would have ended up. Dad loved the bus experience, noticing that no bus in Indonesia has suspension, so if you go over a bump, your bum is literally lifted of the seat. A rollercoaster ride for less than 20 cents. He also seemed quite alarmed at the speed with which the bus was going, especially when overtaking on the wrong side of the road with visable oncoming traffic. But with me, I was happily off in la-la land, placing my trust in a man who probably didn't have to take a practical driving test in order to get his license.

So yes, Dad got the full cultural experience whilst in yogya, and I think he's right when he says Mum probably wouldn't like it here. But he loved Prambanan and Borobudur, despite its distractions, and said he generally had a good time. In fact, it was quite funny that he sat next to a friend of another acicis student on the way back to Bali, and now some random woman knows all about me. How disconcerting.