I used my grab taxi offer to go in to the town with Ell and Amanda today. We headed to the Royal Palace, which had lots of history about the sultans of the area and many artifacts. We took shelter when it started raining, and then made our way to the other side of the palace.
Along the side street, we were shown how they make Kopi Luwak, and offered samples, but I had already decided at this point that I wanted nothing to do with it. The animals are force fed coffee beans which then pass through their digestive systems and get changed. It's the force feeding that really makes me not want to buy in to it.
After the Kopi Luwak demonstration we got to try our hands at some Batik Painting, which was more difficult than they make it look! We then went on to learn about the shadow puppets that are used for the traditional shadow puppet stories, telling the Hindu stories.
After the palace, we headed to Malioboro Street a Amanda wanted to get some new clothes. While we were wandering around the mall, I got stopped by a group of school children, who interviewed me about my tourist time in Indonesia, with questions about what I think of the culture, how long I'm staying, where I'm from etc. They filmed the whole thing and then took selfies - I still feel like a rock star!
Ell and I both agreed that Amanda's new clothes were much better on her than the dark ones she was wearing, We left the Mall after stopping by for some food, and were going to head to the Batik Bazaar place I had been to before, but we were distracted by someone advising us of a free Batik Art exhibition that was in the area. We headed to there instead, and the artists had a display showing he different layers, which really helped me get a much better understanding of how the whole process works. It is a form of screen printing, using wax as the screen. Because the ink dyes the threads, it starts off with the lightest colours first, which are then waxed over, and so on.
There were two abstract pieces of art which really caught my eye, one in particular was a Volcano picture, but the price was 2,500,000 IDR, which, was definitely over my budget, even if it was IDR, it still works out at £168.50!
Ell and I discussed what our options were and asked the people where they were going to be displaying next, since it was their last day in Jogjakarta, and neither of us had any cash. The guy offered to reduce it to 1,500,000 and that was still more cash than I was carrying. I took my money out and counted it, finding that it was 1,100,000 and asked if there was a bank around because at the lower price, I felt the art work was worth it, and he agreed to sell it to me for the 1,100,000. Ell tried to get him to reduce the other piece to below 1 million but he wasn't able to do that, and I don't think she had any cash anyway.
While we were doing this, Amanda had met someone from Turkey and was starting to think about going to Turkey!!!
We headed back to the hostel, and met up again with Toby and Della and the rest, to plan the next few days in the city.