Saturday Oct 15 began with a railway tour — the Dutch built railways to connect the major cities in Java. The tour though, was not that long, merely about an hour through rice fields/paddies and a few towns aboard an old diesel train.
But this was the first time we really rubbed elbows with the Javanese Indonesians for the train is mostly an attraction for locals. We had to wait for the train to depart so we had plenty of time to mingle. There was a large group of schoolchildren from a local Roman Catholic school who were delighted to have their pictures taken. There was a small instrumental ensemble there to entertain passengers waiting at the station as well — they were playing several songs we recognized eg. “Country Roads” and “Somewhere a-Working for My Lord” (you would recognize it from the soundtrack of O Brother Where Art Thou). The guide insisted it was a Dutch song and but the children were, I think, singing in one of the Javanese dialects. Before you knew it, I joined the teachers in the front doing a sort of line dance (fortunately Ira doesn’t like to take pictures.) But Ira was convinced to sing with the instrumental trio and they settled on “You Are My Sunshine”. I like to take pictures-I am only sorry I didn’t record it.
The locals all wanted to take snapshots with us. We must have posed for about 30 or 40 photos with different people. One little old lady actually got out of her wheel chair to hobble over and stand between us – then her daughter and granddaughter wanted to be in the picture and then the male family member who was taking the shots wanted to be part of the group too. We could not understand what was so special about us — the guide said they have not seen tourists in at least 2 years and even then Americans are not all that common. Finally, he told us that they are intrigued by white skin. Having avoided Instagram until now I think that Ira and I are probably posted all over the Indonesian version.
The train ride through the rice paddies was beautiful and tending them certainly looked like backbreaking work. At certain times, just prior to the time for harvest, when the fields are golden, the birds like to come and eat the rice so there are makeshift scarecrows – mostly black plastic bags on sticks.
From there we stopped at one or two small temples and then went to our hotel in Borobudur, about an hour and a half drive. The hotel is one of an Indonesian chain and really elegant. To our great surprise, the manager upgraded our already beautiful room to what I can only describe as a compound. We opened the door to a small garden with a fountain, a couple of enclosed structures and a large private pool. The manager also comped us two massages. Not sure what we did to deserve this special treatment but we certainly enjoyed it.
