Here we were boarding a train from a small random town on the east coast of Java and heading west.... How far? Not sure but it didn't look that far on the map... How long would it take? Not long said one local.... Ohh how naive we were.
So we board our train, all carriages economy. We were among the first to board and it was nice, clean and quiet, for the first 2 and a half minutes, then out of the dark the mozzies came, then came the hoard of children, then the final wave of the assault - hawkers. Thus we began our journey to a random town called Solo.
For the first hour it was not so bad, it was still dark around 6am. Another hour passed and it got hotter, more crowded and slower, but the scenery was beautiful.
Every few minutes we would have hawkers walking up and down the aisles selling things from cups of soup, nasi goreng, to toys and even knives. But the way they go about there sales is very unique. What they do is walk past you and throw whatever they are selling on your lap even if you say no, they still just drop it on your lap. Then they walk to the next group of people or set of seats and repeat the process. After they complete this throughout the carriage they start on their return leg, picking up their unwanted goods. We found it highly amusing watching people who were fast asleep waking up to find a full set of steak knives being thrust into their laps! They would just simply give the seller a look then go back to sleep. We found our favourite one was an old guy in his 80's walking up and down the train just selling bottles of aqua ( water) so we dubbed him old man aqua. At around midday, the train was ever so full, every seat was occupied (or so we thought) and the train was bloody hot (due to the windows only opening 3 inches). Then out of the blue this crazy old farmer lady turns up and drops her self in the gap between Rob and the girl who was next to her. This gap was less than 20 cm, normal for a 2 person seat ... but this crazy farmer lady was determined to make it a 3 person seat and wedge her fat arse into the gap. As soon as she was well and truly wedged in there she promptly fell asleep. Now this was fun to watch as every few minutes the crazy farmer lady would start to roll in her sleep and end up with her head wedged behind Rob or the other girl next to her. Every time she fell towards Rob, Rob would bump her with her shoulder and crazy farmer lady would wake up and glare at us both before returning to the land of nod. After 2 hours of this Rob was getting very stressed and sore so I being the loving person that I am offered to swap seats with and teach crazy farmer lady a thing or 2 about being uncomfortable. The second Rob got up the lady thought she had won! Oh how she was wrong! Instead of space, crazy farmer lady found a foreign guy with broader shoulders than the last skinny girl that was there dropping into that narrow gap. After giving us both the biggest death stares possible, and a look at absolute disgust at how we could possibly expect a devout Muslim woman like herself to sit next to a foreign male, the games began. Every time one of us would move the other would jostle for the ground that had just been lost by the other side. It was only a matter of time till crazy farmer lady excepted defeat.... After a few more hours of travel crazy farmer lady left and I was declared champion of the seat.
By now we were starting to get restless, it had been 12 hours and the train was moving at a crawl. I mean we could have got out and crawled faster than the train in the last few hours. We were hungry, tired and it was getting dark. Our arse cheeks were numb and we were starting to question how long it would take to arrive at our destination. To this we would get the response of not far, very soon, maybe 2 hours.
Ohh how we were so happy when we arrived at our destination.... 15 hours later.. and almost 800km further.... the joys of being naive... but the train ride was worth every sent (36000rp...$4 dollars) the scenery was amazing and we learnt alot on that trip.
We were now in a little town called Solo. We stayed here for 5 days exploring the town and Hindu temples, eating at random little stalls and generally enjoying our time in solo. We met a random eccentric fellow by the name of Donald and he asked us to join him the next day to go to a wedding, why not we said, thinking it would be great to see a local wedding... How wrong we were! It was the wedding of one of the kings daughters! 82 other kings of Indonesia were amongst the guest list and we were in awe at the amount of security and how beautiful people looked. It was a great privilege to get to be there even tho we were turned away at the gate. Donald tried to sneak us in as his official photographers, but to this we kindly declined feeling like we were to out of place and were happy to stand at the front watching the royal and famous walk past with the rest of the locals.
We found out later that our new friend Donald is actually an assistant to the king of Timor, and had been made an honorary member of the royal family. How's that for random? So we will spend a few more days in Solo walking the streets and loving it.
Our next plan is Yogjakarta....
So we board our train, all carriages economy. We were among the first to board and it was nice, clean and quiet, for the first 2 and a half minutes, then out of the dark the mozzies came, then came the hoard of children, then the final wave of the assault - hawkers. Thus we began our journey to a random town called Solo.
For the first hour it was not so bad, it was still dark around 6am. Another hour passed and it got hotter, more crowded and slower, but the scenery was beautiful.
Every few minutes we would have hawkers walking up and down the aisles selling things from cups of soup, nasi goreng, to toys and even knives. But the way they go about there sales is very unique. What they do is walk past you and throw whatever they are selling on your lap even if you say no, they still just drop it on your lap. Then they walk to the next group of people or set of seats and repeat the process. After they complete this throughout the carriage they start on their return leg, picking up their unwanted goods. We found it highly amusing watching people who were fast asleep waking up to find a full set of steak knives being thrust into their laps! They would just simply give the seller a look then go back to sleep. We found our favourite one was an old guy in his 80's walking up and down the train just selling bottles of aqua ( water) so we dubbed him old man aqua. At around midday, the train was ever so full, every seat was occupied (or so we thought) and the train was bloody hot (due to the windows only opening 3 inches). Then out of the blue this crazy old farmer lady turns up and drops her self in the gap between Rob and the girl who was next to her. This gap was less than 20 cm, normal for a 2 person seat ... but this crazy farmer lady was determined to make it a 3 person seat and wedge her fat arse into the gap. As soon as she was well and truly wedged in there she promptly fell asleep. Now this was fun to watch as every few minutes the crazy farmer lady would start to roll in her sleep and end up with her head wedged behind Rob or the other girl next to her. Every time she fell towards Rob, Rob would bump her with her shoulder and crazy farmer lady would wake up and glare at us both before returning to the land of nod. After 2 hours of this Rob was getting very stressed and sore so I being the loving person that I am offered to swap seats with and teach crazy farmer lady a thing or 2 about being uncomfortable. The second Rob got up the lady thought she had won! Oh how she was wrong! Instead of space, crazy farmer lady found a foreign guy with broader shoulders than the last skinny girl that was there dropping into that narrow gap. After giving us both the biggest death stares possible, and a look at absolute disgust at how we could possibly expect a devout Muslim woman like herself to sit next to a foreign male, the games began. Every time one of us would move the other would jostle for the ground that had just been lost by the other side. It was only a matter of time till crazy farmer lady excepted defeat.... After a few more hours of travel crazy farmer lady left and I was declared champion of the seat.
By now we were starting to get restless, it had been 12 hours and the train was moving at a crawl. I mean we could have got out and crawled faster than the train in the last few hours. We were hungry, tired and it was getting dark. Our arse cheeks were numb and we were starting to question how long it would take to arrive at our destination. To this we would get the response of not far, very soon, maybe 2 hours.
Ohh how we were so happy when we arrived at our destination.... 15 hours later.. and almost 800km further.... the joys of being naive... but the train ride was worth every sent (36000rp...$4 dollars) the scenery was amazing and we learnt alot on that trip.
We were now in a little town called Solo. We stayed here for 5 days exploring the town and Hindu temples, eating at random little stalls and generally enjoying our time in solo. We met a random eccentric fellow by the name of Donald and he asked us to join him the next day to go to a wedding, why not we said, thinking it would be great to see a local wedding... How wrong we were! It was the wedding of one of the kings daughters! 82 other kings of Indonesia were amongst the guest list and we were in awe at the amount of security and how beautiful people looked. It was a great privilege to get to be there even tho we were turned away at the gate. Donald tried to sneak us in as his official photographers, but to this we kindly declined feeling like we were to out of place and were happy to stand at the front watching the royal and famous walk past with the rest of the locals.
We found out later that our new friend Donald is actually an assistant to the king of Timor, and had been made an honorary member of the royal family. How's that for random? So we will spend a few more days in Solo walking the streets and loving it.
Our next plan is Yogjakarta....
