2019 Apr 16 - Trip from Kelet to Karanganyar, Kebumen
Our route goes from Kelet via Jepara to Highway 1. We bypass Semarang center and go to Semarang-Solo toll road. We stop en route to eat in a warung.
The colourful milestone tells that it is still 30 kilometers and 900 meters to Semarang.
We visited the warung restaurant Bintangan on our way.
"Soursop juice, please. No ice. No ice! Please watch here and read my lips: N-O... I-C-E. Jangan pakai es. Please! Please!"
You guessed it...
To people travelling in southeastern Asia this is a common problem. The ice is not necessarily from the same source as the water, but getting your portion without the ice can be tricky.
There are fruit and crackers on the tables. Consumption of these is charged afterwards.
The plastic bag on the shelf is filled with a snack less common in Europe: Chicken guts.
What comes to both chicken and mandarin oranges in general, Indonesia is closer to the original nature than Europe. Chicken means chicken, not broiler, and the fruit still have the full amount of seeds in them.
Widening road? After the completion of the maintenance?
Travelling from Semarang to Karanganyar, Kebumen, first along toll road, but then switching to the diverging old road on its west side. Our route passed through Magelang, which is also called "City of million flowers".
The records are becoming harder to beat year by year.
2019 Apr 16 - Karanganyar, Kebumen, central Java
Karanganyar is the childhood home of my wife. Her father and some of her siblings are still living here.
I refer to the place as "Karanganyar, Kebumen" to tell it apart from all the other Karanganyars there are on the island. This Javan-language name means "New Garden".
The place is not complete countryside, but it is away from big cities. Yogyakarta is the nearest big city to this place. Here we are surrounded by rice fields and hear the prayer calls simultaneously from 4 different mosques mingling into single sound tapestry.
The last 200 meters of a minimally narrow car road run between a fence and the sharp edge of a rice field ditch. Especially the 90-degree angle near the midpoint gives a taste of adventure to car-drivers' life.
Miscellaneous fowl roams free along the roads and forest patches.
The kiosk is almost unnoticeable by the street.
Bean porridge at breakfast, tempeh, tofu and papaya leaves at lunch.
Sri's mother gives her vote at home. Her little finger is dyed to signify a completed voting.
The home voting committee members want to get a selfie with me.
Water apple (Syzygium aqueum).
A breakfast.
On our way to shopping at Karanganyar center. The village center is a row of shops lined at both sides of the Highway 3 near Sri's home.
The white house in the photo is also for sale, at 1 000 000 000 rupiah (70 000 €).
Hot weather shopping.
It is around 30°C, with humid air. I am wearing a lined Finnish chilly weather windblock coat for protection against sun while wandering in the shadowless sunshine. No fear of feeling cold there.
We returned from our shopping by rickshaw as our grocery bags would be very inconvenient both in the crowded minibus and on the long walk from the bus-stop.
The brake maintenance work kept me wonderind during the trip. Not that I expected anything fatal, as the highest speed en route, as measured with GPS, was 28 KPH.
These cakes are originally specialties of individual villages, eaten during Id al-Fitr day, but got later nation-wide (and calendar-wide) distribution. They are made of green beans and sugar, possibly also coconut as in the Nampudadi Village version on the left.
The type at the right side resembles quite much the cakes Japanese eat with matcha.
Durian ice cream, and bread leaven of whose composition I have no idea.
Batagor is an abbreviation of bakso tahu goreng, "fried meat balls and tofu". There is also delicious sauce on top of it.
Soto ayam kampung, chicken soup (chicken, not broiler) with the optional chilli.
Drink from jicama bean and chrysanthemum.
Yet another feline visitor.
A sample of pisang susu ("milk banana" ?).
If you order for a banana, always specify. Otherwise you are not much better off than ordering for "a fruit".
Going to Saturday night church.
This is my church dress. And my church sandals.
The shirt has to be worn outside of the trousers.
Easter Saturday night service, Taizé style.
Yet another wonder of the Orient.
Ketan goreng, sticky rice covered with flour and fried. The Javanese name of the dish is tetel.
Cucumber and jicama dipped in sauce of chili and palm sugar.
If you want to take your Finnish smartphone to Indonesia and go on surfing the Internet, you are in for a game with rather complex rules.
The classic network roaming can be murderously expensive, especially if you use video streams or have hungry bacground applications hogging the quota day and night. Certain operators have made roaming contracts which guarantee certain amount of daily data traffic at a limited price. 10 € for 100 MB per each day is a great relief, but not yet dirt-cheap.
If you do not get your operator's info message of the moderate-price contract at your other locations abroad, DO NOT ASSUME IT EXISTS! You could be in for an expensive surprise.
Telia also offers a traveller's package "Reissupaketti" for 24.90 € / 1 GB, but your subscription type must support the add-on feature before you can utilize it.
You can purchase a local SIM with a local telephone number, which disables your Finnish number or puts it behind a dual-SIM switch. ALSO NOTE that Indonesian laws require all Indonesian phone numbers (including the prepaid numbers) to be locally registrable to a person or to a household, AND a single person can only have two personal numbers. Purchasing a subscription for a household requires showing the estate registration certificate to the vendor. Some vendors MAY be friendly enough to let you register your number to their shop.
I use my old cell phone to carry an Indonesian SIM and use it as a Wi-Fi hotspot for my Finnish phone with a Finnish SIM on and data disabled. People using such solutions must be aware of all the relevant settings of their phone (data enablation, roaming enablation, Wi-Fi usage) and set them according to their needs every time they change their usage scenario.
Flat monthly rates do not seem to exist or at least are rare. You will do wisely to monitor your accumulated data transfers from the setting screens of your phone.
Even with all prerequisites done right it is not guaranteed that you have sufficient wideband field coverage at your location for any feasible Internet communication. Patient waiting will not help you if your requested pages fail with a timeout message. Even in areas with a good field the weather conditions may affect the quality of the connection.
The Easter Sunday lunch.
Chicken, not broiler.
Chicken leg also means chicken leg, not just the fleshy part of it.
Salad mixture purchased in portion bags.
The visiting cats came to share our Easter meal.
Straits Times report: The volcano Agung puts up a show a few days before our planned trip to Bali. (Photo source: Setiawan/Facebook)
Morning, about 05:30.
My wife's sister preparing meal.
Baked banana.
This banana variety is the saba banana, as it is called in English by its Philippinian name. Its Indonesian name is pisang kepok. Its taxonomic name is given as musa acuminata x musa balbisiana.
This banana is intended primarily for cooking, but can also be eaten raw.
An offering of gratitude. Not one we give, but one we got!
All major and sometimes even not-so-major events are matters of the whole village. Everyone is invited to weddings, funerals are observed by everyone...
If somebody feels thankful, he may give a thanks offering to the church. Or, as in this case, to the whole village. Every household in the village got a bag with the same or resembling contents as shown here.
Dish 1: Ikan pepes. Rastrelliger (a type of mackerel) seasoned with chilli and herbs, roasted inside a banana leaf. A patient approach is recommended, as the fish has plenty of bones.
Dish 2: A variety of shumai, also spelled siomai, from Chinese (shāomài in Mandarin). Boiled cabbage rolls and tapioca with a satay-like sauce.
Dish 3: Goat-meat tongseng, a curry-like dish.
A famous warung restaurant in Kebumen. It has prominent visibility in Google Maps.
Cow meat soup. Very close to its Finnish equivalent.
Getuk (from Javanese gethuk) is made of cassava and resembles sticky-rice cake in composition.
Ketek is a hot and spicy condiment for getuk. It is made on the base of ground, oil-depleted coconut.
It is a so far unsolved mystery to me how poultry and hungry cats are able to roam the same streets, gardens and field patches without causing a massacre.
Serayu mountains. Java Island has a mountain range running along it similarly to Japan.
Supermarket snack shelf in Kebumen.
It is Sri's father's birthday. We are in Kebumen city running family errands and having lunch together.
Sri eats chicken noodles, her father fried rice (nasi goreng), and I have the house's special noodles.
Returning home from the city trip.
Flowers grow high in this country.
Roadside flowers are not a mere decoration. They help to fend off impurities falling into the rice fields.
The calendar of Java Christian Church. The calendar shows different traditions by displaying the Christian Gregorian calendar, national holidays, the number of lunar calendar days (?) in Latin and Arabic script, and the day names of the Javan 5-day cycle.
In the leftmost column there are the week-days in Indonesian. They have been adopted from Arabic language, except for Minggu (Sunday), which has been derived from Portuguese Domingo.
Bubur candil. Sticky-rice-plus-tapioca starch balls in red sugar sauce. Optional addend is salty coconut milk.
Our bye-bye dinner at Sri's parents' home.
Berkat, "blessing", is the set of foodstuffs in the first picture. Added to an already plentiful meal it made a rather memorable dinner.
Berkat is what Sri's sister and other members of wedding preparing committee received in the preparatory phase. When the wedding of the happy villager comes closer, a second round of similar berkats is sent to as many of the 1000 invited guests that can be reached with reasonable effort.
Our dinner includes also a plateful of boiled bananas and noodles hand-made following the local tradition.
A hired driver came to pick us up. The trip to Yogyakarta can begin.
The last few hundred meters of the road to Sri's parents is a SUV driver's nightmare. If the barely car-sized road does not spook him out, the sharp 90-degree corners surely will.
