Monday, April 8, 2013

Visiting The Harmonious Jogjakarta

I actually had 6 days vacation to Jogjakarta with my Mom in January. It has been 20 years since we left Jogja. My mom said that my parents were just married when they moved there. Ahh, so sweet. Especially knowing that I was raised at such beautiful and peaceful land like Jogja.
The main reason my mom and I traveled there was because we just wanted to track back our memories from the past. It was kinda emotional too for me especially when we visited the house which my parents used to rent. We met our old neighbors in the dense neighborhood of Jogja. Of course they are not young anymore. But they still have that memories when I was a little baby. So happy that I was be loved by so many nice people around me.

Anyway, beside tracking the memories of my past, my Mom and I got the chance to go to a lot of tourism destination in Jogjakarta, shopping, and tasting various kind of Jogja cuisines. I don't really remember what we exactly had, but here I share some photographs I took and short stories during my vacation. ^_^

 She was my neighbor when I was a baby. Kinda hard to get this photograph, she was so shy because I couldn't stop taking pictures of her. Hehehe. Thanks Mbah for taking care of me when I was so young.

 It's located not far from Keraton Jogjakarta (the Royal Palace). We call this place as Museum Kereta Jogjakarta (Cart Museum of Jogjakarta). Those carts are mostly age hundred years old. And they are still very well maintained and being used by the Keraton Family for certain ceremonial events.

 In U.K. or in another countries, you perhaps can't enter the Royal Palace. But here in Jogjakarta, it's opened to public!! By paying very little amount of entrance fee you can explore some parts of the Keraton. There are some museums inside about Batik, Royal's family structure by centuries, and any other informative things you can find only in this Palace.

 He is an "Abdi Dalem" or "the King's Servant" in english. In Jogjakarta, the people are so obedient and faithful to the King and His family. They really respect the Royal Family and work with them for such long time as Abdi Dalem. Suprisingly they only get paid less than RM10 per year!! Can you imagine that!! Such a good servant!! Salute!! (Well, most of them only work part time as Abdi Dalem, they suffice their families by working another job)

 The pedicab driver looked so happy even though he had been waiting for the passengers for such long time  that day. In this beautiful place, I suggest you to take pedicab or "Becak" to feel the atmosphere of the city. The fee is mostly still affordable and negotiable, depends on how far you go.

 This is one of my favorite shot. (I was the photographer, LOL) It's located not far from Keraton. We called this place as Taman Sari. People believe that this place was used by the princesses from Keraton to take a bath.



 When you go to Jogja, don't forget to go to Malioboro to get batik. Batik is Indonesia famous fabric. Actually, each province in Indonesia has it's own pattern and color of batik. These days, to preserve Batik, Indonesian designers  make such innovation to design Batik into several catchy models so people can always wear it in any such moments.

 Not only Penang that is famous with it's street food. You can also find a lot of street foods in Jogjakarta.


Don't miss this food if you are in Jogja. GUDEG!! I dunno how to describe this food. But I just love it! You can find it at any restaurants 

Prambanan temple. It's also a must to visit this amazing old architecture. The uniqueness of this temple made me wondering, how the past people could come up with the ideas to build such incredible form of art into a temple

 You can see the details uh?

 Another famous temple in Java. Well it's very far away from Jogja btw. Borobudur is located in Magelang which is not part of Jogja anymore.

 You must go upstairs to reach the highest level of this budhist temple. You also can get chance to see beautiful nature nearby the temple. Because of it's height, you will feel like you are on the top of hill.

 This artist is very cute!! >_< He is a street artist that looked so happy to act his character. If we can see gold sparkling men in Bukit Bintang Malaysia, we can meet this pantomime guy in Jogjakarta.

 Don't worry, those seniors are not real. They are just the mannequins placed inside the museum Vrederburg. You can feel the nuisance when Indonesians struggling after the independence day in this museum by different scenarios of each stage of history.

This was the last place I went with my mom. It's called Monjali  or MOumeN JogjA kembaLI. Almost the same with Vrederburg, we can see the scenarios of moments during past time after Indonesian independence day. We can also find a lot of vintage stuffs left by the history.

This short visit of me and my mom left such good memories for us. Many things might have changed. But we will always remember this beautiful city no matter what. :)

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Backpacking to Penang part 2

Here is the second post about Penang. Yeah,  it's kinda late.Cause last month I had so many activities to do.

Food Hunt
From the travel book that Bang Ooc (My backpacking company) bought, we saw list of foods that might be tried. My classmate, Joel also gave me itinerary plan which consist of some famous restaurants in Penang that I can visit. Bang Ooc, Bang Ali, and I managed to try all of them, unfortunately some Chinese foods in the list which are non-halal.
Penang is very famous with its street food. During night and day we can see a lot of people sell the foods with considerably cheap price. Mostly what I found out in Georgetown, the foods are Chinese food. Well, I am ok with any kind of foods but it must be halal :)
To prevent any non-halal foods, we always asked before we try the foods. It took time for us to find the "right" foods. We went around Georgetown to find foods. These are the foods we eat there :

Nasi Kandar Beratur

As I read about Nasi Kandar, it's originally from Penang Island. When I tasted it slightly has Indian food influence because of the taste of the curry. 
The restaurant "Nasi Kandar Beratur" is very wellknown in Penang. It has been operating since 1943. "Beratur" in bahasa Melayu means "Queue'". Just like the name, we must queue to get our food. This restaurant only open at 10 pm. Can you imagine, you have to wait till 10 pm to get nasi kandar and wait for another minutes for queuing. But don't worry you deserve very good food after all. We can choose many dishes offered here. I heard from some people, the special dish here is the fish egg, so i gave my try. Then I also tried shrimp with lady fingers. Do not worry about the price, you can get it about RM 8 - RM 15 I think. Depends on how many dishes you get.

The next morning, we were so hungry but we try to find halal foods that we can eat. We remembered that someone we met in Nasi Kandar Restaurant said that we can try "Jeruk". Well, it's kinda awkward for us as Indonesians, because Jeruk in Bahasa Indonesia means Orange. But never mind, we hunted this food. We were kinda surprised knowing that Jeruk is actually fruits pickle which we call as "Asinan Buah" in Indonesia. it looks so colorful and nice. But, it seems like it's sour. Because it's still in the morning, we were afraid that we could get stomachache. So we tried to find another foods.


Not far from the "Jeruk Pak Ali"-the name of the shop- we found "Penang Road Famous Theochew Chendul Ice Kacang". The name is so long eh? hahaha. This is another "must try" food that we saw in the travel book and it's halal. We got some Chenduls. Well, we can find it in Indonesia as Cendol. The restaurant actually  has 2 main menus of drink, Ice Kacang (Ice with various kind of beans) and Chendul. Me and friends ordered both and shared the drink together. We got served in a small restaurant and it has another Penang Food to be served and luckily it's halal. Because the one who cooks the food is Indonesian too. OMG I can find a lot of Indonesians in Malaysia and even similar the foods. My friend ordered Laksa Penang. It has a lot of veggies and fruits inside. Served with thick fish soup with laksa (like mee but made by rice). I really love this laksa. Bcz I love seafood, veggies, and fruits. My friends said it's too sour and fishy. But I enjoyed eating it. Bcz right after I went back to KL, I've tried a lot of Laksa in different restaurants but still can't defeat the one in Penang. Hahaha.




On the next day, we hung out to the northern part of Georgetown which is facing the sea. There is Fort Cornwalles as the tourist attraction. Then we can find a food court in front of the Fort. We ordered different halal chinese foods + coconut shake. I think the coconut shake here is not as good as the one I had in Melaka.


We continued our food hunting to Little India. Almost the same as Chulia Street, in Little India we can see a lot of restaurants and street foods. But the special thing here all is about India. We stopped in some Street Restaurants and tasted varieties of Indian cakes.

Basically, we tried some other foods and I managed to take some pictures of random street foods in Georgetown. Here they are....