Java - Day 17- Sultan's Palace & Bird/Fish/Puppy MarketNov 27, 2011
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With the dancers
| We began our day by walking with Nick and Delphine to the Sultan's Palace to watch a 10:30am traditional Indonesian dance. We paid our entry fees, quickly walked in and found a spot to sit down in front of the stage. We watched 3 dances, each telling a part of the story similar to that of the Kecak dance we saw in Bali, and parted ways with Nick and Delphine. We walked around the palace grounds, went into the museum and continued on our way to the Bird & Fish Market. We ended up taking a tuk-tuk to the market, as we discovered that it was farther than the woman at the tourist information center had originally told us. Finally arriving there we could see why no other "tourists" seemed to be visiting the market. Hundreds of birds stuck in cages, most of the time too many in one. Our hearts broke as we saw beautiful large red spotted gecko's crammed together in cages, bats, owls, monkey's, cats, dogs, squirrels, rabbits, guinea pigs and hamsters also suffering the same fate. A lot of these animals looked barely alive. Aquariums jam packed full of fish. It was a terrible place and we didn't spend too long looking around. I'm sure many of them were wondering why two white people were walking around with a camera taking pictures of everything. We grabbed a tuk-tuk to go back to our hotel. Stopping an old man who could barely see to read our map, when we asked him how much he pointed to one of Jason's $20,000 rupee bills and off we went. Half way we stopped at a fruit market, offered to grab something for our driver but he didn't understand any English so Jason went into the market himself. After coming out with a bunch of banana's and a mango Jason took over for our driver and started to peddle us down the street beside the scooters and vehicles. Receiving some loud giggles from the girls in nearby street stalls and weird looks from the local traffic drivers. Our driver sat quietly beside me as Jason peddled down the street. After a bit, the old man took over and off we went. Once at our destination Jason supplied our tuk-tuk driver payment with tip, to which he happily accepted and was back on his way. We walked back towards main street where we began to tour all the local shops again, finding ourselves back in the main shopping mall where we shared a boxed meal of spiced chicken, rice and vegetables with a bit of spicy beef for .90 cents Canadian. We also stopped in a McDonald's where we sampled their spaghetti for .60 cents Canadian. Not bad at all. We walked around a bit more and ended up back at our hotel. Met up with Nick and Delphine who checked out earlier today but had their bags in one of the locals rooms for safe keeping until their train ride tonight. The train leaves at midnight, so we offered them to move over their bags to our room instead and to have a shower to freshen up if they liked before we went for supper together. Grabbed a bite to eat, and of course drank a few Bali Hai to cool ourselves down. Copied over some pictures to each others hard drives and enjoyed our last meal together. As the conversation continued on Nick and Delphine have decided to meet back up with us in Borneo to take a trek into the jungle to see the Orangutans and the Rafflesia flower/plant. We leave for Singapore on November 30th, we will be there until the 4th when we take a flight to Kutching. Where we will stay until the 6th or 7th when we will meet back up with them in Borneo. Very exciting, we can't wait. |
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