Bule masuk kampung

The weekend before last I went with Lufi (a girl from my kos) to her house in a village close to Probolinggo. We caught 3 buses and a becak to get there, which took about 3½ hours. It was easy to stay well fed on the trip as people jumped on an off the various buses offering sweet and savoury snacks. I managed to buy some of my favourite current sweet, kelepon (small green rice flour balls with an oozy palm sugar centre, rolled in coconut) as well as trying onde-onde (sesame balls with sweet green mungbean paste in the centre). Yum!

Needless to say, in a slow moving becak travelling through a village not frequented by foreigners, I received my fair share of stares. I awkwardly pretended not to notice. Lufi’s house was lovely, right next to a mosque. Though either its call wasn’t as loud as others or I’m just used to it, but I hardly noticed it was there. I spent most of the rest of the day meeting female members of Lufi’s extended family (I got confused about who was related to who and gave up trying to figure it out in the end).

Later we went for a ride through the rice paddies at sunset, which was pretty amazing. Poor Lufi doesn’t usually ride with people on the back of her bike, the bike wasn’t hers, it was heavy and she is tiny! It felt like we were pretty close to tipping over a few times (luckily we never went very fast). Never before have I felt like such a big westerner. I think it stressed her out a bit…

Local Celebrity

Photo 1: One of the articles
Photo 2: Ani and I

Now that I've been in Malang for a couple of weeks, I feel that I’m in a better position to compare it to Yogya. So far I have discovered:

1. It is cooler. A lot cooler. Like I can wear a jacket in the middle of the day cold. Having said that it’s probably not that cold – just comparatively.

2. There are foreigners here. Admittedly there aren’t any were I live, but on a recent trip into the main city area I did spy a few.

3. I don’t seem to be getting any more attention than I did in Yogya. Well perhaps I am, but people here don’t seem to vocalise their excitement with calls of ‘hello mister’ like they do in Yogya.

4. The food is not nearly as sweet. And everyone is obsessed with Lalapan (chicken/fish, sambal, token veggies).

In the last week I have become a bit of a celebrity (my 15 minutes of fame perhaps?). Last Saturday I taught an English class at a local primary school. We just did basic things – letters and colours. Beforehand I was pretty nervous. After all I was teaching 40 of them for an hour and a half. Once I started it was surprisingly easy however. The kids were really excited to meet a bule and seemed to embrace the lesson with enthusiasm. In the end the time passed pretty quickly and before I knew it I was being hustled outside to do interviews with some of the journalists who had come to cover the event. Over the next couple of days the story appeared on Malang TV as well as in the Jawa Pos, Malang Pos and Suriya newspapers. Following that I had people coming up to me at uni and asking if I was the girl from the paper!

Moving to Malang

Photo 1: Parangtritis from up high
Photo 2: UMM mosque

So the first part of my trip is over and the second has begun. I left Yogya last Saturday after spending the previous week mostly lazing around. On Friday I finally went down to Parangtritis with a few other ACICIS people on their bikes. The beach itself isn’t particularly scenic – a vast stretch of black volcanic sand framed by rough sea on one side and a stretch of ramshakle warungs on the other. We clambered over the cliffs and ate rambutans (my current favourite in-season fruit). On the way back to Yogya we stopped at Imogiri as the others hadn’t been there yet. I had visited at the beginning of January, but still managed to have a look at some areas I hadn’t seen last time.

Saturday night Dan and I took the travel down to Malang with everyones luggage in the back. It was a tight squeeze and as a result we had to sit in the front…without seatbelts…driving way too fast…with a driver who looked like he was about to fall asleep… But we arrived safely just before 5am. Later that day I moved into a kos that had been found for me by Anne (currently doing honours research in Malang) and her friend Ani. Ani met me when I arrived and helped me move all my stuff. My room isnt as big as the one in Yogya, and I don’t have my own bathroom, but the area has lots of character, heaps of student services (including very cheap, very tasty food), its close to campus and the girls in my kos are friendly – so im just going to stay here. Certainly saves me the hassle the others are going through trying to find somewhere to live!

Our first three days at UMM have been good – we’ve been given our horrible UMM uniform, had a few (short) lectures and done a couple of ‘field study’ trips to a ciggarette factory, illegal stone mining site and a chinese temple. Today is Chinese New Year (a public holiday) so we have no more lectures until next week.