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capn_n_pyeIn 2014, after years of not being allowed to take students to Indonesia, Pye made a triumphant return with a pan-Java adventure. Flash forward to 2024, after years of not being able to go anywhere, she did the same again – with exactly the same staff no less!
Stinky’s own adventure was well underway by that time – she had very selfishly left first, leaving Pye at the mercy of other participants to get to the Gull Bus (at least they left at a sensible mid-morning time, rather than 2am). In fact, Stinky’s group left Jakarta on the morning that Pye’s group arrived – had we planned it better we could have ‘accidentally’ run into each other, imagine the hilarity of that situation!
Pye planned for one day in Jakarta, which is empirically more than enough time in a sweaty armpit of a city. Manifesting patience and calm with 25 potentially un-resilient post-COVID Year 10–12 students, we bravely stepped out into the sweltering tropical sun to admire MONAS – the National Monument, a stately edifice that represents the urge of men everywhere to commemorate events by building a giant penis.
The place was absolutely packed with armed forces personnel (at least the equivalent of the population of Geelong) and their toys, because apparently they need a week to get ready to celebrate their birthday. It’s a good thing Moose was with Stinky, lest he have been tempted to start some shit and see what sort of consequences he would face.
Everyone there was wearing their uniforms a lot looser than the young-folks-in-training seem to like these days – how do these young men that Stinky ran into sneeze without their uniforms popping off their bodies?
Even these models in the dioramas under MONAS whose uniforms are literally painted on don’t wear them as tight!
In classic Jakarta fashion, when we brought the students down to the diorama section, they started to spread out and look at them all with interest.
“NO!” cried Nagun, the guide who would follow us till the end, “The museum has given us a guide!”
An eager young woman with a [completely unnecessary] bullhorn proceeded to shout all sorts of information about the dioramas. The students were bewildered but polite in the face of this.
“Do you understand what she’s saying?” whispered one to Pye.
“Nope – and she’s speaking English!” Pye whispered back.
“IS SHE??” gasped the flabbergasted student.
The guide at Istiqlal Mosque was much more intelligible - even though it was a Friday and therefore usually closed to visitors, we were still allowed to have a look around.
One thing to say about mosques is that they don’t tend to change much in 10 years. In fact, the state Cathedral across the road was also mainly unchanged – with one exception:
I, for one, welcome this new method of holy water dispensation.
Speaking of unusual water, the Orchardz Jayakarta has to have the most unusual setup for their swimming pool. I mean, why not wrap the breakfast buffet around it? Fantastic atmosphere for both breakfast and bathing!
The children were, naturally, entranced by the religious buildings and weren’t at all hangry by the time we showed them Sunda Kelapa Harbour, which to be fair, Pye didn’t really give a shit about either. Lunch in Kota Tua (the old town square) restored them swiftly, but also heralded an ongoing problem of us always showing up to places before they filled up, and therefore being devoid of domestic tourists to talk to.
Nagun the Guide explained that he was originally from Lombok before moving to Yogyakarta, before going on to prove he couldn’t give a flying fuck about Jakarta or anything in it. The man loved the microphone on the bus, though, and took his guide duty very seriously – the bit where he read us the Wikipedia page about Grand Indonesia Mall was definitely a highlight, and facilitated a meditative nap on Pye’s behalf.
Old Mate went off even more on the mic the next day when we headed for Bandung, showing a refreshing commitment to the device, no matter whether he was addressing the group or answering a question to the person sitting next to him. Byron refused to Vulcan Death Grip him, or at the very least to cover Nagun’s nose and mouth with his hand until he snoozled off. Pye heroically attempted to engage…
Nagun: *mentions wife*
Pye: Does your wife work?
Nagun: Yah *continues to describe where he used to get his toenails cut in 1978*
To be fair, we probably frustrated him with our school-ish rules, such as Pye’s desire to not allow the students to walk in traffic.
First stop in Bandung was Gedung Sate, a building distressingly devoid of any form of sate for us to eat (it’s named thus because it allegedly resembles a giant sate stick). The colonial government built it in the early 20th century and now it’s the seat of the governor of West Java and also a museum. These things are also very appealing to teenagers, who love architectural details.
We don't know why there was a hot air balloon basket to play in, but who are we to judge?
The itinerary then had the group going to Asia Afrika Street, which Pye thought was where the factory outlets she had requested to visit were. Well, she was close, the building which housed the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference is almost the same as some discount shopping, right?
Nagun seemed to think the kids would like to spend a good 45 minutes in there, but when they started making TikToks with local girls (who were presumably also there against their will), we knew it was time to leave. Imagine Pye’s surprise to learn that just down the road there was the really rather cool Jalan Braga, full of ice cream shops and shopping opportunities – Nagun was also quite surprised to learn the children preferred this to learning about mid-20th century geopolitical conferences.
The kids were not yet complaining (where we could hear them), and Lil Iggy had a lovely time at lunch…
… and we all enjoyed the fact that Bandung has lots of trees, is slightly less hot, and – even better - isn’t Jakarta. But the real draw of Bandung is Saung Angklung Udjo – a cultural workshop that showcases angklung and other Sundanese dance and music.
Ten years ago, this was an absolute highlight, and Pye had high hopes that it would go off again – we wouldn’t want the kids to sit there looking like this:
Byron ruined his own experience by watching the Cats lose the semi-final, but the rest of us had a marvellous time. Fortunately, it was just as good as the last time, and we had enough individuals in the group that were eager to jump up and join in, which then made the other students brave enough to join in too. The audience participation is off the charts – 200-ish people all playing songs together on angklung is an amazing achievement! The gift shop also went off like a frog in a sock, and the faster shoppers even ended up playing soccer with some local lads instead of just crawling back onto the bus to suck on their phones or whatever it is kids do these days.
This all made the students wish that we could stay in Bandung longer (probably because they didn’t know that Jalan Braga and Udjo’s are pretty much all there is to do unless you like hiking). Pye, on the other hand, was more than happy not to stay longer. See this towel rack?
She touched it and it immediately collapsed, tipping the folded towel on top directly into the toilet. Like, *plop* right in the middle, nothing but net, slam dunk. Luckily there was a second towel that did not fall in the toilet, but that's not the point, screw you, Bandung, how’s everyone else’s night going?
The next morning required a very early start for us to catch the train to Yogyakarta – a good seven hours taking in the sights of rural Java. Some of the students thought this would be boring, but they were very wrong. Lil Iggy had a marvellous time, as did the train-loving autistic kid who Pye made a leader on that day.
Upon arrival in Yogyakarta, we were spirited up a hill to Candi Ijo to watch the sunset – in true Javanese fashion, this plan was enacted despite the persistent haze, thick cloud cover, and minimal chance of any sort of impressive sunset.
After a bit, the sun bravely tried to make itself visible, as pictured here:
Pye was all, “Hey kids, this is a good reminder not to look directly at the sun!” What did they do next, I wonder? Well, the first thing was to turn their heads to see if they could look directly at the sun! Then one of them told her that it was okay to stare at the sun if enough clouds were in the way – he was quite insistent on the point! Then another one said that it would be okay for them, because their sunglasses are really good! Pye was like, “You can’t negotiate with reality, but sure go ahead and burn your retinas, you fucking donkeys.” Fortunately for eyesight everywhere, the sun did not reappear at all, and everyone went humbly down the hill with their eyesight intact.
The Best of Yogya kicked off the next morning with an ego-denting silver-making course (think you can curl pieces of wire and use tweezers? HA no you can’t).
Some retail therapy was thence required, and Pye wanted nothing more than to see if Hamza Batik on Jalan Malioboro was still there. It was, but she had to get past a dinosaur first, because apparently Malioboro has dinosaurs now?
It’s also cleaned itself up – all the market stalls along the street are gone, it’s positively boring, dammit. Speaking of dammit, look how much Pye’s Hamza total came to lol…
Borobudur was next on the list, and yeah, sure, a massive 8th century Buddhist monument is pretty cool, but have you ever played with putri malu?
Pye was starting to worry she’d not be able to find any this trip and literally gasped and exclaimed out loud when she finally found it! The kids were also rightly captivated by this touch-sensitive plant and the Borobudur guide (who was trying to procrastinate until 10am when we’d be allowed in) was quite tickled too.
They no longer do the sunrise visits, but have tightened up how many people are allowed up into the monument at one time, so you can actually get photos with no one in them!
Mind you, it’s blisteringly hot, so no one wanted to hang around all that long. Pye snapped a few more pictures to show to Moose later…
… then got all the kids to sit under a tree facing this view while she made them do an Ignatian reflection called the Examen. Ha ha suck it, you go to a Catholic school, this is what you get!
The way out of the complex was breath-taking in another way – they’ve gone fully off-chops on developing it. There’s a massive market, museum, amphitheatre (maybe two amphitheatres?) and the car park is almost back in Yogya. It’s entirely possible that they have gone too far, no matter how far out of character that may be for Indonesians.
If one has visited Borobudur, that means you’re in the vicinity of Candirejo, and a village tour is de rigueur. Who doesn’t love a good dokar ride? This lovely pony waited until the children were safely on board, then immediately took a giant shit. Moose would have loved it!
Unfortunately, Pye did not find the guide we had from when we brought D’admiral and Chuckles to visit – Pye wanted to see if she still remembered how to use the ‘fucking hell’ expletive we had explained how to properly use. Nonetheless, our guides were enthusiastic and delighted to show us around their village, and bless them, the kids were genuinely interested in having a go at weaving pandan leaves and making krupuk. Their enthusiasm only wavered slightly when 25 people had to wait their turn to play the gamelan, but they actually weren’t too shit at that, either. A thunderstorm kicked off as we dokar’d out of town, which meant we missed out on seeing the valley where three rivers meet – Pye was curious to see what the kids would have made of it!
From the village tour the plan was to go to the Chicken Church – Stinky had sent a picture from Lake Toba of this big stupid Fish Building, and Pye wanted to see which one would win in a fight.
Unfortunately, old mate Nagun had stuffed up the timing, and what with the rain and him not pre-arranging the shuttle, we couldn’t go. Fish wins by default, booooo >:(
Speaking of disappointing, Pye’s desire to make boring things fun caused more sadness. Every time we have ever visited the Kraton (Sultan’s Palace), we have been proudly taken to see a museum dedicated to stuff once touched by Sultan Hamengkubuwono IV. Instead of staring perplexed, wondering why we would want to see this dude’s scout uniform, she had primed the kids to all try and get a photo of what they thought the most random item was, and then later we’d have a competition to decide the best (Pye was going to choose his baking/measuring spoons). We were therefore all excited for the shit bit – but noooooo, turns out that bit is currently under construction, no sultan’s socks for us! No fair!
This was on top of the becak reveal – they have replaced almost all the bike bits on the becaks with motorbikes! This means a better lifestyle for the drivers, but a much less peaceful ride for bule.
Now, the sultan’s museum being closed did not mean we didn’t get a museum to look at, it was just that the Sonobudoyo Museum is now massive, modern, air conditioned and well-curated. Pye could barely comprehend what was going on! Lil Iggy proved that he didn’t need Moose’s bad influence to behave badly or make new friends…
… and Byron found his doppelganger!
The previous day Pye had expressed her disappointment to the Tri-jaya Tours rep about missing out on the Chicken Church and they were super keen to make up for it. They brainstormed all sorts of solutions – going back (1 ½ hours away) was no good, the beach would be no fun cos the kids wouldn’t be allowed to swim, no one could think of a workshop that would inspire joy. Then a light went on in Pye’s head! The hotel had said that there was karaoke in the rooftop bar, and we’d been all pumped to try it, only to have them take it back. Well, Nagun, there’s your solution – get us into a karaoke room!
The kids had a marvellous time, notwithstanding us four staff members entertaining ourselves with songs from Grease and Pye busting out two of her favourite Indonesian songs (she was amazing, they’re lucky it wasn’t more).
These shenanigans did lead to a certain floppiness the next day, and a distinct lack of enthusiasm for Prambanan. “Don’t worry,” Pye assured them, “There’ll be lots of domestic tourists to talk to, get in there and make lots of friends!” Alas, in the way of almost everything Pye expected this trip, this too did not come to pass – Dutch and other bule abounded, but the domestic tourists only showed up as we were leaving. It’s enough to make you want to break all the rules!
Nagun was keen to kill more time before lunch, so had everyone walk around the complex (Pye has always lazily got the lil bus train before). Workmen were actively working on rebuilding more of Candi Sewu, like the kids gave a shit…
… and Quentin Tarantino would have loved this particular section!
But again, fair play, the kids were still being really good and not too sooky, which meant that when we spotted this ‘Angkutan Sampah’ (‘Trash Transport’) Pye didn’t have to point at it and say, “Your ride is here!”
The last official activity on the list was a batik workshop, where they took the unprecedented approach of letting everyone choose a cap (stamp) to decorate their piece of material. Usually, they give you a canting and giggle at how bad you are at it, but this result was remarkably good – and we got to watch the dying process too. Pye’s only regret is that she didn’t know in advance so she could have planned a stylised FART BUM POO WEES to make Moose happy.
All this brought us to the last night in town. After dinner the students were given permission to socialise outside their rooms where we could see them from our little balconies, but not in the foyer where the pool table is.
Pye immediately had to go up to the top floor to inform a group that although she did not specifically say so, the rooftop bar of a hotel was not a viable interpretation of ‘outside your rooms’. This is also how she discovered that we all might want to close our shutters!
Credit where credit is due, the kids had all been really good about going to their rooms (or at least clever enough not to get caught going to each other’s rooms). Pye sat up a bit and when all seemed quiet, she finally took off her bra and went to close her door overlooking the courtyard. Upon doing so, she immediately spotted a Year 11 girl on her phone, being shadowed by a Year 10 boy. “GET TO YOUR ROOMS” she growled across the courtyard. On the other side, a boy popped out, apparently looking for a better wifi signal. Across the way, a fully-clothed boy named Ryder was doing some sort of burlesque dance on his balcony. Pye’s whisper-shout “GO TO BED!!” caused the Javanese men on the floor below momentary alarm. As Pye stood there holding her boobs, another head popped out and was quickly withdrawn. “RIGHT!” snarled Pye. She snatched up her room key to storm out and stomp around to put her foot down (for the detailed oriented reader, she paused briefly to angrily put her bra back on).
Peace and calm restored, she went back to her room and unlocked the door. It opened, but only a little. Somehow the internal latch had bounced and had locked the door from the inside. Entertaining notions of having someone climb over the balcony to let her in, Pye gave few good shoves and thankfully the shoddy infrastructure failed.
The kids were all like, “Oh no, you have to tell reception and pay for it!” Ha, not bloody likely, this one’s on them! Indeed, the best course of action was to leave town – leave the country, in fact. Yogya’s got a brand-new airport down near the beach (it’s so new that Google Maps doesn’t think anything is there). There were all sorts of things to look at, such as this bridge which was broken, and yet still very much in use for anyone on a motorbike…
The new airport was giant and shiny and new, not at all like the little dinky old one. But the good news is we still got a clear view of our plane! Thank goodness, Pye could watch her luggage get fed into the belly of the plane, just like usual!
Off we went to Denpasar airport, and bless them, the kids loved being able to try and guess which mountain top was poking out from the top of the clouds.
Even better, one of the boys fulfilled his goal of getting Lil Iggy into the cockpit! All you have to do is ask!
He was all set to try again on the Bali to Melbourne flight, but international pilots are less jolly than domestic. Also less jolly was about 12 flights all arriving at Tulla at the same time, with none of them having had customs declaration cards to fill in. While we were gathered up with hundreds of others all busily filling in cards, who should show up but an ex-student!
This was not any old alumnus. In fact, this student had been on an Indonesian trip too, back in 2016! IN FACT, this individual had done one of the stupidest things we’ve ever seen! IN FACT this student’s behaviour had made it to Story Time (a listening activity that we make students do every week, wherein they listen to a story and have to answer questions). This person’s story was called ‘THE NAUGHTIEST KID ON THE BUS’ and was all about how he needed to hang a whiz while on a bus between Toba and Medan, so had just waited till it was stopped in traffic and then fucked off out the back door, only to be surprised when the bus took off and he had to chase it. Pye might also emphasise how unrepentant said student was, and how she’s still mad about it (in a funny way) because until that point she had honestly thought it was safe to have a snooze up the front of a bus.
All the Year 11 and 12s in the group were well acquainted with the story and we all had a good chuckle. Then this young man decided to take direct action. Here he is pictured saying, “Oi mate, why’d ya do it??” to a Nicolas who was initially confused, and then again COMPLETELY UNREPENTANT.
Quasi-celebrity spotting aside, Pye does not recommend arriving at Melbourne Airport at the same time as so many other planes, not least because they insist on having only something like ten scanners to get arrivals through the smart gates, and no staff to help direct or guide the hordes of people. Still, if that’s the worst thing that happened, we’re still laughing – let us consider this school trip a success! Oh shit, does this mean Pye has to do it again in two years?
Stinky’s own adventure was well underway by that time – she had very selfishly left first, leaving Pye at the mercy of other participants to get to the Gull Bus (at least they left at a sensible mid-morning time, rather than 2am). In fact, Stinky’s group left Jakarta on the morning that Pye’s group arrived – had we planned it better we could have ‘accidentally’ run into each other, imagine the hilarity of that situation!
Pye planned for one day in Jakarta, which is empirically more than enough time in a sweaty armpit of a city. Manifesting patience and calm with 25 potentially un-resilient post-COVID Year 10–12 students, we bravely stepped out into the sweltering tropical sun to admire MONAS – the National Monument, a stately edifice that represents the urge of men everywhere to commemorate events by building a giant penis.
The place was absolutely packed with armed forces personnel (at least the equivalent of the population of Geelong) and their toys, because apparently they need a week to get ready to celebrate their birthday. It’s a good thing Moose was with Stinky, lest he have been tempted to start some shit and see what sort of consequences he would face.
Everyone there was wearing their uniforms a lot looser than the young-folks-in-training seem to like these days – how do these young men that Stinky ran into sneeze without their uniforms popping off their bodies?
Even these models in the dioramas under MONAS whose uniforms are literally painted on don’t wear them as tight!
In classic Jakarta fashion, when we brought the students down to the diorama section, they started to spread out and look at them all with interest.
“NO!” cried Nagun, the guide who would follow us till the end, “The museum has given us a guide!”
An eager young woman with a [completely unnecessary] bullhorn proceeded to shout all sorts of information about the dioramas. The students were bewildered but polite in the face of this.
“Do you understand what she’s saying?” whispered one to Pye.
“Nope – and she’s speaking English!” Pye whispered back.
“IS SHE??” gasped the flabbergasted student.
The guide at Istiqlal Mosque was much more intelligible - even though it was a Friday and therefore usually closed to visitors, we were still allowed to have a look around.
One thing to say about mosques is that they don’t tend to change much in 10 years. In fact, the state Cathedral across the road was also mainly unchanged – with one exception:
I, for one, welcome this new method of holy water dispensation.
Speaking of unusual water, the Orchardz Jayakarta has to have the most unusual setup for their swimming pool. I mean, why not wrap the breakfast buffet around it? Fantastic atmosphere for both breakfast and bathing!
The children were, naturally, entranced by the religious buildings and weren’t at all hangry by the time we showed them Sunda Kelapa Harbour, which to be fair, Pye didn’t really give a shit about either. Lunch in Kota Tua (the old town square) restored them swiftly, but also heralded an ongoing problem of us always showing up to places before they filled up, and therefore being devoid of domestic tourists to talk to.
Nagun the Guide explained that he was originally from Lombok before moving to Yogyakarta, before going on to prove he couldn’t give a flying fuck about Jakarta or anything in it. The man loved the microphone on the bus, though, and took his guide duty very seriously – the bit where he read us the Wikipedia page about Grand Indonesia Mall was definitely a highlight, and facilitated a meditative nap on Pye’s behalf.
Old Mate went off even more on the mic the next day when we headed for Bandung, showing a refreshing commitment to the device, no matter whether he was addressing the group or answering a question to the person sitting next to him. Byron refused to Vulcan Death Grip him, or at the very least to cover Nagun’s nose and mouth with his hand until he snoozled off. Pye heroically attempted to engage…
Nagun: *mentions wife*
Pye: Does your wife work?
Nagun: Yah *continues to describe where he used to get his toenails cut in 1978*
To be fair, we probably frustrated him with our school-ish rules, such as Pye’s desire to not allow the students to walk in traffic.
First stop in Bandung was Gedung Sate, a building distressingly devoid of any form of sate for us to eat (it’s named thus because it allegedly resembles a giant sate stick). The colonial government built it in the early 20th century and now it’s the seat of the governor of West Java and also a museum. These things are also very appealing to teenagers, who love architectural details.
We don't know why there was a hot air balloon basket to play in, but who are we to judge?
The itinerary then had the group going to Asia Afrika Street, which Pye thought was where the factory outlets she had requested to visit were. Well, she was close, the building which housed the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference is almost the same as some discount shopping, right?
Nagun seemed to think the kids would like to spend a good 45 minutes in there, but when they started making TikToks with local girls (who were presumably also there against their will), we knew it was time to leave. Imagine Pye’s surprise to learn that just down the road there was the really rather cool Jalan Braga, full of ice cream shops and shopping opportunities – Nagun was also quite surprised to learn the children preferred this to learning about mid-20th century geopolitical conferences.
The kids were not yet complaining (where we could hear them), and Lil Iggy had a lovely time at lunch…
… and we all enjoyed the fact that Bandung has lots of trees, is slightly less hot, and – even better - isn’t Jakarta. But the real draw of Bandung is Saung Angklung Udjo – a cultural workshop that showcases angklung and other Sundanese dance and music.
Ten years ago, this was an absolute highlight, and Pye had high hopes that it would go off again – we wouldn’t want the kids to sit there looking like this:
Byron ruined his own experience by watching the Cats lose the semi-final, but the rest of us had a marvellous time. Fortunately, it was just as good as the last time, and we had enough individuals in the group that were eager to jump up and join in, which then made the other students brave enough to join in too. The audience participation is off the charts – 200-ish people all playing songs together on angklung is an amazing achievement! The gift shop also went off like a frog in a sock, and the faster shoppers even ended up playing soccer with some local lads instead of just crawling back onto the bus to suck on their phones or whatever it is kids do these days.
This all made the students wish that we could stay in Bandung longer (probably because they didn’t know that Jalan Braga and Udjo’s are pretty much all there is to do unless you like hiking). Pye, on the other hand, was more than happy not to stay longer. See this towel rack?
She touched it and it immediately collapsed, tipping the folded towel on top directly into the toilet. Like, *plop* right in the middle, nothing but net, slam dunk. Luckily there was a second towel that did not fall in the toilet, but that's not the point, screw you, Bandung, how’s everyone else’s night going?
The next morning required a very early start for us to catch the train to Yogyakarta – a good seven hours taking in the sights of rural Java. Some of the students thought this would be boring, but they were very wrong. Lil Iggy had a marvellous time, as did the train-loving autistic kid who Pye made a leader on that day.
Upon arrival in Yogyakarta, we were spirited up a hill to Candi Ijo to watch the sunset – in true Javanese fashion, this plan was enacted despite the persistent haze, thick cloud cover, and minimal chance of any sort of impressive sunset.
After a bit, the sun bravely tried to make itself visible, as pictured here:
Pye was all, “Hey kids, this is a good reminder not to look directly at the sun!” What did they do next, I wonder? Well, the first thing was to turn their heads to see if they could look directly at the sun! Then one of them told her that it was okay to stare at the sun if enough clouds were in the way – he was quite insistent on the point! Then another one said that it would be okay for them, because their sunglasses are really good! Pye was like, “You can’t negotiate with reality, but sure go ahead and burn your retinas, you fucking donkeys.” Fortunately for eyesight everywhere, the sun did not reappear at all, and everyone went humbly down the hill with their eyesight intact.
The Best of Yogya kicked off the next morning with an ego-denting silver-making course (think you can curl pieces of wire and use tweezers? HA no you can’t).
Some retail therapy was thence required, and Pye wanted nothing more than to see if Hamza Batik on Jalan Malioboro was still there. It was, but she had to get past a dinosaur first, because apparently Malioboro has dinosaurs now?
It’s also cleaned itself up – all the market stalls along the street are gone, it’s positively boring, dammit. Speaking of dammit, look how much Pye’s Hamza total came to lol…
Borobudur was next on the list, and yeah, sure, a massive 8th century Buddhist monument is pretty cool, but have you ever played with putri malu?
Pye was starting to worry she’d not be able to find any this trip and literally gasped and exclaimed out loud when she finally found it! The kids were also rightly captivated by this touch-sensitive plant and the Borobudur guide (who was trying to procrastinate until 10am when we’d be allowed in) was quite tickled too.
They no longer do the sunrise visits, but have tightened up how many people are allowed up into the monument at one time, so you can actually get photos with no one in them!
Mind you, it’s blisteringly hot, so no one wanted to hang around all that long. Pye snapped a few more pictures to show to Moose later…
… then got all the kids to sit under a tree facing this view while she made them do an Ignatian reflection called the Examen. Ha ha suck it, you go to a Catholic school, this is what you get!
The way out of the complex was breath-taking in another way – they’ve gone fully off-chops on developing it. There’s a massive market, museum, amphitheatre (maybe two amphitheatres?) and the car park is almost back in Yogya. It’s entirely possible that they have gone too far, no matter how far out of character that may be for Indonesians.
If one has visited Borobudur, that means you’re in the vicinity of Candirejo, and a village tour is de rigueur. Who doesn’t love a good dokar ride? This lovely pony waited until the children were safely on board, then immediately took a giant shit. Moose would have loved it!
Unfortunately, Pye did not find the guide we had from when we brought D’admiral and Chuckles to visit – Pye wanted to see if she still remembered how to use the ‘fucking hell’ expletive we had explained how to properly use. Nonetheless, our guides were enthusiastic and delighted to show us around their village, and bless them, the kids were genuinely interested in having a go at weaving pandan leaves and making krupuk. Their enthusiasm only wavered slightly when 25 people had to wait their turn to play the gamelan, but they actually weren’t too shit at that, either. A thunderstorm kicked off as we dokar’d out of town, which meant we missed out on seeing the valley where three rivers meet – Pye was curious to see what the kids would have made of it!
From the village tour the plan was to go to the Chicken Church – Stinky had sent a picture from Lake Toba of this big stupid Fish Building, and Pye wanted to see which one would win in a fight.
Unfortunately, old mate Nagun had stuffed up the timing, and what with the rain and him not pre-arranging the shuttle, we couldn’t go. Fish wins by default, booooo >:(
Speaking of disappointing, Pye’s desire to make boring things fun caused more sadness. Every time we have ever visited the Kraton (Sultan’s Palace), we have been proudly taken to see a museum dedicated to stuff once touched by Sultan Hamengkubuwono IV. Instead of staring perplexed, wondering why we would want to see this dude’s scout uniform, she had primed the kids to all try and get a photo of what they thought the most random item was, and then later we’d have a competition to decide the best (Pye was going to choose his baking/measuring spoons). We were therefore all excited for the shit bit – but noooooo, turns out that bit is currently under construction, no sultan’s socks for us! No fair!
This was on top of the becak reveal – they have replaced almost all the bike bits on the becaks with motorbikes! This means a better lifestyle for the drivers, but a much less peaceful ride for bule.
Now, the sultan’s museum being closed did not mean we didn’t get a museum to look at, it was just that the Sonobudoyo Museum is now massive, modern, air conditioned and well-curated. Pye could barely comprehend what was going on! Lil Iggy proved that he didn’t need Moose’s bad influence to behave badly or make new friends…
… and Byron found his doppelganger!
The previous day Pye had expressed her disappointment to the Tri-jaya Tours rep about missing out on the Chicken Church and they were super keen to make up for it. They brainstormed all sorts of solutions – going back (1 ½ hours away) was no good, the beach would be no fun cos the kids wouldn’t be allowed to swim, no one could think of a workshop that would inspire joy. Then a light went on in Pye’s head! The hotel had said that there was karaoke in the rooftop bar, and we’d been all pumped to try it, only to have them take it back. Well, Nagun, there’s your solution – get us into a karaoke room!
The kids had a marvellous time, notwithstanding us four staff members entertaining ourselves with songs from Grease and Pye busting out two of her favourite Indonesian songs (she was amazing, they’re lucky it wasn’t more).
These shenanigans did lead to a certain floppiness the next day, and a distinct lack of enthusiasm for Prambanan. “Don’t worry,” Pye assured them, “There’ll be lots of domestic tourists to talk to, get in there and make lots of friends!” Alas, in the way of almost everything Pye expected this trip, this too did not come to pass – Dutch and other bule abounded, but the domestic tourists only showed up as we were leaving. It’s enough to make you want to break all the rules!
Nagun was keen to kill more time before lunch, so had everyone walk around the complex (Pye has always lazily got the lil bus train before). Workmen were actively working on rebuilding more of Candi Sewu, like the kids gave a shit…
… and Quentin Tarantino would have loved this particular section!
But again, fair play, the kids were still being really good and not too sooky, which meant that when we spotted this ‘Angkutan Sampah’ (‘Trash Transport’) Pye didn’t have to point at it and say, “Your ride is here!”
The last official activity on the list was a batik workshop, where they took the unprecedented approach of letting everyone choose a cap (stamp) to decorate their piece of material. Usually, they give you a canting and giggle at how bad you are at it, but this result was remarkably good – and we got to watch the dying process too. Pye’s only regret is that she didn’t know in advance so she could have planned a stylised FART BUM POO WEES to make Moose happy.
All this brought us to the last night in town. After dinner the students were given permission to socialise outside their rooms where we could see them from our little balconies, but not in the foyer where the pool table is.
Pye immediately had to go up to the top floor to inform a group that although she did not specifically say so, the rooftop bar of a hotel was not a viable interpretation of ‘outside your rooms’. This is also how she discovered that we all might want to close our shutters!
Credit where credit is due, the kids had all been really good about going to their rooms (or at least clever enough not to get caught going to each other’s rooms). Pye sat up a bit and when all seemed quiet, she finally took off her bra and went to close her door overlooking the courtyard. Upon doing so, she immediately spotted a Year 11 girl on her phone, being shadowed by a Year 10 boy. “GET TO YOUR ROOMS” she growled across the courtyard. On the other side, a boy popped out, apparently looking for a better wifi signal. Across the way, a fully-clothed boy named Ryder was doing some sort of burlesque dance on his balcony. Pye’s whisper-shout “GO TO BED!!” caused the Javanese men on the floor below momentary alarm. As Pye stood there holding her boobs, another head popped out and was quickly withdrawn. “RIGHT!” snarled Pye. She snatched up her room key to storm out and stomp around to put her foot down (for the detailed oriented reader, she paused briefly to angrily put her bra back on).
Peace and calm restored, she went back to her room and unlocked the door. It opened, but only a little. Somehow the internal latch had bounced and had locked the door from the inside. Entertaining notions of having someone climb over the balcony to let her in, Pye gave few good shoves and thankfully the shoddy infrastructure failed.
The kids were all like, “Oh no, you have to tell reception and pay for it!” Ha, not bloody likely, this one’s on them! Indeed, the best course of action was to leave town – leave the country, in fact. Yogya’s got a brand-new airport down near the beach (it’s so new that Google Maps doesn’t think anything is there). There were all sorts of things to look at, such as this bridge which was broken, and yet still very much in use for anyone on a motorbike…
The new airport was giant and shiny and new, not at all like the little dinky old one. But the good news is we still got a clear view of our plane! Thank goodness, Pye could watch her luggage get fed into the belly of the plane, just like usual!
Off we went to Denpasar airport, and bless them, the kids loved being able to try and guess which mountain top was poking out from the top of the clouds.
Even better, one of the boys fulfilled his goal of getting Lil Iggy into the cockpit! All you have to do is ask!
He was all set to try again on the Bali to Melbourne flight, but international pilots are less jolly than domestic. Also less jolly was about 12 flights all arriving at Tulla at the same time, with none of them having had customs declaration cards to fill in. While we were gathered up with hundreds of others all busily filling in cards, who should show up but an ex-student!
This was not any old alumnus. In fact, this student had been on an Indonesian trip too, back in 2016! IN FACT, this individual had done one of the stupidest things we’ve ever seen! IN FACT this student’s behaviour had made it to Story Time (a listening activity that we make students do every week, wherein they listen to a story and have to answer questions). This person’s story was called ‘THE NAUGHTIEST KID ON THE BUS’ and was all about how he needed to hang a whiz while on a bus between Toba and Medan, so had just waited till it was stopped in traffic and then fucked off out the back door, only to be surprised when the bus took off and he had to chase it. Pye might also emphasise how unrepentant said student was, and how she’s still mad about it (in a funny way) because until that point she had honestly thought it was safe to have a snooze up the front of a bus.
All the Year 11 and 12s in the group were well acquainted with the story and we all had a good chuckle. Then this young man decided to take direct action. Here he is pictured saying, “Oi mate, why’d ya do it??” to a Nicolas who was initially confused, and then again COMPLETELY UNREPENTANT.
Quasi-celebrity spotting aside, Pye does not recommend arriving at Melbourne Airport at the same time as so many other planes, not least because they insist on having only something like ten scanners to get arrivals through the smart gates, and no staff to help direct or guide the hordes of people. Still, if that’s the worst thing that happened, we’re still laughing – let us consider this school trip a success! Oh shit, does this mean Pye has to do it again in two years?
