Wonosari, Yogyakarta Trip

23 September 2012
Today me, my wife, my parents, my aunt and my cousin take a trip to Wonosari, a regency in special region Yogyakarta. Since my cousin took a flight from Jakarta to Yogyakarta, we left Semarang early at 4 o'clock in the morning. We arrived on time at 7 to pick up my cousin, and having breakfast at mbak Diah, after breakfast we're heading straight to kukup beach, Wonosari regency.
Kukup beach is a beautiful beach, with seaweed on the seabed, rocks protected the seaweed, and people can safely explore the soft seaweed. There are some people selling colourful fishes from the reef around there. There's also fried seaweed snack.

Next we're having lunch at Baron beach, the beach is located at a gulf, although the tide is quite high, it didn't prevent some people (mostly boys) to play around, and swim, splashing water. There are some food depots selling seafood dishes, some allowed us to buy fish on nearby fish market, and let them take care of the cooking. After we fill our tummy, we're heading to Ngobaran beach.

Ngobaran beach is approximately one hour trip west of Baron beach, the road is quite rocky in the middle, however when we arrive it's all paid in full with the view, the most beautiful beach we see among the three we visit today. There is a Hindu temple located in this beach, with some statue, taken from javanese wayang characters, such as Arjuna, Semar, Maha Guru, etc, each of this statue present a virtue of javanese culture, such as wisdom, bravery, love, etc. It's quite interesting because before, I've only encountered Balinese influenced Hindu temple in Indonesia before. The temple, and the philosophy behind it made me realised that like other religions in Indonesia, local culture always give certain 'touch', perhaps even simplify local people to grasps its concept.

These beaches are beautiful at daytime, but beware, since I noticed there's little and almost no street illumination, I'm sure it's get nasty in the dark, we left before dark. We already book a night in Wisma Joglo, on Jl. Mayang, near Jl. Sumarwi, Wonosari.

The hotel is clean and quiet. The owner, Pak Bowo is very friendly, and informative, he knows the regency quite well and well connected with other hotel owners, local tour, places to eat, and other tourist's necessities (where to book a car, a motorcycle, etc).

Followed Pak Bowo's advice, we ate at Ayam Goreng Pak Parman, near outskirt of the city. Pak Parman serve mostly fried chicken (ayam goreng) which is noticed as ayam kampung, meaning free farm style chicken (not confined in a cage). It's quite delicious and tasty

Later we went to the alun-alun (in javanese culture this means the city centre, although the meaning is already differ in modern days). Here we saw some decorated bikes, with some colourful LED lamps all over the vehicle. We decide to give it one go, which cost us Rp. 10.000,00 for one bike. three stop lights later, we're back on where we start in the alun-alun.

We decide to call it off for today and heading back to Wisma Joglo. Tomorrow we will continue our trip

(500) Days of Summer

Recently I watched (500) Days of Summer, a romantic comedy as the narrator says: "About a boy, meet a girl, but not a love story". Okay, I think he lied about the "not a love story part" after watching it, it's obviously about a boy (Tom Hansen) who fall in love with a girl, who he think his destiny, his soul mate. The girl (Summer Finn) doesn't believe in such things, however she seems to return the boy's feeling.

The relationship doesn't work as the boy's expectation, they broke up badly, and meet again in the train. After some dancing and talking, the boy think that he could renew the romance, instead he's invited to a party. Unfortunately for the boy, in this party he saw that Summer is already wearing an engagement ring, he ran home feeling miserable, after days of self pitying and remorse, he quit his job as a greeting card writer and pursue his dream career as an architect. In the end of the movie, he met another girl, who regularly go to his favorite spot in the city but he never notice, she said her name is Autumn.
After I saw this movie, I can connect with the boy feeling, however I also think that this kind of things doesn't always involve personal relationship. Sometimes we're overly attached to a person, a place, a job, a things, etc that we feel that it's the most important person/place/job/things in the world, we love it dearly, we can't live without it. When the day comes we must part with it, our world end.... We're blinded by the so called "love" and forget to notice that as the movie said in a conversation between Tom and his 12 year old sister Rachel, "there's plenty other fish in the sea (although most of them are guppies...)". We overlook other doors that open in front of us because that one closed door.
I think that it's time for us to embrace the moment, and leave the past behind, see the future, seek new adventure.
All in all it's a good movie, watch it if you haven't