July 6 - Big mosques, museums and Western movies

July 6 Day 142

We got up, had breakfast, got a few things done in the room and then headed out on the commuter train to the third largest mosque in the world.  Ronny had told us how Sukharno had courted the Soviets and gotten all sorts of things built in Indonesia by them, including this place.

                As we entered the grounds all of these women tried to sell us black plastic bags to put our shoes in.  Actually, they handed them to us and then demanded  money.  One chatted nicely with Meg and then said "you don't want to support me?" when we still refused the bags.  Supporting the local economy is one thing but adding to black plastic accumulation is quite another.

                At the door we were met by a greeter who showed us the shelf to store our shoes and gave Meg a robe to wear - headcovering was just for Muslims.  I didn't have to wear anything extra.  We walked up the steps past the washing area and saw the huge chamber - it can accommodate 200,000 worshipers.  During our visit, a few people were praying but several were sleeping or catching up on their phones in the mainly empty chamber.  There were shiny stations that I thought were drinking fountains but turned out to be bookshelves, presumably with copies of the Koran.  The upper levels were fenced off, it had 5 levels to mesh with the pillars of Islam, so we walked around the balcony of the 2nd.  The size was impressive, but it was real Soviet realism with almost none of the ornamentation that you can examine for hours in a Turkish mosque.  A 15 minute look around and you're ready to move on. 

                On the way out one of the bag ladies (sarcastically?) thanked Meg for her help.  Our greeter told us about a free bus to the museum when we asked how to walk there so we went with the bus option.  This was a tourist bus that did a long loop of the city, mainly the huge park and lush shopping areas, before dropping us at the museum an hour later.

                There seemed to be lunch at the museum but it was for participants in a women's cookoff being held there.  We found a coffee shop and had coffee and brownies to fill the gap until we could get somewhere else.

                The new wing of the museum had 4 floors of historical items.  We saw juice machines, old bikes, models of ancient ruin sites, furniture, weapons and burial procedures from the many areas of Indonesia.   There was lots of English explanation and a few groups of kids more interested in running around than seeing the displays.  The tops floor had the most gold we'd seen since King Tut's tomb with some amazingly ornate work.  The curation focused first on Buddhist traditions and then the Dutch conquest and some of the treasures taken by the Dutch.  This floor on its own was worth a long visit as there were many world-class pieces.

                We entered the old wing and saw rooms full of Hindu statues surrounding a garden of statues, similar to what we've seen in Greece and Turkey.  At the end of the space was a room showing videos of sites around Indonesia and he best of them had archival footage of indigenous rituals.  The statues were fine but we were tired and so we headed out.

                We managed to hail a Bluebird taxi and took a slow ride through traffic to the mall that was playing our movie.  It was a huge, posh mall and we had to walk a long way to get to the theatre.  We grabbed tickets and were looking at overpriced, fancy restaurants until we found an actual food hall.  There was lots of selection and I went for the hand-cut noodles, which were being made in front of us and were delicious.  They didn't have a veggie item on the menu, so Meg went to an Indian place that had a veggie curry that was mainly potato.  Tough being a veggie.

                We were looking to pick up some travel food so we went to a department store that referred us to their food hall, which is what the Indonesians call a supermarket.  We got some bread, fruit and snacks as well as some anti-perspirant, finally!  We bagged our booty and headed up to the movie theatre.

                Our film was the comedy Yesterday which we were interested in because it was directed by Danny Boyle and all of the other movies playing were not good.  We were surprised by how popular it was, as we only had about a dozen seats left to choose from and ended up sitting apart in the second row.  The Indonesians seemed familiar with the music as they laughed in the right places to song references.  Overall it was overlong and underwritten but an okay distraction for an evening.

                We wet back to the hostel with takeout from the food court, Meg having learned to ask for chicken dishes without the chicken and vegetables substituted, although she got raw salad vegetables on her her cooked noodles.

                The taxi back to the hostel was slow but we had time and were starting to recognize landmarks.  We first chatted with a Belgian couple who were on our train and so planned to share a taxi in the morning.  We also chatted with an Egyptian guy with his young son who expanded our knowledge of modern Egyptian politics.  Packing had to be done for an early morning so we threw our stuff together and went to bed.

The world's third largest mosque.  The prostrate people are sleeping, not praying.

Big, scary stone head in the statue garden of the museum.

Big, cool sculpture at the museum entrance.