Because time on tour Indonesian visa was limited, we opted to spend only a few days in Java. Our first destination was Yogyakarta, the second biggest city after Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. We found the city very impressive and clean. The people were very nice, and the food was decent and cheap. The Javanese are the dominant ethnic group in Indonesia--they make up maybe 50 or 60 percent of the population. They are all Muslim, but they didn't seem very religious. Java is very tidy and civilized and there seems to be a large educated population. We stayed in the Sosro distrinct, a maze of charming alleyways. It was really interesting to visit the batik school and see how this traditional art form is done. There we spent some time with a batik-artist who painted trippy mushroom motifs. He cited Salvador Dali and psilocybin mushrooms as his major influences.

The next morning we went to Borobodur, the famous 9th century Buddhist monument (the whole area used to be Hindu and Buddhist before the arrival of Islam). Each level of the temple represented another level of enlightenment (I think, don't quote me), and there were carved reliefs depicting scenes from the life of the Buddha.

Each of these massive bells contained a life-sized Buddha. Many of the Buddhas are headless; the temple was sacked by the Muslims sometime early this milennium. Later the heads ended up in European museums--the Euros must have sacked the Muslims in their turn.