In the end we decided that Roz had an unusual holiday. In the past 2 weeks she’d gotten to do a lot of touristy things, a few non-touristy things and some very strange things. The touristy things were the standard things to do. In Bali we went to Ubud and saw the Elephant Cave, in Yogya we went to the Water Palace, Borobudur, Prambanan and the Kraton. On the way back from Borobudur we’d stopped in the beautiful village of Kaliurang, on the slopes of Merapi, with cool and fresh air and visited possibly the best museum in Yogya, the Uller Sentalu Museum of Javanese culture and art. In terms of non-touristy, she got to experience the life of ACICIS students here - staying in a kos, going to the giant mall Amplaz and hanging out with a bunch of Australians. As for strange, well, ending up in hospital is definatly one of them. Another was the night that we got roped into teaching English. My friend Miko had been asking me to be a guest in his English class that he teaches, and I agreed and took Roz along with me. The class turned out to consist of 6 men in their late 30s-early 40s who were employed by TNT and had obviously been made to do the lessons. They knew very basic English, and were told to ask us whatever they wanted to know about us in English. You can imagine the results! Amongst other more…normal…things, we were asked what our plans were for marriage, what we liked in a boyfriend, whether we wanted one of them. When we tried to get them to talk about other things, such as “what do you like about living in Yogyakarta?”, one of them replied “because its full of pretty girls like you.” Another joked that he had a wife and child but no mistress, so one of us could be his mistress. After an hour and a half of this the class was wrapped up, thankfully.
So yes, it turns out I’m the provider of unusual and different holidays. A bit more than just the tourist experience.
