Tourism Experience #1
My All-Time-Favorite Classic City
of Nostalgia : YOGYAKARTA
I've always been this kind of girl who
loves travelling. The not-so-good thing about it is that I was late to discover
my interest in photography. That is probably, the biggest reason why I have
less photos of me visiting special places. I've always preferred to enjoy the
scenery with my bare eyes which once said as the world's best camera ever
exist. Even these days, when I happen to visit some places which amazes me with
its view, I'm into capturing those aesthetics more than capturing myself in it.
Have been visiting many beautiful
places throughout these 19 years of life, however, is still unable to replace
this one certain city−I always have a place in my heart−from my mind. I can’t figure out why,
but this city always left such a deep impression whenever I went there for a
visit. It’s a little too precious than the other places I’ve visited before. I
can even remember almost every ‘lil memories I had there clearly. That one city
is …Yogyakarta!
As what we’ve already known, Yogyakarta
is likely known as the 2nd most famous tourist attraction in
Indonesia, after Bali. And even though it’s only classified to regional tourism
based on geography, but for me personally, it’s the best one out here in
Indonesia. There’s always something special there that keeps me from going back
to my hometown after my stay there, and there’s this little heartbreak I never
absence to get whenever I went to some other cities which required me to pass
Yogyakarta. I’m just… always wanting to go back there over and over again. It’s
clearly the only city I will never get bored at.
A part of my big family−from my mother’s side−lives in Yogyakarta. They’re one of the
closest one, to be exact. That’s why me and my family had been visiting there
regularly, sometimes once a year, but if possible, it could be twice or thrice
a year. We would usually stay there for a quite long time−more than 3 days. It could be a whole
week, even I remembered staying there two weeks full back when I was still a
kid. I think it’d still be one of the nicest holiday I ever had even when I don’t
really go anywhere but staying at home with my big families. Still, I had a
blast. But well, we used to. The visiting frequency decreased a lot in the past
5 years.
Main reason : our family member’s are
all busy; busy with schools and works, and life.
It seems cliché
but it’s very true. As me and my cousins grew up, we got a lot busier with
schools and our holidays seemed to be cut off so it became lesser each time and
it’s finally hard for us to even schedule a family meeting once a year. So the
time when my family−actually it only consisted of me and my mom with two of her
officemates−was
finally able to visit Yogyakarta again was up for different purpose like we
used to have. It was still a vacation, but this time we tried to do it like how
a backpacker does. It didn’t really turn out like those though, since we’re all
women after all and we didn’t really want to go hard on ourselves, but at least
we tried. I couldn’t say it was really great but it wasn’t that bad either. It just
gave me another new experience of going on an adventure in Yogyakarta with
females only and not having personal cars to take us anywhere we wanted. Wait…let me think. I’ll take my previous
words back. I think my visit that time was superb though. 😂 (I’m going to tell you the details next time!)
Anyway, let’s
go back to the supposed-to-be-main story I’m about to tell you. The hints are
up there in those 3 photos. You can’t probably guess it but they’re all taken
during my family visit to Keraton Yogyakarta. To be really honest, I can hardly
remember the details or what did I do there.😅
I just remember how a guide lead our family for a tour in that place. Then I
kept playing here and there with my cousins while busy munching snacks. No matter
how much I thought about it, I can’t help but imagining how horrible I looked
like that time. Based on the goals, activity and object, that visit should be vacation,
education and cultural type of tourism since our main purpose of visiting
Keraton Yogyakarta was for vacation which actually could really advantageous. You can
study about their history in a fun way while learning more about their culture
through the interiors and antique furniture, but there I was being busy with my
food and playing around like it’s my own playground. But I was just a toddler
back then, and people loved toddlers and their cuteness, right?
Though I
couldn’t remember exactly everything I did in Keraton, fortunately I still
remember with whom I went there. Based on the people, it was included in
individual tourism since I went there with my family consisted of my parents,
sister, grandparents, my aunt and uncle and 2 cousins of mine. And we went
there by car, which made it as a land tourism.
Well, although
I still couldn’t catch a thing back during my first visit to Keraton
Yogyakarta, I could finally did during my second visit in my third year of
middle school. If you ask me about the history, I still can’t really tell. I’m
bad at memorizing those kind of things, to be honest. But I remembered the atmosphere.
That place was cool, it just gave me a kind of strange feeling−still a good one though−when I first entered. It was large−like literally large−and a bit crowded. I’m not sure but I think
it was under renovation when I was there, so some areas were closed. There were
nothing much I can describe by words because you definitely need to visit it
yourself, but if there’s one thing that amazed me the most is its abdi ndalem. How should I describe them
though? I don’t really know but I think they’re those people who’re in charge
in preserving Keraton as well as helping visitors with their routes there. The first
thing that caught my attention is how they all wore Yogyakarta’s traditional
clothes and most of them are walking barefoot. It gave me thrills whenever they
passed us smiles and talked to us. (Let me tell you, I’ve always been favoring
people from Yogyakarta because of their famous patience and the way they talk. It
always sounds so good in my ears hearing them talking). The last thing I
remember was me watching their daily musical performance at 12 o’clock
consisted of 4 women singing Javanese songs accompanied by gamelan and other
Javanese instruments.(I forget the name of the performance but if I’m not mistaken,
those women are called sinden). I still
remember how I really wanted to sit in the front row but it was so full so I
could only sit in the third row, before my mom was able to get me seated in
front. But the odd thing was, I think it was magical. I was really energized
but once I listened to the sinden’s
voice, I felt dizzy and sleepy all of sudden. It was going like that for around
5 minutes before I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to just move away. And I
went for another special place near it after that.
I don’t have those photos of mine there
during my second visit but I have those in my first visit as a toddler, and I’ve
made a collage of it below. (Sorry if it’s not that pretty!)
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p.s. dear Miss Meriska, I am truly sorry for only being able to
attach these photos of mine when I was only 4/5 yo. I have ones stored in my
computer back during high school but unfortunately, my lovely computer is
'hospitalized'😂 It's currently under maintenance and yet to be repaired. It
got serious problem in its motherboard so 😅
And to make it short, these are the only suitable ones I currently have for
this assignment. I really hope you'll gladly accept these low-quality photos I
tried quite hard to capture in the most perfect angle possible (even though
they’re not) and made a collage of it. As I’ve already said, I prefer capturing
scenery. Once again, I'm sorry.
