a belated e-postcard from indonesia

my first weekend back, my family escaped from jakarta for a little r&r in central java. we stayed at the losari coffee plantation, a newly opened resort built on a restored dutch coffee plantation. absolutely beautiful, simultaneously paying homage to its colonial roots and its javanese setting. with the exception of the spa, all of the villas and resort buildings were restored antique homes. the "concierge" was housed in the old train depot. the villas we stayed in had been purchased and moved, piece by piece, from nearby villages and cities. the club house was the original plantation manor, outfitted with antique javanese furniture which my dad drooled over. he lifted each piece to confirm that it was made of heavy teak, then examined the joints before exclaiming: "no nails!" apparently, one of the features of well-made furniture here is its pure construction.

on the agenda for the first two days were eating (chicken satay, nasi goreng, fried bananas, barbeques), drinking kawista and tamarin sodas, sleeping in the sun by the pool, a massage and traditional lulur scrub (involving tumeric, which has the effect of yellowing your skin, if you're not careful. mark had yellow armpits for awhile), and a tour of the plantation.

in my mind's eye, i expected to see sprawling fields of coffee trees arranged in perfect symmetry and order. what i got was much better: all the coffee grown at losari is shade-grown and organic. so instead of using chemical fertilizers or pesticides, the coffee trees are planted among local vegetation (bamboo, cotton, banana trees) that provide both nutrients and protection; a twiggy plants man's dream. speaking of which, i had no idea that i had a twiggy plants mom--she was the best at identifying the different trees and fruits; i was totally impressed!

our guide showed us the different varieties of coffee (java, arabica, acelcor, and robusto--which is what i'm bringing back with me), how they graft trees together to take advantage of different qualities (for example, arabica's trunk is not very thick or sturdy, so they often graft arabica branches to robusto trees), what leaves they use to line the bottoms of trees to prevent insect infestations, the process of planting, harvesting, drying, and roasting, and finally, how they drink the coffee (instead of stirring a sweetener in to their coffee, they put a piece of palm sugar into their mouths before they sip their coffee). i'm not a coffee drinker, so i can't attest to the whether or not it tasted better than starbucks, so i think we should do a taste test next time we're together.

probably the funniest thing to happen was when i asked about purchasing cat poop coffee. have you ever tried to describe anything involving feces without actually saying the word, or any word that describes poop? well, it's even more difficult if you're trying to do so with a language barrier. my attempt to gingerly describe what i was looking for, using hand gestures to fill in the blanks, was like a round of taboo: "i'm looking for the coffee that the cat eats and then, well, it comes out... and... well... then you pick out the coffee beans..." there were lots of confused "is-this-woman-out-of-her-mind?" looks around the gift shop. in the end, the woman i was speaking to laughed and said something about how the plantation squirrel had died (???). no doubt something was lost in translation.

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borobadur

now, my family is not known for being early risers. and i'm not the worst of 'em; kaye has been known to sleep for 14 hours on a pretty regular basis. so it was quite a triumph, on our last day, that we all managed to wake up at the ungodly hour of 2am to travel west to borobudur, the thousands year old buddhist temple that had been lost under ash and jungle, then found again by dutch explorers. from the moment we arrived on the grounds, it was well worth it. armed with flashlights, we followed our guide up to the temple in the darkness and settled down on the first level of nirvana (there are three levels of inner peace, apparently). these pictures do not do the view justice. from our vantage point, we could see village below, which was cloaked in jungle mist. the sun rose between two volcanos... one of which, mount merapi, has been active for some time, and was smugly smoking through the morning. apparently, on some nights, one can see lava flowing down the side of the volcano.

this link describes the structure of borobudur quite nicely, so i won't reinvent the wheel. what was cool was that our guide walked us through some of the levels and told us the stories of the buddha's many reincarnations and karmic tests. good lessons about being unselfish and taking the middle path... by the end of the tour, all of us were ready to throw in the proverbial towel and convert to buddhism. at one point, our guide took us to one of the many stupas (see left), on the first level of nirvana, which housed a buddha inside. legend has it your wish will come true if you are able to reach inside and touch certain parts of the buddha: for men, the ring finger on the right hand and for women, the heel of the right foot. (see picture on the right). as all of us tried to touch the buddha, it became apparent that the goal for the men was much, much easier to attain than the goal for the women. i remarked on this observation, saying to our guide: "i wish that women could touch the ring finger instead of the heel." in all his wiseness, he replied, like the buddha himself probably would, that the struggle to touch the buddha paralleled similar struggles in life... and sometimes, women need to reach even further then men have to, in order to get what they want buddha must be a feminist.