3081 This is the Gereja Blenduk, a Dutch church building from the colonial period. The towers at the front are partly hidden by the trees on the left. You're looking at the church toward the south transept. You can see how short the nave, apse and transepts are from this angle. The entire sanctuary is under the large dome.
3129 These girls are applying wax to the batik at Sanggar Batik Semarang 16. As you can see the cotton cloth has already been dyed once on the piece in front and at least twice on the green batik at the back. The girl in front is blocking out large areas of the red areas with the dark brown wax so she's using a brush. The girl in the striped shirt is using one of the wax pens, like a very tiny watering can on a stick, to apply wax to very small areas. Apparently the red and green areas are going to be subjected to another color of dye.
3180 This is the largest temple at the Sam Po Kong Chinese Temple complex. You can see the large warrior statues in the foreground. No mosque area would ever have statues of people. If you look at the temple in the background, you'll notice that you can see all the way through it. Aside from the carved grey columns at the front, there's nothing inside. Kind of makes you wonder what the warriors are protecting.
3230 This is the large bronze of Sam Po that stands in the northwest corner of the temple courtyard. The small temple you see in the background has not Buddha or anyone else inside it. For Muslims from Arabia this place must be a shock.
3233 This is the bride and groom we encountered at the temple. Notice that you can see her hair as you always can in this traditional Chinese garb.
3361 These are the mothers-in-law overseeing the activities. Notice that they've added the traditional Muslim head covering to their traditional Chinese clothes. Not gonna get a peak at their hair.
Feb 20 – Semarang, Java, Indonesia. We've been to Semarang on Java before but went on a long drive out to Borobudur. This time we opted to stay in the city and see what's going on there.
When we arrived at the port there were dancers there to greet us. I have a hard time telling Chinese dogs and lions apart. I would guess that these were dogs. Most of the dance moves are shared by both. I suppose there are tells but I don't know what they are. I probably should by now; I've certainly seen enough of both types to know which is which.
The streets in the port area look like downtown Jakarta, full of water. The news is worse here however because it's not rain water, it's brackish water from the ocean. They've lost some buildings near the port when they became uninhabitable due to water incursion.
Our first stop was as the Gereja Blenduk, a Dutch church from 1753. The building has been well maintained and is still in operation as a church. It has a pipe organ, one of only two in Indonesia neither of them work. The humidity here is hard on them and it's difficult to get parts and find someone who can repair them here. It does have the traditional cross shape but the transept is the sanctuary. The extensions that give it the cross shape are very short. It has a finely carved mahogany pulpit and cover. The tile floor is tile and appears to be close to as old as the building. It has neat rows of mahogany, cane seat and back chairs with arms. The central dome, the domes on the two towers at the front and the roof of the cupola on the dome are covered in tin plates painted red. The portico and the peaked roof over the apse are covered in curved tile.
There's a small park that's part of the church grounds. People were sitting in the park talking. A street vendor had set up his card along the busy street. He was selling bowls of hot noodles with chicken and vegetables. He had chopped up already cooked chicken on a small shelf and raw vegetables and noodles in the large storage area. When he got an order he put the noodles and vegetables in a small cooking pot along with broth from a kettle, after they boiled for about 1 minute he added the chicken and in another minute he poured it in a bowl and you are good to go. There's a small charcoal stove under the cut out for the cooking pot, actually more like a wok, that supplies the heat. Everyone I saw buy noodles brought their own bowl. If he had any I couldn't see where he stored them. He had several pots and jars with seasonings that he'd add as the noodles cooked.
The have two separate fleets of trishaws here, the blue and the yellow. The blue can work during the day and the yellow can only work at night. Since we are fairly close to the Equator that gives each about 12 hours to work. It was not uncommon to see a driver sleeping in his trishaw.
There are trucks and cars but the motorcycles and motorbikes outnumber them 10-20:1. Often deliveries are made by motorbike. I saw one bike with 4 100 pound bags of rice tied to the back, another 100 pound bag of rice between the rider's legs and several boxes of unidentified goods under that rice bag. With the rider that's over 600 pounds of load on a motorbike I'm sure is rated for less than 250. He was zipping right along. If he ever hit anything the rice behind him would kill him.
Our next stop was at the Jamu Nyonya Meneer, a factory producing traditional Javanese herbal medicine. They've been in business a long time and have a museum upstairs. It had some old office and production equipment on display as well as old medical cabinets and houseware. When we came back down stairs they had set out samples of some of their products. One was a hot liquid that looked like apple cider. It smelled like ginger so I had to try it. It was really refreshing and D liked it too so I bought a jar of the powder. I'm a sucker for this sort of thing. I bought some red ginger hot drink packets in Korea when we were there.
From there it was out of town and across rice paddies for miles until we arrived at the Sanggar Batik Semarang 16. This is a factory where batik is made by hand. They have demonstrations set up of the weaving, waxing, dying and drying process. One thing about batik, it's been boiled so often during the manufacturing process that it will not shrink when you wash it, nor will the colors bleed. It's light, cool and very comfortable to wear in hot weather being 100% cotton. The only negative is that you do have to iron it. Real batik is not wrinkle resistant. Since the fabric is permeated with wax anywhere they don't want the color to take it will have the same depth and shade of color on both sides. If it doesn't it's not handmade batik. After the dying process they have to boil the cloth to remove the wax. If it's a two color fabric they have to was the portions they don't want the second color to attach to and then after dying boil the cloth again to get the was out. They were using a very dark brown wax here so they could easily see where the wax has been applied.
It's amazing to watch the work being done. First the artist draws the design on the cloth. It then goes to the ladies who apply the wax to the areas that are supposed to stay white. They have a bowl of hot was and dip it up into little cups that have a short nozzle attached. They then use the nozzle to apply the wax. Sometimes if they're working on the second color to be applied they put the wax on the already dyed part with a brush if the areas are large. Then they use the wax pens to wax the white part that's supposed to stay white. The more colors, the more the work and the more expensive the batik cloth becomes. It's exacting work for sure.
I went into their small sales area not expecting to find anything because they rarely have my size. To my surprise they had several shirts that fit me very well. I bought on and should have bought more. I wore it tonight and it's so comfortable I regretted by decision to get just one.
Our next stop was an unusual one. It was a temple. Stop, you say. You've been in hundreds of temples and you'd be right. But I've never been in a Muslim/Buddhist temple before. The Sam Po Kong Chinese temple was built to honor Sam Po Thay Jin a Chinese emissary who came to Semarang in 1401. He was Chinese but he was a Muslim. He was very popular in Java and the Chinese style temple is dedicated to him and he is buried there. The only way you'd know it's not a Buddhist temple is that in the four temple buildings on the property there's no Buddha in any of them. The practice some of the same temple traditions as Chinese Buddhists, jos stick fortune telling, burning paper money to send it to your relatives, offerings of flowers, fruit and incense but not to Buddha. In a seeming contradiction there are statues of other Chinese characters on the property. Some of them appear to be Chinese gods of a sort. I'm going to have to do some research to see how they merge that with Islam's strict prohibition against pictures and images. Technically this is not a Mosque but a Chinese temple. Maybe that's enough.
The temples have altars and places to put burning incense sticks, there's just on one on the altar. Seems odd. As with most temples it's a photographer's paradise very colorful and ornate contrasting with the red, undecorated columns and eaves. One temple had two marble columns deeply carved with Chinese dragons chasing a ball, as apparently Chinese dragons like to do.
There were five people on the temple grounds in traditional Chinese costumes. It looked like a bride, groom, matron of honor and the two mothers. The posed for pictures for all the tourists with smiles on their faces. They were accompanied by a professional photographer and I think we interrupted their wedding picture session. Then I noticed that the photographer continued shooting them while they posed for us. He didn't seem to care either.
There were areas with shaded benches and stools. Most of the stools were shaped like colorfully painted Chinese drums. A very large bronze statue of Sam Po dominates the courtyard between the temples.
On the drive back to the port we drove up to the highest part of the island. The area is called the Gombel Highlands, but it's informally known as the Beverly Hills of Semarang. The houses were large by Indonesian standards and all had walls and gated driveways. The drive ways were very short, no more than 30 feet. It was obviously a very well to do area.
Our entertainer tonight was Scott Williams, an Auzzie comedian. His comedy act was the most hi-tech I've ever seen. He used electronics to change people's voices and interspersed is patter with video. Very enjoyable.
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