Feb 27 – At Sea-Madura Strait & Java Sea. At last, after 5 days in a row in port, a day to rest up and reorganize. I'd almost forgotten my sea day routine. But like riding a bicycle, on the trip up to breakfast it all came flooding back and I stuck to it 100%.
This is the half way point of our cruise geographically; we are now headed west and will be gaining back all those hours we lost. We passed the half way point from the standpoint of time about 6 days ago, the day before we arrived in Bali.
Our entertainer tonight was Tian Jiang, a concert pianist. Born in Shanghai he came to the USA on a cultural exchange arranged by Isaac Stern when he was 8 years old. A ballet dancer that was on the same trip defected and he was taken back to China. When he was 18 he made his way back to the USA and studied piano at the Julliard School in NYC. He's excellent and got the standing ovation he deserved.
Feb 28 – Surabaya, Java, Indonesia. Our last Indonesian port. A hot one as well as a new one for us.
Surabaya is Indonesia's second-largest city with just over 3.1 million residents. It is the capital of the province of East Java and is on the northern shore on the Mas River bordering the Madura Strait. It is also known as 'The City of Heroes' because the Battle of Surabaya roused national and international support for Indonesian independence. Indonesia's first president, Sukarno was born here.
The name Surabaya is made up of the words 'sura' (shark) and 'baya' (crocodile), the two creatures which, in a local myth, fought each other in order to gain the title of "the strongest and most powerful animal" in the area. Rather than continue the fifth they agreed that the shark's territory was the sea and the crocodile's ruled the land. This kept the peace between the two until the shark swam into the river estuary to hunt and the crocodile saw that as an incursion on his domain. Shark argued that the river is a water-realm which means it is his territory. The crocodile believed that the river flows deep inland, so it belongs to him. In the ensuing fight the shark was seriously injured and took refuge in the sea. The crocodile established his territory to the river estuary and that's where the city is today. The two combatants are the city's symbol, shown facing each other while circling. There's a statue in the Governor's Park showing the two facing off.
The earliest record of Surabaya was in a book written in 1225. Ma Huan also wrote about the visit of Zheng He's treasure ships in the early 1400s. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Surabaya was a sultanate and a major political and military power in eastern Java. Until it was taken over by Mataram who then controlled almost the whole of Java, with the exception of the Sultanate of Banten and the Dutch settlement of Batavia.
The Dutch eventually took over the city when Mataram weakened in the middle 1700s. Surabaya became a major trading center under the Dutch colonial government, and hosted the largest naval base in the colony. Surabaya was also the largest city in the colony serving as the center of Java's plantation economy. Japan occupied the city in 1942, as part of the occupation of Indonesia, and it was bombed by the Allies in 1944. After that it was seized by Indonesian nationalists. However, the young nation was soon put into conflict with the British, who were caretakers of the Dutch colony after the surrender of the Japanese. The Battle of Surabaya, one of the most important battles of the Indonesian revolution, started after the killing of the British Brigadier Mallaby on October 30, 1945 near Jembatan Merah (the "Red Bridge"), allegedly by a stray bullet. The Allies gave an ultimatum to the republicans inside the city to surrender, but they refused. The ensuing battle, which cost thousands of lives, took place on November 10, which Indonesians now celebrate as Heroes' Day (Hari Pahlawan). The incident of the red-white flag (the Dutch national red-white-and-blue flag at the top of Yamato Hotel's tower that was torn into the Indonesian red-white flag) by Bung Tomo is also recorded as a heroic feat during the struggle of this city.
Ok, that's it for the history. Now for the visit. Once again we were met at the pier by a Javanese dance troupe. We didn't get off the ship early enough to see them perform.
Our first stop was at the House of Sampoerna. The company, now owned by Phillip Morris, makes cigarettes using the mixture of tobacco and cloves that is standard here. The structure built in 1858 in Dutch colonial style is now used as a museum. The downstairs has artifacts from the history of the company. Pictures are allowed here. Upstairs is a gift shop and along one wall are large windows where you can look out over the production area. Over 400 red capped women sit as small manual machines rolling cigarettes. Each outputs 302 cigarettes or more per hour to maintain their quotas. The process is simple but has to be done very quickly to produce the just over 5 cigarettes per minute required to make that total.
First they pick up a quantity of the tobacco-cloves mixture and place it on the machine in front of them. Too much and the cigarette paper won't meet and it will fall apart. Too little and the cigarette won't be full and the tobacco mixture will fall out. Each has a small lidless plastic box to their left about the size of a shoebox but a bit longer into which they place the finished cigarette. Next, they pull a handle like those on an old adding machine, about like a slot machine lever but on a more horizontal plane, this pulls a paper, compresses the tobacco-cloves mixture, wraps the paper around it and seals the paper. This process is repeated about every 12 seconds. There is two women in a black hats seated so as to divide each row of machines in thirds. These ladies do quality control on the cigarettes, trim them to length and bundle them in pack quantity. The trays are picked up by floor runners and taken to a tally point where that the operator's tally is recorded. The cigarettes are then passed on to one of the 50 or so yellow capped men in the front right quadrant of the work floor to be given another inspection and put in the final packaging for distribution. The whole building smells like someone is roasting a clove studded ham. It was making me hungry.
Someone must have been reading my mind because as we exited the museum we found snacks and drinks on a patio in the courtyard. They were mostly things we'd seen before but one was a small tart with small slices of 4 tropical fruits on top of a layer of custard. They looked very pretty and tasted even better. I'm pretty sure the fruits were mango, papaya, pineapple and a red grape. Excellent!
Oddly enough my favorite exhibit in the museum here was a 1946 Jawa Prák (=Springer) motorcycle. Founded in 1929 by a Czech engineer who moved to Java and obtained a license to manufacture a German designed motorcycle in here, the company's name was a combination of the first two letters of his name, Janeéek, and the first two letters of the German company's name, Wanderer. The cycle was a huge success and in 1946 won the Gold Medal at the Paris Motor Salon.
I think D finds my habit of buying unusual souvenirs a bit disconcerting. This is a prime example. Although I don't smoke and never really did, I had to have a pack of the clove cigarettes. The sell small packs of 5 for about 14,000 rupiah, about $1.10US, certainly an inexpensive purchase. They have a much more aggressive anti-smoking package that we do in the US. The tops1/3 of the package on both sides is given over to the photo of the lower lip and jaw of a person with advanced cancer of the mouth. Certainly a sobering sight.
The streets are very crowded here with the usual suspects, bicycles, motor scooters, motorbikes, cars, trucks and busses. Every stoplight looks like the starting grid of a very unusual grand prix. As we were driving to our next stop we passed the National Police Monument. I had to chuckle a bit because it atop the monument they show the 'Top Cop' standing on a lotus flower just as the Buddha is shown. Struck me as a bit much.
Our next stop was at the office of the Mayor of Surabaya. She greets visitors when she is in but today the Director of Tourism for Surabaya was standing in for her. She's a very pretty woman. At the Mayor's office we were met by a cultural performance. First, four men performed a dance that was based on Javanese martial arts, very quick movements combined with kicks, thrusts and strikes. These were tied together with circular movements reminiscent of Chinese kung fu combined with Japanese Shotokan karate. This was followed by a ladies dance in which they adopted movements used by a mounted cavalry soldier to ward off and attack ground troops. I had heard that the peoples in this area were viewed as the 'bad boys' of Indonesia and I have to day they certainly have the most martial of all the ethnic dances we've ever seen here.
The third portion of the program was two men who essentially performed an Olympic floor routing on the hard macadam of the parking lot. Diving summersaults, back flips and many of the techniques you'd see on the Olympic gymnastics floor, they did. The only difference was that when they struck a still pose for a few seconds it was always in a martial arts form, usually a just executed defensive move of some sort. In fact, defense seemed to be the motif for their entire segment.
What followed was one of the most unusual male dances I've ever seen. A man dressed in a large mask and headdress danced and spun around the performance area. The mask was very large and looked like a lion. Around that was a six foot wide and 8 foot tall headdress of fringe, a sign and ostrich feathers. I asked the guide and he said it weight about 40-60 pounds depending on size. He also said that it does not rest on the man's shoulders but is held in his teeth. Seems unlikely, especially considering what ensued. When he was done with his dance, his assistants picked a man out of the crowd. Not a small man but a substantial Dutchman, probably 5'11" and somewhere between 170-180 pounds. The performer knelt down and the man sat on the lion's head and then the performer stood up and did a full 360˚ turn with him sitting up there. When the dance was breaking up Diana went out to have me take a picture with of her with him, and the assistants grabbed her, put her on the lion head and he gave her a spin too. I looked at the man when the performance was over and he took the headdress off. He was about 5'6" and did not look that large although he was of a much sturdier build that his comrades. Amazing.
As we entered the mayor's office building we were each greeted by the Director of Tourism and received a gift. The men got the traditional head cover they wear in this area and the women got a shawl. The men's hat is basically a do-rag head cover with style. It has a point that points down in the middle of the forehead, an edge that sweeps upward in the front from left to right. On the right side there's a fin shaped piece of cloth and at the back there are two long slim triangles that stick up like two Indian feathers. I think an authentic one is tied from a square or rectangle of cloth but ours is stiffened and glued together because if it ever unraveled we'd never reassemble it.
The mayor of Surabaya has comfortable but not lavish offices. It's in the first Dutch government building in Surabaya during the colonial period. Nice to see a public official that takes more interest in her work than her office. Our guide told us that there are city employees assigned to every area whose task it is to clean the streets every afternoon. If someone calls the mayor's office to complain that their street is not cleaned properly the very next day the mayor herself drops by to talk to the employee assigned there to find out what's up. Sometimes it's not the employees fault and sometime it is. If it is she gives them a stern lecture and says the next time will be the last. She's been known to respond with a shovel in her hands to fires and other messes to help clean up. This sounds like a politician worth voting for.
When we entered the large lobby, there were more snacks and drinks waiting for us as well as some chairs to sit in. As we were enjoying our treats the music started and three exquisitely dressed ladies performed a traditional welcome dance. They were dressed in blue and gold fitted and belted tunics over black and gold long dresses. Their dark hair was done in a beehive cone atop their heads and adorned with gold bands and blue flowers. They had diaphanous scarves draped across their shoulders that were so long they had to be held in their hands to prevent them from dragging on the floor. This scarf was a major prop and integral part of the dance routine.
After being properly welcomed we were invited to tour the offices. The most impressive thing to me was the room where she displays the gifts from visiting dignitaries that seem to be an integral part of diplomatic visits. Every president's library that I've visited has rooms filled with these artifacts and often it's the most visually interesting part of the building. Some countries really go all out with the gifts and some, like the USA's Obama give autographed copies of their own book to the Queen of Great Brittan. How embarrassing.
As we left the building the next set of tour busses was arriving so we got to see the dancers again. This time the assistants picked two girls for the lion ride. The first was an average sized girl that was no problem at all. Next was a pretty Dutch girl. She was not a small girl. She was very tall and in proportion to her height. Probably lighter than the Dutch man but heavier than D. I wonder how many more time that poor guy will have to perform.
There were two young local girls watching the performance. One had a cell phone and was taking pictures. They were probably 7-8 years old. They'd walk out and take a picture and then run back to the shade of the porch to see what they got. Sometimes the result would have them squealing with laughter. I was watching them as much as the dancers. For all I knew they were taking pictures of the tourists so I went behind them to peek over their shoulders. Sure enough, tourist pictures. At least the one I saw. I took a picture that reproduced the one they had taken. Apparently they were intrigued by the dress of young foreign women. Most of Java is Muslim so I don't know how many Western women they've seen in casual clothes.
From there we went to visit an unusual monument. I'm unclear about the motivation for setting it up but I saw a definite meaning in it. The monument is a Whisky Class submarine given to Indonesia by the USSR called the Monkasel abbreviated from Monumen Kapal Selam (Submarine Monument. Built by the Soviets in 1952 it was given to Indonesia in the early '60s when the Indonesians were very friendly with the Soviets. As the USSR tried to exert more control over Indonesian politics the relationship soured and when the batteries needed to be replaced on the sub the USSR wouldn't sell them. Since a diesel-electric boat has to run on its batteries when totally submerged it was rendered useless. They cut it in 12 pieces and moved it to this park and reassembled it as a memorial. Don't know what it officially memorialized but the message to me is ages old. "Beware of Greeks (or in this case Russians) bearing gifts." It is a tourist attraction for the locals. They've cut doors in the sides fore and aft so you can go through the sub. Interesting how much the inside and outside resemble US subs of the late WWII era. It has four torpedo tubes forward and two aft and is almost exactly the same dimensions and configuration in almost every aspect.
We walked out to the front of the park to get a closer look at the sculpture of the shark and alligator fighting. On the way we passed what appeared to be groups of young cheerleaders or spirit groups practicing their formations and movements. They were all in their regular school clothes so there was no way to tell which school they represented. They did a three girl pyramid and the top girl performed a back drop from her position into the waiting arms of the boys on the squad.
The shark and alligator sculpture turned out to be part fountain. Water streams from the shark's mouth. Oddly he's shown on top even though it's the alligator who wins the fight. Actually, wouldn't you expect the shark to be attacking from below? That's their usual method. I guess I'm looking for too much reality and reaching too deep for meaning.
Our next destination was the Kayoon Flower Garden Market located on the western bank of the Kayoon River. Fresh flowers are a must here at any party or gathering. They usually fresh flowers, but paper flowers are available for people on a limited budget. We walked through what they call a flower market but it's not one in the usual sense. In most places the flower market it somewhere you go to buy flowers in bulk or to make arrangements yourself. This marked is a series of what would be called flower shops in the USA. Male florists are hard at work making arrangements both large and small in a multitude of colors and styles. It's common to use fresh flowers as a colorful border for a sign such as one you might find in a hotel lobby welcoming guests to a convention or meeting. Apparently funerals here would rival a mafia don's in the number of floral arrangements. On the way through the market D managed to find some kids that seemed very eager to have their picture taken with the tourist. An interesting side note. This morning we saw women working at the factory making cigarettes that are mainly used by men. This afternoon we find men making floral arrangements that will be purchased mainly by women. An unusual sort of symmetry in that arrangement.
Leaving the flower market we drove a short distance to the park across from the governor's house. In the park there is a very old statue of a seated man without the usual lotus or other markings of a Buddha. It is believed to be a statue made in 1289 to honor King Kertanegara of the Singosari Dynasty. It is treated like a temple in that the locals remove their shoes before climbing the few steps up to the platform the statue rests upon. He is wearing the plain, dark maroon beads of a Tibetan monk. Appropriate because this area was Hindu at the time it was carved.
On the street side of the park directly across from the governor's mansion is a statue of the country's first president, Sukarno. Planted all around him are cannas. Apparently Indonesia has been spared the canna blight that has killed most cannas in the USA.
Back at the ship, D stayed in the terminal to do some last minute shopping while I carried all our touring gear back to the room.
Our entertainment was a double header of the last two artists, Kateryna Sychova and Tian Jiang. Both are excellent musicians and the show was great as expected. I think they both get off the ship in Singapore so that was the last we'll see of them.
Oddly enough, although we are northwest we turned the clocks ahead one hour last night to match Singapore. The time zones in this area are contorted beyond all reason. Then, of course, we have the treat of falling back only one-half hour for India.
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