I guess I’ll start of the 2009 post with a little bit of my short trip to Indonesia. I went to a small town of Pati in Central Java to look for something different than the capital city Jakarta. Of course, while there is not much modern entertainments like those large shopping centres, pubs, etc. This town has its own unique appearance.

The buildings remains the same as it was when I went here a few years ago, time seems to go slower here. If we look at the picture of the houses, those are the typical house + shop buildings.

Among other things however one of the best activities that I did was hunting for food. My favourite would be the traditional food called “Nasi Gandul”.

Its most prominent characteristics is having to place the food on top of a sheet of banana leave, giving the dish a very traditional look. I’m not quite sure what part of the cattle is the meat , all I know is that this food taste great and I love it! By the way, this is why we have to bring our camera everywhere including restaurants, so that we can take a picture of those different looking foods.

That was all exciting, unfortunately there are some sad aspect of this city (probably throughout the nation); it is the fact that most of the historical and old buildings are not being cared for. Take a look at the picture below, this was the once great looking sports hall, now a “ghost” looking hall.

Old Sport Hall

Old Sport Hall

From this city, I then moved on to a village, kind of rural suburb area I guess; it was called Trangkil.

Trangkil Sugar Factory

This place was once one of the biggest sugar factory in Central Java during the time of Dutch Colonial. I went there because my Grandpa was one of the head machinist in that sugar factory. Let’s take a look of the few shots that I took during the visit:

Trangkil Sugar Factory, the Machines	Trangkil Sugar Factory, Exterior
Trangkil Sugar Factory, Impressive gears that kept the factory alive	Trangkil Sugar Factory, the Machines

Although looking like a worn out factory, according to the caretaker there, this factory is actually operational. Too bad they didn’t take care of the facility like it used to be, could have been a good tourist attraction, especially there are still a lot of younger visitors who are the family members of the ones who used to work here. The saddest part is when the caretaker said that the last remaining old building will be destroyed as well.

The factory visit was a great thing to look at a portion of the Indonesian history.

Photo Tips: In the dark places like the factory machines above, use high ISO settings and the highest aperture (eg. f/2.8) possible to ensure sharp result. If you use a zoom lens, use the lowest focal length.

From the visits in Pati I then moved to the Semarang city. It is much larger than Pati and more modern in a sense. As usual however, I prefer to visit historical places. I’d like to show you one of the interesting place in there, the Pagoda Avalokitsvara.

This is a realtively new place with great aesthetics. Maybe with a little bit more publication it can be a good addition to the city’s tourism. The pictures that I took here could have been better. The rainy day when I came here didn’t help with the photography aspect of the visit . Here’s a little bit more shots from the site.

All in all, I am delighted to say that my trip had been a wonderful one. Great sites to see, great historical view, great food and most of all great chance to take good photos!