March 03, 2016 – Semarang, Indonesia

Semarang is one of those big cities where cruise ships dock along with container ships, warehouses, and other cargo ships in a busy, noisy industrial area. However, they seemed to be happy to see us, as a small musical group and many dancers were along the dock to greet the ship. They started playing at 7:00 am when we pulled into port, but it took quite a while before local officials cleared passengers to leave the ship. By the time we walked down the gangway after 9:00, the dancers and band had all quit playing and left the area. Maybe it got too hot for them, as it definitely was a hot, humid day. We found out more about the humidity later in the day.

Many of Serenity’s passengers opted for one of three different tours being offered by the Shore Excursion Office to visit Borobuder, a World Heritage Site in the province of Jogyakarta. The tours varied from 9 hours to 10½ hours in length; all of these included six hours driving time (round-trip). Borobuder is the most visited attraction in Indonesia, and is the world’s largest and best preserved ancient Buddhist temple, dating from the 9th century AD. Jim had visited Borobuder back in 1970, and we decided to forego the long bus ride. Those passengers we know that did one of the Borobuder trips said it was worth the drive.

We signed up for a ship’s excursion called “Javanese Culture & Traditions” which turned out to be a good choice for us. Semarang is a large and industrialized city (about 2 million residents) on the north coast of the island of Java. As we said in a previous blog posting, about 145 million people live on the island of Java (claimed to be the most heavily populated island in the world). The Indonesian capital city, Jakarta, is located on western Java. Semarang is the capital city of Central Java, one three provinces on the island. Central Java has 31 million residents.

There were three buses set up for our group from the Serenity on the Culture & Traditions trip. The tour guide on our bus, named Iqbal, did a very good job explaining the city’s interesting history, spanning periods of rule by the Chinese, Dutch, and Japanese. As a result, Semarang has many temples and churches of various religions, including Buddhist, Hindu, Islam, and Christian. He said that, even though Islam is the predominant religion in Indonesia, there is no dictate from the government about which religion people should follow. He said that the Islamic traditions in Java came from China and are not as strict as those in the Middle East. Women don’t wear scarfs, and there’s no need to stop work and pray multiple times per day.

We had a police escort for our three tour buses, so we were preceded by flashing lights and a blaring siren wherever we drove today. This was a perfect way to stay on schedule and not get bogged down by traffic. The police cleared the path for us -- sometimes driving on the wrong side of the road, while cutting off and stopping long lines of traffic, and making quite a ruckus. We’d like to have a police escort like that back home!

Our first stop was the Blenduk Church – the oldest Christian church in Central Java, dating back to 1753. The church is in the “Old City” and was built by the Dutch in a unique square shape with a large dome. It was intended to look like a mosque but still have Christian features. At one time it had a large pipe organ, but that doesn’t operate any more. Iqbal said that, historically, not many Javanese people converted to Christianity during the period of Dutch rule, because the Dutch were their “enemies.”

We stopped at a large Buddhist temple complex called Buddhagaya Watugong. The most prominent feature here is the Avalokitesvara Pagoda – a striking 7-level white tower trimmed in colors of red, green, and gold. At a height of 148 feet, we understand that this pagoda is the tallest in Indonesia. 

Jim climbed up the long, broad stairway to see the golden statue of Buddha on the first level. He then walked over to a second building, called the Dharmasala which housed a “meditation” room. Again there was a golden Buddha statue. Iqbal described the significance of some of the trees planted on the grounds here – especially the Bodhi tree and the Sala tree, both of which were significant during the life of Buddha.

Our final stop was at the Balemong Resort hotel which is very attractive and consisted of many different buildings, nestled within a tropical garden setting. We passed through a warm, wood-paneled reception building to an outdoor area where we enjoyed a warm welcome drink that we were told contained cinnamon, cloves, lemongrass, and some other herbs. A light rain started while we walked a fairly long distance outdoors to a stand-alone demonstration room for preparing batik fabric. After a short demonstration, we each tried to use an old pen-like device in a bamboo holder to put hot wax along a pre-printed flower design on a piece of fabric. This was a lot more difficult than we thought it would be.

While we were learning how to become batik artisans, the skies opened up and very heavy rain started pouring down. After finishing our batik efforts, we were supposed to walk to the restaurant building for lunch. We waited for a while, because we thought the “monsoon” rain would just be a shower and would end soon. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop at all, and several inches of rain were flooding the grounds. Eventually the hotel staff drove three vans along a long back pathway to our building, picked us up, and drove us to the restaurant building. Getting into and out of the van wasn’t easy, and we got soaking wet.

Lunch was a buffet of rice and Indonesian specialties. After lunch, Iqbal told us that we should go back to the batik building to see a demonstration of rice field plowing by water buffalo; umbrellas were available to use. We and about 10 others decided that we didn’t need to walk that far in the monsoon rain to see a water buffalo, so we walked (with umbrellas) to the reception building where the buses were parked. After only about 15 minutes, the rest of the group arrived at the buses, and we were ready to leave. Balemong Resort was a very nice facility and they had a good plan for us, but Mother Nature took charge today.

On the ride back to the harbor, Iqbal gave us the final products of our batik efforts. The hotel staff had died the fabric for us. We don’t think anyone in our group will be returning to Java to take a job in the batik industry. The rain gradually tapered off, and by the time we got back to the ship it had stopped. The good news is that the people who had traveled all the way to Borobudur and back didn’t see any rain at all.

Following our return to Crystal Serenity and dinner in the dining room, we attended a concert by Tom Ward in the Stardust Café. The only possible word to describe his performance is “amazing.” He is an incredibly accomplished classical guitarist. We don’t know how he can possibly move his hands so fast and produce such complex music.

After our three stops in Indonesia, we’re now headed for Malaysia. After crossing the equator northbound, we will be in port four consecutive days in Malaysia -- two days at Port Kelang (closest seaport for Kuala Lumpur) March 6 & 7 --  followed by Penang and Langkawi on March 8 & 9.

Jim & Ginny