First day on the island of Java
As I have already written that we had booked a service apartment in Yogyakarta through a website. This was the flat of a Muslim teacher named Maspriyo. He assured us that we would be able to enjoy our stay in the two room and one kitchen service apartment he provided. Even Masprio's wife assured that she would cook a vegetarian meal for us. We had all this conversation with this family online. We refused to cook them food because our satisfaction was going to be from Indian type of food. I was also apprehensive that the definition of being a vegetarian is different in every country. In any case, we booked this service apartment based on the pictures available on the website. The owner of the service apartment, Mr. Masprio arranged for a driver who was supposed to come to pick us up at Yogyakarta airport. The fare for the taxi from the airport to the service apartment was said to be 750 Indian Rupees, which we thought was fair.
Mr. Meeting with Anto
As per our expectation, Mr. The driver sent by Masprio was standing outside the airport carrying a strip of paper bearing Vijay's name. He was a fair complexion and a cheerful young man of medium stature. He warmly welcomed us and said hello with folded hands like Indians. We came to know the magic of this greeting only by going to foreign soil. As soon as an Indonesian person greeted with folded hands, half the distance between us and him would have ended at the same time. The driver told us his name as Anto and we all asked our names. I guess he even remembered our names at the same time because after sometime he called me Mr. He was addressed as Mohan. After that I also gave him Mr. Addressed by saying at last. I noted that whenever I met him Mr. When Anto used to say that, there was a special kind of smile on his face. Mr. Anto deposited our luggage in his car. His car is also Mr. It was very big like Putu's car and we sat in it with our family and belongings.
I'm sorry
Now the car must have moved only a few meters that Mr. Anto said to the father sitting in the front seat- 'I'm sorry, seat belt please!' Dad also put on the seat belt, apologizing to him. Later it became known that it was his habit to say 'I'm sorry' before saying anything and thank you at the end of the talk. Later on, we got to know some more good habits of his. As soon as he stopped the car, he used to get down and open the car door and before driving he himself used to check all the doors whether they were closed or not. He spent very little time in this work. He also had a good habit that wherever it was necessary, he would tell us briefly about the name of the place falling on the way or its specialty.
Shine of Yogyakarta
When Mr. When Anto's car came out of the airport and started swaying on the streets of Yogyakarta, we were stunned to see the brilliance of this city. It is a big and modern city like Poona. The roads are quite wide which are divided into two major parts through dividers. Each section is further divided into two parts, the left side for two wheelers and the right side for four wheelers. Due to this arrangement, the vehicles were able to move faster and there was no need to sound the horn on the road. In between, there was arrangement of zebra crossing at red beacon from where pedestrians were easily accessible. The whole road is very clean, no beggars anywhere. Not even unwanted vendors selling goods standing at intersections. There was a grand market on both sides of the road, which continued for a long time. There was no end to the number of large malls and lavish shops in the area. After walking the streets of Yogyakarta for about half an hour, we realized that Bali and Yogyakarta have nothing in common. The quiet and simple life of Bali is completely different from the glitzy charm of Yogyakarta. Compared to Yogyakarta, Bali can only be called a clean and civilized countryside. Although there are also cities like Kuta, they are much smaller than Yogyakarta.
The glitz of the mall and the splendid behavior of the girls
We have Mr. Requested Anto that we have to buy milk and vegetables from some shop, then he took us to a mall. Me and Vijay went inside the mall. The remaining members of the family remained sitting in the car. This mall could be compared to any other grand mall in the world. It was a unique and sparkling world made up of a mixture of glass and light. We tried talking to some people there so that we could find out in which part or on which floor we would get milk and vegetables, but we could not find a single person who knew English. There the Indonesian language was written in Roman script, which was not possible to understand. So we at our discretion decided to look for milk and vegetables. We soon saw fruits and vegetables on one of the floors.
Here vegetables from many countries of the world were kept. How many types of onions or how many types of potatoes or how many types of apples or how many types of tomatoes there were, cannot be said. Bananas, watermelons and melons were also of many kinds. From here we also got closed cans of milk.
When we went to the payment counter to pay for these commodities, we saw 18-20 year old girls working at every counter. Scarves were tied around everyone's ears and heads. Everyone's hands worked fast. She used to take payment from the customer in a hurry and settle it so that her time was not wasted. They recognized us on seeing that they were Indians, so they greeted us with folded hands and welcomed us with a smile. He quickly made a bill for our goods and after taking payment from us, returned the remaining money. Couldn't this kind of decency and speedy work be done in India, I asked myself!
It was a huge mall. There were customers all around but the crowd was nowhere to be found. There is no shouting, hustle and bustle, restlessness, hustle and bustle, laxity in work, nothing that can be found in the work of these girls. In very few stalls we saw young boys standing, with 90 percent or more girls working there.
Certainly Indonesia is a Muslim country, 90 percent of the population of this country is Muslim. Even on this, India repeats this claim in front of the world time and again that most of the Muslims of the world live here, but what is the difference between the Muslims of both the countries! The Muslims of India are known for their poverty, illiteracy, backwardness and population growth. Muslim women of India are still embroiled in burqa and triple talaq, but Indonesian Muslim girls have proved to the world that women of any country cannot behave like them decently and decently. She tackles every task with patience, calmness and skill.
Glitter of residential settlements
After leaving the mall, we again stood in the parking lot. Came up to Anto's car and the car started running again. After about an hour's walk from the airport, the market process ended and residential settlements started. The number of shops here remained few. There was no dearth of luxurious rooms in the residential area. One building after another.
In the desolate settlement
It had been almost an hour since we walked. In the end this dazzling series of residential settlements also ended and Mr. Anto's car turned on a road from which a desolate settlement began. Seeing the car turning on this road, we were shaken. There were small houses painted green in front of which chickens were seen running. The sound of azaan was coming from a mosque on a loud speaker. Soon Mr. Anto's car stopped in front of a locked iron gate. It was the same door whose picture we saw on the website. Things didn't look good from outside but we started unloading our luggage.
We were blown away when faced with the truth
Inside the gate, a narrow platform, ten feet long and three feet wide, led to the main halls of the building. On both sides of this road there was a huge pool of water in which black colored dirty water was visible. The one-and-a-half year old lamp could have fallen in this cistern at any time. The lamp, which is always raging, cannot be kept even by holding it all the time. Sometimes man's attention will be missed!
The condition of the rooms was even worse. No fans, air conditioners on the ceilings of the rooms. The doors were broken, on which the small nails, pricked them as soon as they put their hands on the doors. There was a table fan in both the rooms, from which air was coming out with difficulty. In both the rooms there was a small CFL hanging from which very little light was reaching the floor. There was no spout on the washbasin and the toilet facilities were so bad that our heart trembled. In both the toilets there was no system of washing after defecation. In the toilet of one room, a curtain was hung in place of the door. There was a knob in the wall of the toilets, which when turned, used to get water from a fountain hanging near the ceiling. How to be here, each of us was asking ourselves the same question.
When we inquired about the kitchen, it came to know that it is in the next house where the landlord's food was also cooked. When the kitchen fridge was opened, chopped fish and chicken were kept in it. Madhu raised her hand that she would not go to the kitchen and cook food where fish and chicken are already kept. It was not even possible for us to have the food prepared there!
Considering this arrangement, the time was above five thirty in the evening. It was not immediately possible to find another service apartment in Padresh. It was not possible to go to the hotel as there would be no food preparation facilities. We asked the landlord if another apartment could be found nearby that would be more convenient! Mr. Masprio flatly refused. We have Mr. Asked Anto, he also said that he can take it to some hotel but does not know of any service apartment.
Since the time of Yogyakarta was one hour behind the time of Bali, while the actual distance was only 502 km, it was dark here very early. Nothing was going to happen because of the hustle and bustle. So we decided to act patiently. Mr. Masaprio was requested to arrange a gas and stove in the narrow verandah in front of our rooms, put up a wooden table and order a 20 liter bottle of RO water from the market so that we could have our meals in this verandah. be able to prepare Seeing our condition, Mr. Masprio took pity on us. He fulfilled our demands.
Trouble on Trouble
While Madhu and Bhanu were busy preparing tea and food, Vijay and I were busy booking another service apartment through the internet for the next three days. Here also a crisis arose. Wi-Fi connectivity was not available inside the rooms and laptop was not working outside the room as the laptop battery got discharged after running for a while. There was no electric socket in the verandah to which the laptop could be connected. We kept trying for about three hours, as soon as we chose a service apartment, the booking could not be done as the scanned copy of our passport was not reaching the website due to low-connectivity of WiFi.
Sushma's solution
Vijay contacted his younger sister Sushma and told her his problem. Sushma, who is working as a software engineer in Infosys, lives in Chandigarh, but on this day she had come to her in-laws' house in New Delhi. Sushma's husband i.e. my Jamta was cut off from the work of his company that day. Sushma got us booked for the same service apartment from Delhi which we had selected by looking on the website. Its check-in time was after 2 o'clock in the day but we wanted to shift there in the early morning. So Vijay contacted Miss Rogovita, the owner of the service apartment, and told her his problem. Miss Rogovita said it would take time to get the apartment cleaned. So we can come not at 8 in the morning but at 11 in the morning.
The chickens kept talking, the mullahs kept banging and the mosquitoes kept biting
We slept as soon as we had food. It was difficult to get the night out, but there was peace in my mind that it was only a matter of one night. We could bear the pain but were not able to bear the condition of food cooked in filth, the smell of meat and fish and lack of system to clean the body after excretion in the toilet. There was no air coming out of the fans of both the rooms all night. Mosquitoes were present in large numbers due to the dirty water pool and the whole night Indians kept feasting on blood. Every once in a while some rooster in the street kept banging and after a while the sound of azaan being given by the mullah from a nearby mosque kept reverberating. There was no trace of sleep anywhere. What a night it was! I have also spent a few nights traveling in jeep all night along the Indo-Pak border, but still did not feel such a bad feeling.