Cilacap!

What a strange sounding name! In Dutch days, this native name was spelled using the Dutch alphabet with its values as Tjilatjap. When Indonesians want to give a feel of past imperial glory or Dutch stateliness they will spell the name of their business or restaurant or resort or product using this older spelling. Somehow, even though the Dutch are not usually remembered fondly, Indonesians still have a fascination for, and a desire to emulate, the West. They see us all over television, movies and the internet, but when one of us actually turns up… well, it doesn't take me long to get used to being stared at! It also doesn't take me long to forget I'm a bulé, a white Westerner, because I do everything Yndonesians do without thinking twice. For me, the culture shock was in returning to the States, not coming here.

So, we headed south to Cilacap. I really didn't know what to expect. Was it some sort of national monument, or what? I was getting a strange mix of attitudes about it from the few things I was hearing. It seemed to be a bad place, because the Dutch committed lots of atrocities against the Javanese there. It seemed to be a good place, because in spite of it all, the people survived. Why would they want to preserve the site as a monument, I don't know, except to show future generations what inhumanity can be practiced by civilised nations. So the Dutch were bad parents. Will the children learn not to imitate them, or is it already too late?

Cilacap (CHEE-lah-chop) is an old fortification on the south coast of Java. It has been turned into a historical monument with some unexpected features. the dinosaur statues, for example, who would have suspected they'd turn up at Cilacap? Did the Dutch have things like them to terrorize the natives? One unexpected pleasant surprise was the presence of deer in the park, that quite tamely kept close to us, but not too close. The waterfront made the park seem a little like a beach, and I suppose it was. This was the closest we came to hanging out at the beach, except for the morning we spent on the Singaraja waterfront in Bali.

For me, Cilacap was a bit of a let down as a historical site, probably because I didn't have any previous knowledge of it, and it held no emotional content for me. As for the fortifications themselves, they were not too different from things that exist in the States that I've seen. Nothing of European content in the States is very old, except on the east coast, Boston, for example. Everything else, though we think it old, is not really very old at all. The same lack of the antique surrounds, for me, the European monuments in Asia. There just not old enough to be of much interest. I am much more interested in the native monuments. On my next stay here, we will visit Borobudur, we must.

After walking around the site, we were getting hungry. We had brought snacks with us in the car, something we always did when we went on day trips, but Dwi and Yudhie wanted to get some food from one of the beach front warungs. You just order up the food, and keep going back if you want more of something, and then at the end you pay. Sometimes the warung owner is absent when it's time to pay, so you leave the money with one of the warungs nearby to give him when he returns. I was really quite surprised how the 'honor system' works here so naturally.

Sitting on a bamboo mat on the grass with our sandals left behind, we enjoyed lunch and a drink—an actual coconut slashed open with a machete and the liquid contents sweetened a bit, shaved coconut floating in it, and ice, and drunk through a straw. It cost practically nothing, and the old woman who went to the trouble of preparing it worked so hard. I never stopped being impressed by the industry and thrift of the people of Yndonesia. Again and again saying to myself, 'They do so much with so little.' This is probably true of many underdeveloped countries, but Yndonesia seems different because it is so large, so populous, and though so diverse so mutually helpful.

Standing on the beach, looking out to sea, it was hard to believe that somewhere a few hundred miles away, lay the continent of Australia, one of the most advanced and richest countries on the planet. And here, in Java, people were making ends meet on an income that an average American or Australian can't even manage to use for a recreation allowance. To me that was perhaps the greatest and most shocking realisation I had from living in this country for three weeks. Economics is very relative. A hundred dollars in America can be the cost of a dinner date and a movie or concert. A million rupiah can be the monthly income of an entire family. The two amounts on the foreign exchange ledger look about the same. But what a difference it makes where and how you live.

Next… Home to Tangerang, again