That night, Malioboro was closed to traffic and all street vendors (not food vendors, just the people selling knock-off goods and various cheap wares) leaving the places more open and subsequently filled with people. There were also a couple of stages set up however I only saw one band performing on one stage. I don't actually know why there were three except that one of them was used by XL, a wireless provider, and there a bunch of schools did this dance contest of sorts, mine included.
First, every school was dressed how they saw fit. SMK 1 wore their gym class uniforms with crazy straw hats for example. My school made masks out of boxes that we painted, and then a bunch of people painted themselves white, pretty much just because they could. We looked a little something like this:
Once your school was up, you had to do your chant. I'm still not really sure why but everybody was pretty pumped up so there was a whole lot of energy which made it pretty cool.After that, you all faced the stage and performed maybe 40 seconds of this dance that we learned at school earlier in the week. After every school had gone through, each school went a second time, but instead of doing the dance we had all learned, each school performed their own variation of it. I, unfortunately, had missed this little lesson, so I learned the dance about five minutes before doing it. Needless to say, things went mediocre for me. In the end, I don't know who won because I couldn't understand anything the MCs were saying, but I'm about 99% sure it wasn't us.
After the contest, I had to go get a shirt for the next day (will explain this in a moment) on the South end of Malioboro and then forced myself, along with some friends and other exchange students, through an exceedingly thick crowd to get my bike to finally get home. We finished dancing at about 8:30 and I wasn't leaving Malioboro until 9:35, so the crowds were pretty thick. Despite the crowds, though, we still managed to take a picture with the becok and horse carriage drivers:
The next day at school, everyone wore various traditional clothes (that's where the shirt I needed to borrow comes in). My particular class wore the clothing of traditional Javanese farmers, so nothing too fancy:
Getting dressed at one of my classmate's homes who lives close to school.
Other classes were dressed differently, most wore more wealthy clothing and they showed off a few different styles. What is most interesting, however, is that almost all traditional clothing from the area (and I think Indonesia at large, but I can't say for certain) mixes very old local styles with Dutch clothing. Typically, men would wear a 19th century Dutch military-style jacket and a jerek, or traditional Javanese skirt for men. Women would also wear a jerek (although it may have a different name for girls even though it seems the same) and then have a pretty ornate blouse of some kind. This half and half combination is found pretty much everywhere, especially among members of the royal family of Yogyakarta. That's right, Special Province Yogyakarta is still ruled by a sultan as its governor. How sweet is that? Here are a couple examples of fancier clothing traditional to Jogja:
We didn't actually have any school that day, we just came all dressed up, walked about, hung out for a bit, then went to a classmate's house to eat. Nothing is more Indonesian feeling than eating a chicken and a huge pile of rice with your hands, on the floor, with about 30 people.
Sounds like you had a fun and busy weekend. Love the box masks. What did yours look like?
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