Fred went a wandering.

The main road is amazingly busy 24/7 with sometimes up to 10 cars passing in a single day.

[/url]

Many of the houses need a little attention ... and electricity ... and running water ...and a toilet

The village has two water supplies, the one from the national water company (That dries up in the dry season), and the well dug and maintained by the locals (That dries up in the dry season).

Basically, there's very water in much of the dry season, so you have to be very careful how you use it.

The well looks like this, including the pump system that fails with a power cut, and they happen at least once a week because of the electricity saving rota the national electricity company enforces as demand exceeds supply.



To explain the differences between the dry and rainy seasons, take a peek at these two photos I took in 2009.
Same lake, taken from the same place.

That duff building in Bintaro is about to be no more.
The press and emergency crews are in place, as are the explosives, and all are waiting for 10pm this evening

He's never going to ride on the road like that, is he?



Yep, he sure did.

That duff building in Bintaro is coming down piece by piece.





But this wouldn't be Indonesia without a bunch of guys collecting scrap metal that has come away during the demolition, regardless of how unsafe the place they're standing is.



(Sorry about the poor quality of the last picture; I only had my 24 X optical zoom compact so I had to resort to digital zoom).

Village life changes very slowly,  the pace of life equally so.





This village shop is new

Every village has a graveyard, and they all have far too many tiny graves.
Life without cash means no medical help so a sick child often becomes a dead child.

Doggies are not especially popular in Indonesia because their saliva is considered unclean in Islam. However, there are a lot of pet shops selling them over here, but some "shops" tend to be a little more portable.
Menteng (Where these were taken) is one of the posh parts of Jakarta, full of embassies and seriously expensive buildings, unless you wander down the side streets.

Streetside furniture shops and micro factories are in every town and city here, often clumped together in rows of shops all selling about the same stuff.
This example is in Glodok, just south of the Jakarta's old town.
Business is business so they're normally make anything you want in any size you want.

Newspapers are normal all over the world, but these sellers in Glodok near Jakarta's old town are a little multi culti in their business. They have papers in several languages to suit the diverse population in that area.



Selling papers from a bike is also pretty common here.

I don't much bother wandering into tourist areas because it isn't really my cup of tea and there are millions of snaps of Jakarta's old town (Kota tua) on the internet. However, it's worth a brief mention.



This is the old well that supplied the Dutch colony's water.

People go to the old town for various reasons, but they mostly involve looking around the museums, riding the old hire bikes, listening to music (Sold by the song performed live) and to wear hats they'd never get away with normally.
The chilled dudes you see performing were pretty good.

This visit was with intent, mostly to get a few shots of something very rarely taken, that being the mysterious activities of school and university "Bule" (Foreigners that look a lot like they might speak English) hunters.
English teachers and lecturers send their students off in hunting parties  with the aim of viciously interviewing foreigners and capturing interviewees on film.
Knowing there were very likely to be tribes of these hunters around, I went to shoot a few of them, totally ignoring the danger of being interviewed in order to get these rare photos of ESL learners in the wild.
I was interviewed several times but managed to escape alive after cleverly going to a shop to buy a life saving bottle of water so I could manage to answer their questions without dehydrating.









Note to the teachers and lecturers - Dudes, try some more imaginative questions - You're boring as hell.

I wandered through Bintaro sector 9 this afternoon, where I came across a chap whose roof had suffered in the recent bad weather.

I apologise for the poor quality but they were moving quickly and there was little time to get a shot.
Yes, they're carrying a tree on a motorbike.

Liquid nitrogen is at around minus 196 degrees centigrade - That's cold enough to freeze your hand, mouth or stomach as soon as it touches.

Anyway, on an entirely unrelated subject, who fancies a snack?

A dude making kids' snacks



Hang on ... what's this?



Ah, nitrogen. Maybe he has a side business pumping up tyres for high performance cars.



No, he's pouring a -196 degree liquid onto the snacks





Sometimes he puts some in a cup and pours it on



And the finished product

There are many reasons I like Indonesia so much, but one of the big ones is demonstrated by this picture. The washing is left out in the street without the slightest thought anything will get damaged by vandals or stolen, mostly because the chances are close to zero.

The commuter train ride to Jakarta is a game of sardines at busy periods, and a rush to exit the station when you arrive. Hang back, let the other go and you'll stroll out easily 5 minutes later.

Palmerah station has a footbridge and a lot of motorcycle taxi riders hunting for your business.



There are a few female ojek riders in Jakarta, but not many. This one works for one of the app based companies and will take both male and female passengers.

The big and messy building in Bintaro is still partially up, but coming down bit by bit.



They have men working up there again



This doesn't look deliberate; I hope no one was up there.

Mental illness is a bit of a problem here and your care depends totally on how much cash you or your family can come up with. Non-violent people tend to end up wandering the streets, sleeping in from of a school in this case as I saw on my last trip to Wonosobo.

Schoolgirls are schoolgirls regardless of where they come from, and schoolgirls like to take silly pictures of each other. These kids were near the traffic lights in Wonosobo, their pal was taking the picture with her phone, but my zoom lens caught them. This, as an old, fat uncool person who could easily be wrong, is a 'dab', something that's gone wild in Indonesia.

Poverty is an issue for many, and some live their wholes lives with nothing much. That means they have to work until they no longer can, trying to earn enough to survive.
This lady was in a village just outside Sapuran, Wonosobo.



Different lady, different village, different sticks, same life.
Kledung pass, Parakan.

Wonosobo market, like so many similar places with terrible wiring, burnt down. A temporary market has grown up to keep the businesses running.





The taxi service wasn't effected

I don't do scenery, mostly because I'm not very good at it and I never capture the full beauty of a place. This is the case with my poor attempt to show a little of the Kledung pass outside Wonosobo, but I hope they show a little of how amazing it is.

Step farming a volcano



The next one sort of remind me of the Pennines, but with more volcanoes.

The market in Wonosobo was a concrete and brick building that was demolished after a massive fire.
This is all that's left.





Most people see a mess, but I see a man making a living ... but you have to look very carefully to the at the right of the picture.

I'll walk over and make it easier for you to see.

Christmas is a minor thing around there because there are few Christians and Catholics about.
Christmas day fell on a Sunday this year but it had absolutely no effect on normal Sunday morning stuff except there were less people dancing because a lot had gone to church.

The man that usually sells milk was selling milk (I especially like the strawberry)



The food sellers were still selling food



The people who usually chill out were still chilling out.



The dancers were still under the command of the scary lady who runs the dance thing.



and the dancer were still dancing



There went Christmas morning.

The dancers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnbxzNr … e=youtu.be

You are absolutely right... What a great job that you are doing .. Whenever I see your pictures, it seems like I am wandering into those streets and I really can breath the and feel Java inside me... You are lucky that you live such a wonderful place on earth... Indonesia is also lucky to have a fan and admirer like you... You must arrange a Photo Exhibition one day...

aly123 wrote:

What a great job that you are doing .

Thank you, but it's just a bit of fun and I wildly snap away in the hope of the odd half reasonable shot.

aly123 wrote:

Whenever I see your pictures, it seems like I am wandering into those streets and I really can breath the and feel Java inside me....

Excellent; that's what I'm aiming for.

aly123 wrote:

You You are lucky that you live such a wonderful place on earth

I love Indonesia with a passion - I will, if all goes well, stay here until I stuff it then be buried here.

aly123 wrote:

You must arrange a Photo Exhibition one day...

I've thought about that. I must find an opportunity.

A cock fight in McD.

I'm sure McD know nothing of this but I'm going to email the video link to them.
At least one member of staff was aware and ignored it, but the others had no way to see it.
The men jumped over the back wall when they'd finished their 'sport'.









https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLsCOiQ … e=youtu.be

I bought a dash cam a while ago.

It's seen a few bumps but the last couple of days have proven it was a good idea. It captured the moment I entered McD and saw the cock fighting, but the day before saw one of the strangest things I've noticed on an Indonesian road.
I thought I'd seen every possible silly act,  but I was so very wrong ~ watch the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtC6c0j … e=youtu.be

Fred wrote:

I bought a dash cam a while ago.

It's seen a few bumps but the last couple of days have proven it was a good idea. It captured the moment I entered McD and saw the cock fighting, but the day before saw one of the strangest things I've noticed on an Indonesian road.
I thought I'd seen every possible silly act,  but I was so very wrong ~ watch the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtC6c0j … e=youtu.be

Wow that was sure scary..........hope all ended well for him and family.

HRGuru wrote:

Wow that was sure scary..........hope all ended well for him and family.

This time it was low speed and the lady sort of stepped off, managing to avoid any injury save a couple of scratches.
Who knows where it will happen next time.
Since he was aware he was epileptic but still rode, he's very likely to do it again.

There are very few things in Indonesia that really get me angry, but the adults hiding out of the way whilst they exploit this little kid at the roundabout just south of Tangerang's immigration office is one of them.
Slavery such as this is still far too common here and government efforts to wipe it out have been ineffective. Someone told me the adults were her parents, but it's hard to believe someone would send their own little kid out into traffic to sell stuff to strangers in cars.

The tobacco debate has pretty much come and gone in many western countries, but it rages on here in a big way.
At the time of posting this there is a move to ban tobacco advertising from TV and much talk of more tax and more restrictions on sales.

Most in the Wonosobo area tobacco trade probably know little of all this debate and probably care even less.

Tobacco grows easily, quickly and sells fast, meaning it's a very good cash crop.




I'm guessing the people picking the crop aren't going to make enough to retire next week.

The road we saw winding through the valley in a previous post was shorter but very narrow, so that was closed and a new bridge built. The old road was taken over by the tobacco people as a perfect drying area for the cut leaves.

The trays stretch a very long way down the road and each one is turned from time to time to aid drying.

I hunted for a processing plant but didn't find one as the directions were vague at best, probably deliberately.
The point of sale is very easy to find as the stuff is sold in every local market.











The stuff stinks like mad, more so when they light up.

Wonderful pictures and your way of presenting is taking all the readers through a journey of this beautiful yet unexplored land. Keep it coming Fed......love your pictures and starting to love the place as well.