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I spent only one full day in Yogyakarta. The hotel provideda car and very pleasant, helpful driver: we were going to see four places, but only reached two. We started with the Sultan's Palace, a fundmentally nineteenth century building with much of itsnineteenth century furnishings, and ore recnt ones. The Sultan was the hereditary ruler of this area, an important figure during the Dutch Colonial period, and the family reains importnt today. The last Sultan was an important figure in the early Indonesian stae, and his heir is the Governor of the area of Yogyakarta. He lives in a part of the Palace not open to the public, but the public is admitted to the reset of the Palace only between the time the governor leaves for work in the morning to the time he returns home for lunch. Neither men nor women are allowed to wear hats inside the Palace as a sign of respect. I had been looking at television programs about the home of the Duke of Devonsire, and it was interesting to compare the two somewhat similar establishments: their combination of public and private, their collections of material from varied cultures over centuries. I probably spend too much time there.
Then I went on to the Archeological Museum, which was right around the cornere. the exhibits are good, simply labelled in English with a notable lack of dates. They begin with some skulls of Java man--the driver said they were pithecanthropus erectus--tthe schools teach everyone about them, not surprisingly. But in the same room was afull skeleton in a reconstructed cist grave with no indication of its date. I hoped there might be a museum shop, and thre wasn't, but the woman at the desk suggested I go to small building on the museum grounds to see if they had any information for saile--I'm not quite sure what she had in mind, but in fact it turned out they were making wooden puppets, intended for the shows put one regularly. 9I could have gone to one tht night, but I had a very early flight int he morning and thought better not.) I did buy one: went out to get half a million Indonesian rupiah from an ATM with no real idea what I was doing--not very much, in fact. I missed the market--supposed to be an excellent source of local crafts-- and the Water Castle, which looks most attractive.
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