starts with a man on the street excitedly telling you about an art gallery that's moving out of town the next day to tour sumatra. lies. people offer you really yummy tea. ok that was nice. you're shown really beautiful batik paintings. the people are so nice. it's fake. the paintings are one of a kind. not at all. you pay way way way too much money because the salesmen are brilliant. they inject meaning into everything. they spin tales. they're really storytellers at heart, and you walk out in a trance, only to emerge feeling like an idiot and wanting to punch yourself in the face.
it's okay, because i learned how really good salesmen work. it's all about creating meaning, a setting, and a story. maybe i'll become a batik mafia member if all else goes to hell.
besides this incidence, i've been loving Jogjakarta. It's so beautiful and cultured. Yesterday we rented bikes and rode all around the city, visiting a sultan's palace, an old water palace that was currently in shambles, and eventually stopped at a bus station where we caught a ride to a little restaurant/yoga/culture retreat center. they had a tiny tiny museum, but it was really beautiful. The food was really different from what i've had so far. I had a javanese noodle soup. Biking in the city was crazy. On multiple occasions I was almost run over by a herd of motorcycles. There was lots of honking, yelling, and rushing. It would go from the most peaceful of rides to the most hectic. We had to rush back from the restaurant to catch another tour to see the Ramayana ballet, which was pretty cool. The stage was in front of this huge hindu temple, and it all played out under a full moon.
Today, we woke up at 4:30 am to visit Borobudur, the buddhist temple. Just got back. It was really lovely, but it's too fresh in my mind to fully think about. Also, i wanted to know more about buddism but none of the tour guides seemed to know. They'd always just tie everything back to the Qaran, which really makes no sense.
Gotta run, and i'm starving. Fresh mango juice, sappan tea, and a vegetable dish awaits.
The batik thing was a really good lesson. Hopefully you didn't pay "too" much for for the batik...?
ReplyDeleteA similar thing (almost) happened to me last weekend at the mall. There's a small tea shop called "teavana" where they have tea samples (yerba mate!) and Josh and I usually grab some samples as we walk past the store (two each, one in each hand. fast like a ninja). But this time, we were lured in by an overly nice sales associate. We felt guilty for drinking so much of their tea for free, so we pretended to listen to his sales pitch. He was really hyper (and "fabulous," if you know what I mean) and soon we had agreed to buy an expensive tea set and some loose tea leaves. We already HAVE a tea set which we never ever use. And I don't like dealing w/ loose tea (which I also have and never use). Under the salesman's spell, we were all ready to buy this stuff. But then the people in line in front of us were taking too long. In that time, we came to our senses and ran out of the store. Literally, "ran" into the mall area to escape Teavana, knowing we could never return for free samples. That's how effective the salesman was- we had to run because we were so scared of offending him.
The salesman used the following things to make us agree to buy something:
1). Guilt- he never actually made us feel guilty, but by being so nice, we started feeling bad for always drinking the samples.
2). Showed us some super expensive tea makers, so when we saw a moderately priced one, we thought we were getting a deal.
3). Lots of little lies- talk about how he has this moderately priced one, how he can't live without it, how easy it is to use, etc... He was an animated story teller.
The only thing you need to know about Buddhism, is that it's the "moderate" cousin of Jainism. Jainism pushes asceticism above all else, and Buddhism came about as a backlash to this; it's the "reformed" version of Jainism.
Love you!
re: The temple incident. Buddhists make up less than 4% of the Indonesian population, there are even more than twice as many Christians. Those monks could use some help from the batik salesmen. Or they could teach that Buddhism will bring prosperity instead of useless things like "enlightenment"
ReplyDeleteWhat?! You mean Ross didn't teach you how to do these things? I think we're paying far too much for our education.
ReplyDeleteI have read over your recent posts and am glad you're having fun. I'm sure you'll have plenty of unique vegetable dishes in your cooking arsenal when you return. To share, and stuff... : )
JPW