Our first destination was a book store inside the department store, where Dwi bought some postcards and Unin persistently proposed to buy VCD of Aladdin. She ended up buying it. She didn't mind all the judgmental stares from Utin, Dwi, Yayank Tika, and even from the shopman.
She thought the VCD contained her favorite version of Aladdin (in which there are cute-genie-with-the-black-soul and the lovely theme song, A Whole New World). Later did she find out that it's the different version. The characters move in robotic way, too.
*sob* But.. But.. The VCD has this picture as the cover.. So deceitful..
From the book store, we got into convenience store to buy some drink and fruit. We need them to regain energy to go back home. Unfortunately, going home would take much longer and harder than expected. We were trapped in the midst of carnival. And because of the parade, all bus route along and around Malioboro Street were suspended. We tried to figure out some alternative solutions but ended up waiting there for hours until the route was back to normal.
We thought, "Of all days, why now? When we're already tired like this?" But then again, maybe they know we were determined to have cultural trip, so they completed our day with the parade. Well, they did it. They managed to make us sit and watch the parade.
Sorry, we didn't take any picture. The camera had run out of battery. And have I told you that we were tired?
However, the series of unfortunate events wasn't going to end soon. The queue of people who were desperately longing to get home was oh-sooo-long. We thought it would be better for us to take the reversed route to avoid the crowd. So we walked across the busy street to get to the bus shelter, waited in despair, jumped in a crowded bus, got off at the airport shelter to change bus, jumped in another crowded bus, stood for some time before we got the seat at the next stop, and finally reached Prambanan at 8 pm. After that, we rode our motorbike through the dark and busy road, full of big vehicles and pollution.
We were so grateful that we got home safely. We were also pleased by the experience we had. We realized once more that our people had friendly and decent nature. They greet people politely and show their concern, even to strangers. We have this deep-rooted mindset that our nation is one big family. In every place we visited that day, we always found people who smiled at us, asked us where we come from, and started a small talk. What a noble culture we have.
