Kraton & Taman Sari

Today our first full day in Yogjakarta! We start relaxed: The Kraton, sultan's palace, and the Taman Sari, the water palace of former sultans.
Our guide is a man of 84 years old, who visited a Dutch primary school and HBS. His Dutch is still fluent and he still knows a lot of "old proverbs and sayings".

For me the buildings are known and not really changed, although there was damage during the 2006 earthquake.

The palace guards

New for me was the dancing. Only on Sunday morning they have dancing in the Kraton, each day a different program. The last time there was the gamalan orchestra, although the dancing had a musical setting of gamalan, mainly women.

Three difference dances were performed!

These were part from the Ramayana ballet, which is slow dancing and very controlled. The couple danced fully synchronized!

A little boy, prepared for his future

After a nice lunch, in a different place than planned, our becak drivers couldn't find the place we were looking for, we went to Taman Sari!

This is the water palace used by previous sultans, with his wives and children.
Sultan Hamengkubuwono VI had 16 wives and over 40 children. He has his own bath in the water palace. The other two baths were for his wives and children.

The current Sultan HB X only has 1 wife and 5 daughters. His dad, who studied in Leiden had 4 wives, continuously, when one wife fell off, he married another one.

The view from the tower, where the Sultan could choice one of wives to swim with in his private bath.

For dinner we went to restaurant Legian, which we meant for lunch. It has a nice view on Jl. Maliriboro, the famous shopping street in Yogjakarta.

A nice, relaxed, but very hot first day in Yogjakarta!