Candi, Semarang

Six weeks have past now since we left Sydney, and we're starting to feel like Singapore is now our home. This feeling was really strong when we stepped off the plane on Monday night (11:45pm) and knew we were only a 15 minute taxi ride from home. (As opposed to the 7 hour flight we would normally be facing after a visit to our family in Indonesia.

We left Singapore on Thrusday morning, bound for Surabaya, in the west of Java. We spent a good couple of hours here, mainly playing Eye-Toy with our neice and nephew. A series of simple games is made a whole lot more fun by having to move around using the camera... Highly recommended.

Next, we moved on to Semarang, taking with us our neice Shelda, to spend 4 days with Hanna's mum and sister (Merry).

Whilst in Semarang, we stay in Hanna's mum's second home, Candi, up in the hills surrounding the generally flat city of Semarang.


I like this patch of vegatation. Its actually across the street from the house, and is just a vacant lot which hasn't yet been developed. I love that everything seems to grow here, with bananas, peanuts, chilli, starfruit amongst other herbs. Everything seems to just grow randomly. We tried the peanuts (steamed) and have eaten the bananas.. :)


This is the house, and I included it mainly as a comparison to the other house (which unfortunately I didn't manage to photograph as it was raining when I had the camera). So its a future reference point.


This is the wall across the front of the house. Houses in Indonesia appear to be built as miniture forts, with barbed walls around the front, and high-gardenless backyards with walls which generally reach as high as the roofs. I am not sure if this is common in Asia, or just in city Indonesia, but it doesn't exactly make you feel that its a very safe place.


One final shot before leaving Candi, the manicured backyard (showing the rather high brick wall). When the kids are in town, there's often a turtle or two from the local market in the pond (though there were none in there this time... I don't know where the turtles go when the kids go).