A mix of cultures

In Yogyakarta, the culture is held up by the intertwining traditions of Hinduism and Islam. For example, in the Sultan’s palace (you can tell that it’s a Muslim establishment because Sultan is a Muslim way of saying king) there was a shadow puppet performance of the Mahabharata, a Hindu tale. It was really interesting and unusual, and the show was amazing too!

In our villa, there was a painting of a sultan, titled: Sri Sultan… Sri is a Hindu way of saying ‘revered’.

As well as this, the two most famous temples in Yogyakarta, a Muslim city, are the Prambanan (Hindu) and Borobudur (Buddhist) temples.

The mix of cultures is really cool and unique. The ability to accept other people in Javanese culture is one of the reasons that Java is the most populous island in the world. Java contains 56% of the population of Indonesia- out of 17,500 islands- and 156.4 million people! This is despite it only being the fifth largest island in Indonesia. Another reason is that in Java, only three out of Indonesia’s 719 languages are spoken, making it easy to do trade and business. This all results in Java being the centre of the Indonesian economy.

Ishani