I was wandering around Yogyakarta, a good-sized town in the island of Java in the country of Indonesia.
In Yogyakarta, they have these things called gangs. A gang is a small alley–too small to get a car through– lined with shops. They have a magical feel to them– as if you are living in a time before cars existed.
So, I’m walking up one of these gangs, and I come to a little restaurant that is advertising Javanese massage classes. I turned in and inquired. I signed up with Mr. Gabriel for a 4-day class in Javanese massage to begin the next day.
It was just me in the class so I got the benefit of one-on-one instruction.
Mr. Gabriel had first learned massage while he was imprisoned for political reasons. He was taught by massage masters who were also imprisoned. He said massage was how they made it through 7 years of imprisonment without much food or medicine.
He had made up a book complete with pictures and taught a thorough class. He brought his daughter for a female model to practice on and for the male model he brought in a man that swallowed glass (not without injury) for a living.
When the class was done, he asked me where I was headed next. I told him I was off to Borobudur. I told him about a woman I met in Bali that told me, the most wonderful experience of her life was watching the sun come up from atop Borobudur. But, the gates into Borobudur don’t open until after the sun comes up. So, if you want to watch the sun come up on top of Borobudur you need to stay in the hotel inside the grounds, which cost 40 dollars. 40 dollars is a lot to pay for a room in Indonesia but I figured for the possibility of having “the most wonderful experience of my life� I would splurge.
Gabriel said, “No, you will come home with me, I live near Borobudur and I know someone who can get you in before sunrise.â€? So Mr. Gabriel and I rode the bus back to his home and he arranged with his friend– a gregarious woman named Rinney who was stricken with some disease like MS– to get me through the gates.
When Rinney and I got to the gates early the next morning, she did a bunch of talking to the guards. When the guards turn to me and asked, “Lama?” I just nodded and smiled. Whatever she said got us in before it opened and without paying admission. The stairs spiraled up the monument for three miles (4.8km) or you can take a shortcut and walk straight up which is what we did because we wanted to get to the top before sunrise and it was hard for Rinney to walk.
Up on top, the sun was just coming up. There was an artist up there sketching. We sat for awhile and watched the sunrise and talked to the artist. Then we started hearing people singing. It would get louder and then almost fad away as the singers spiraled up the monument…Then even louder, until they finally reached the top. They were a large group of Westerners with their spiritual leader, a lama.
Back at Gabriel’s house, he wanted me to learn massage of the belly from an old woman master, so, as a Christmas gift, he paid for me to have a massage with her. I went to the home of one of his childhood friends to have the massage. She was a beautiful wealthy Chinese woman who had gotten the windows in her house broke out when the Javanese went on a rampage and started attacking all the Chinese in the country 2 years before.
The old masseuse arrived and with the woman of the house watching, I got my massage. I don’t know what they were saying but I think it was at the urging of the Chinese woman, that the old masseuse pulled out a coin and started raking it across my flesh. It hurt but not as bad as it looked. By the time she was done with me, I looked like someone should be in jail. I looked whipped. All over my back and front, I had long red streaks where she had raked that coin over my skin. It was bleeding under my skin but she came just short of breaking the skin. The signs of my massage didn’t go away for days.
After the massage, the old woman left. Gabriel, the Chinese woman and I talked in the living room, with Gabriel having to interpret everything. Gabriel appeared a little embarrassed by the coining thing. It’s not something he does. From what I could gather, it looks to be something woman do more then men.
Gabriel was a catholic, a fact that the Indonesian government finds so important that it was on his ID. He took me to evening mass at the Catholic Church. Later that night I went out with Rinney and her friends to a party with karaoke. Rinney and I sang a duet: Kay sera sera.
I think about Gabriel and what a good teacher he was and how nice he was to me. He said his daughter was not industrious so he knew he would have to make arrangements for when he got old. He said he had it all arraigned.
If you ever find yourself wandering the gangs in Yogyakarta, stop in at Anna Restaurant and meet Gabriel for a great Javanese massage class with a wonderful teacher. I found a site on the Internet that is listing his course; it says the price of the 4-day course is 350,000 Rp, which is about 40 U.S. dollars. Which is a phenomenal deal considering that this is a serious class with expert instruction.
