and this concluded my ten-day three cities eight thousand miles journey.

years ago, i was one of the kids looking through the wired gates of kemayoran airport dreaming of being inside an airplane and flying up to a destinations far far away.

as i took this picture on the way boarding a lion air flight, my mind took me to my childhood memory at kemayoran airport and saw that i used to be in the other side of the airport.

no one ever doubt the power of dream.

dream high. visualize often.

in sam po kong temple, you can see kyai jangkar where it's being respected and prayed upon by people who came to seek solaces and fortunes. some said, it was the jangkar of admiral cheng ho's ship and kyai jangkar has a mystical power people believe.

not to forget, the 500th year of admiral cheng ho's landing in tanjung mas.

sam po kong temple is like a museum itself. there are reliefs of its history that you can learn and follow. it was interesting and i just didn't have enough time to read all the story.

masih ada dua jam sebelum saya harus berangkat ke bandara dan this time a taxi driver took me to the sam po kong temple where i roamed there for forty five minutes taking a lot of pictures and praying for my ancestors -- don't know who they were though.

gedung tawang lawu di depan patung pemuda semarang yang terkenal amat sangat angker bekas barak tentara belanda dulu. tidak ada satupun paranormal yang berani memasuki gedung ini termasuk kru acara dunia lain yang konon terlempar keluar dari dalam gedung ini.

beberapa orang konon memberi sesajen di depan gedung ini dan beberapa anak kecil bermain dengan sesajen-sesajen tersebut. the rest of the story, you can guess yourself.

gedung-gedung ini mustinya bisa di preservasi sebagai bagian dari sejarah bangsa.

gereja glenduk dengan kubahnya yang unik. dinamakan glenduk karena kubahnya. gedung arsitektur peninggalan belanda ini hanya beberapa saja yang ada di indonesia dengan menggunakan gaya kubah. salah satunya adalah gereja emmanuel di jakarta. di beberapa tempat, gereja-gereja peninggalan belanda sudah berbentuk katedral dengan gaya gothic-nya.

bapak becak membawa kami mengelilingi kota tua semarang tempat pusat pemerintahan di jaman belanda dulu. masih banyak sekali gedung-gedung tua yang berdiri kokoh dan tampak tidak terurus dengan baik. tapi suasana kota tua masih terasa sekali.

when was the last time you rode a becak? it was two years ago in jogyakarta when the last time i rode it.

hawa panas yang bercampur dengan angin sepoi-sepoi dari depan jalan ngebuat saya ngantuk. belum lagi ditambah irama kayuhan kaki si bapak becak dan suara kreyit-kreyit kayu becak tersebut dari tekanan rangka besinya. sempat saya tertunduk menahan kantuk, tapi tentu saja pemandangan di sekitar membuat saya terbangun.

bayangkan jalan yang masih teduh dan lebar seperti ini.

seminggu saya meninggalkan jakarta dan jalan yang biasanya saya lalui berangkat kerja sudah porak poranda dihantam proyek busway. macet di sana sini, klakson mobil dimana-mana, dan motor-motor yang bersliweran tak menentu.

tentu saja menikmati jalan lebar dan rindang seperti di atas tidak saya lewatkan begitu saja.

first to jalan pandanaran to buy some wingko babats, bandeng prestos and kue moacis.

the next day, we hired a becak driver to take us around.

kadang-kadang saya suka kasihan. i was thinking like what if i were the becak's driver? tentunya capek ngayuh becak keliling kota ngebawa penumpang yang berat ini.

but, a friend reminded me, "iman... it's his job!"

okay.

walking around simpang lima, i didn't know why i felt so safe. i took a lot of pictures around. people saw me like i was a japanese tourist, but they just ignored me and did their own business.

perhaps, i wouldn't do this in jakarta.

across the soothsayer, you can find people were relaxing. lighting his cigarette waiting for his girlfriend finishing her dinner at a lesehan.

for the past weeks, i've been travelled to surabaya and seoul reaching thousand of miles, but to be able to capture this kind of human interest picture made me seem to forget all the tiredness from the weeks before.

a full tummy then brought us to walk around a night market in simpang lima where i shot some pictures describing what people were doing there.

one of the street vendors interested me was a soothsayer where people were sitting around him and he was reading a fortune from one of the spectators.

it was interesting to see how the soothsayer read the future with the prayers of kejawen.

it was late at night and the nine of us were all hungry when we came to a lesehan around simpang lima. we ordered ayam bakar, bebek goreng, cah kangkung, nasi liwet, es jeruk, es teh manis and opened some kerupuk kulit. all for just a hundred thousand rupiahs.

of course, having a lesehan dinner together with chats and laughs among friends was priceless.

we were in semarang for yet another wedding exhibition held in that city. the second night there, we wanted to explore the special local culinary. as we walked around simpang lima, we stopped by beside an officer who was ready to off his duty and asked him about the specialties of this simpang lima.

i told you, semarang people are all nice, right. even the officer was kind enough to show us the well known lesehan and took picture with us. never before we took a picture with a policeman in jakarta.

after seoul, korea, my journey took me to semarang -- just 50 minutes to the east of jakarta by air. i've never been to this city before. my semarang recollection was just a pass through on the way to salatiga when i was a high school student years ago. but to be really exploring this city and stay nights in semarang happened to me just days ago.

the city was smaller than surabaya. one thing i learned right away, its people are so humble and very nice.

in jakarta, you never heard people say "terima kasih" or "maaf-permisi" anymore in general occasion, but in semarang, i heard those words being said many times.

one thing from semarang i think the city lacks off is the mall. its mall is just too small.

the nicest thing being a tourist is i can shoot anything. everytime i visited a foreign city, two things that i try to find -- bookstores and people's market (pasar basah).

in pasar basah, you can learn something from its country that people everywhere is the same.

living in this world is about survival -- to survive everyday by working hard to face another day tomorrow.

penjaja buah di nam dae mun market. satu slice semangka, satu slice nenas seharga 1000 won. berapa slices bisa kita beli di jakarta seharga Rp10,000?

tentu saja dengan biaya hidup yang amat sangat tinggi -- seoul is the second most expensive city in the world next to new york city as the most expensive city to live -- kita tidak bisa menyamakan kehidupan di seoul dengan di jakarta.

tapi sedikit banyak, gambaran di atas dapat dipakai untuk menggambarkan betapa tingginya tingkat perekonomian negara tersebut.

come evening and this tree will be alive!

waktu saya melihat foto ini kembali, bulu kuduk saya berdiri. dan bulu kuduk saya masih berdiri ketika saya mengetik posting ini.

ceritanya begini. seperti biasa, karena hobi saya motret maka saya adalah peserta tur yang paling tertinggal dan paling belakang. saya bisa mempelajari sejarah bangunan ini dari brosur atau buku yang bisa saya beli, tapi momen untuk memotret hanya ada saat itu saja. entah kapan saya bisa balik ke sini lagi.

it was a hot day and the clouds above was dark. rain was about to fall shortly when i was captivated by this wall. the combination of the old walls and the woods area to its right was a good composition for me to capture it.

at that moment, i knew that i was left far behind the group and for a split second, i felt a chill. uh-oh.

then suddenly, my never-troubled-camera stuck. it was just stuck. it has never happened before. i knew the battery was full since i just changed it minutes ago.

was i panicked? yes, it was my beloved camera! but, i did a stupid thing! a really really stupid thing out of my unconsciousness.

i yelled an expletive word to my camera!

in a place like that one you just cannot even speak with a loud voice. i yelled an expletive word!

at that moment, i can feel something strange. it was like i was slapped by the wind and i just cannot say what else -- i ran and ran. the tour leader was looking for me that was then i realized that something was not right the moment the tour leader asked me whether i was okay or not. i was pretty ashen at that moment.

the moral of the story -- never say a bad word in a place like that.

ada yang pernah berkunjung ke kesultanan jogyakarta? masuk ke salah satu bangunan di kesultanan yang menjadi tempat pajangan lukisan-lukisan jaman peninggalan belanda dulu? di situ, lukisan-lukisan itu rusak karena tidak terawat. jika terawat pun mungkin prosedurnya tidak tepat hingga lukisan-lukisan bersejarah tersebut menjadi rusak.

mungkin kita harus belajar dari bangsa lain untuk bisa merawat peninggalan-peninggalan bersejarah.

memasuki istana kekaisaran ini di seoul, saya teringat waktu saya mengunjungi kesultanan jogyakarta. saya banyak menemukan kesamaan mulai dari lapangan luas di tengah-tengah areal sampai dengan bangunan-bangunan di mana raja atau kaisar bertemu dengan rakyatnya -- tentu saja dengan arsitektur yang lain.

tapi yang berbeda dari kedua tempat berserjarah itu adalah cara masing-masing tempat menjaga peninggalan-peninggalan bersejarah tersebut.

sayang sekali.

semenanjung korea adalah sejarah daerah sejarah yang telah berasal dari ratusan bahkan seribuan tahun lalu bersamaan dengan berkembangnya kekaisaran cina di sebelah baratnya. banyak dari arsitektur bangunan-bangunan istana di korea mirip dengan arsitektur kekaisaran di cina.

i love visiting this kind of places. salah satu yang menjadi daya tarik saya mengunjungi tempat-tempat peninggalan bersejarah ini adalah membayangkan kehidupan orang-orang yang tinggal di tempat ini 600 tahun yang lalu.

di lobby hotel intercontinental coex seoul, saya berdiri di depan patung ini cukup lama sambil berusaha untuk mengerti arti dari apa yang akan disuarakan oleh si pemahat.

si pria ada di bawah anak-anak tangga yang tidak bersambungan menuju si wanita yang ada di atasnya.

saya berusaha keras untuk mengerti apa maksud yang tersirat dari karya seni ini.

apakah untuk mendapatkan hati seorang wanita, si pria harus berusaha untuk menaikki anak-anak tangga yang tidak tersambung itu?

mungkin.

same as their neighbors to the east, koreans love to read. they read everything and they read everywhere even in a rest area in a crowded mall.

for me, the worst part of visiting korea or japan is -- i just cannot buy any single book or magazine in their bookstores.

and, of course, starbucks is everywhere in the world.

but, it's so expensive. i said to myself that seoul is more expensive than tokyo. having visited tokyo several times, i knew some affordable places to buy things i needed. but, everything in seoul seems so expensive.

for instance, a macdonalds big mac with a medium coke and fries cost you Rp25000 in plaza senayan. in seoul, the same combo will cost you Rp58.000 in COEX mall.

permen mentos costs you Rp2500 at HERO supermarket. it will cost you W600 or Rp6000 in Seoul.

the same thing for a medium cup of caramel macchiato at starbucks. everything is triple than how much they cost is in jakarta.

but then, i was there for just four days and we were never be able to venture outside seoul where i heard from lots of indonesian workers working in korea -- there are a lot of cheaper places to eat and shop outside the city.

at hyundai department store -- yes, hyundai has a department store -- i saw colorful snacks. they're actually kue moaci yang dalamnya itu kacang. tapi luarannya dibuat sedemikian rupa, bentuk dan warnanya, hingga menarik orang untuk membeli. it's quite expensive though.

kue-kue moaci ini bisa dibeli untuk dimakan sendiri atau dibawa sebagai hadiah kalau kita sedang bertamu ke rumah keluarga lain. it is so customary for guests to bring something if they're visiting another family especially the elders.

salah satu yang saya impikan dari kota jakarta adalah kemudahan untuk penduduknya agar dapat berjalan kaki dengan santai dan tentu saja di tengah-tengah kota yang tidak polusi dengan udara kotor. as i walked across the wide street of gangnam area in the southern part of seoul, my mind could not be happier to be able to leisurely walk with warm fresh air filling up my lungs.

this particularly street has only five lanes each. i've seen a wider one with eight lanes in each side.

can you imagine when tuan gubernur see this kind of street in jakarta? four lanes in each side would be build for busway and, of course, all trees will be axed down.

incheon international airport lies in a man-made island off the coast of the Korean Peninsula. just about two years old, the airport is known for its morning fogs in the summer and heavy mists during the fall season due to the difference between the cool temperature in the evening and the hot summer day. when your plane glides down on the way to its final runway at incheon and see through the window, you'll feel like entering an earie area with fogs surrounds you.

a friend said, "kayak masuk ke negeri kahyangan ya..."

it was so beautiful.

a journey of a thousand miles starts from --
the dark and gloomy Bandara Internasional Soekarno-Hatta.

a crazy month indeed

after three busy days during the weekend attending the Jakarta Wedding Festival and a short week ahead, i'll be having crazy days of traveling. first will be an overnight to surabaya leaving on friday and returning saturday afternoon. a quick dash home to see mom before catching a flight to seoul. then seoul until wednesday before leaving to semarang the next day. then bali at the end of the month.

there will be no weekends without a break.

so, i'll be blogging after semarang with lots of pics from seoul.