Ujung Kulon National Park

One of national park in Indonesia is Ujung Kulon. We can find more than thousand birds from 17 species. This amount of birds is quite increasing since staffs of Ujung Kulon National Park were trying so hard to save them from local citizen's hunting.

Many ways to hunting the birds, such as set a trap or smear mucilage on the tree. Each bird can be sold about Rp 1.5 million - Rp 3 million (about US$ 150 - US$ 300).

The aid not only for birds, but also for other animals, such as buffalo, Javanese rhino, and terrapins.

The pics were taken from here and here.

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Puppet Master from Betawi

Puppet usually is well known came from East Java, Center Java, or West Java. But today, there is a person from Betawi who wants made a change. He want to build a puppet based on Betawi culture. His name is Tizar Purbaya.

Wayang golek (the puppets) were made from kayu lame (sorry, I couldn't find the similar word in English), a soft but firm material, so it makes the puppet not easy to broke. So far, he had already made some pupppet with Betawi characters, they are si Jampang, si Pitung, si Manis Jembatan Ancol.

Today, he had about 7,000 puppets for his show.

The rate for each puppets is various, it started from Rp 40,000 (US$ 4), for low quality, until Rp 300,000 (US$30) for best quality.

You can visit the gallery here:
Jalan Danau Indah Blok A-3 Nomor 40
Sunter, Jakarta Utara
Phone: 021-650 8427
Mobile: 0811 883 755

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Kimono Festival in Kyoto

Recently, a kimono festival was held in Kyoto, Japan. Kimono is a traditional dress from Japan, using only by a woman. Recently, kimono is rarely being used, since the kimono is quite heavy and complicated to be worn.

In kimono festival in Kyoto, many women were dressed like princess.

The festival was started by pageant from Gosho toward emperor castle in center of Kyoto and ended in Kamigamo temple in north of Kyoto.

This festival has purpose to begging to the God for stability of weather and good harvesting.

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The Unifinished Kutai National Park

Kutai has quite big national park, since there is 198,000 hectare area that is enrich not only by various and uniques plants but also rare animals, such as orangutan (Pongo satyrus), owa kalimantan (Hylobates muelleri), bekantan (Nasalis larvatus), kera ekor panjang (Macaca fascicularis fascicularis), beruk (M. nemestrina nemestrina), and kukang (Nyticebus coucang borneanus).

But recently, the condition of this national park is very afflicted, because the local citizen destroy it, by wild deforestation and burn the forest. This action couldn't be handled by the officers, since there is only limited officers work there.

The effect of this deforestation is many animals loiter from the forest and take foods from local house.

I hope the local government can do some assertive actions to prevent the wider of damage.

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Silver from Kota Gede

Kota Gede, a region as a part of Yogyakarta, has an unique product that can attract tourists, not only domestic tourists but also abroad tourists. The product is SILVER craft. This products were made by Kota Gede citizen and today it become home made industries.

As you can see from the pic in the right, this silver craft were made carefully, since some customers don't like any spoilage on the product. Especially if the product was specially ordered for a specific purpose.

I was there couple years ago. It can be reached easily from Yogyakarta, so don't worry to go Kota Gede and buy silver crafts there!

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