Festival Malang Tempoe Doeloe

May is the anniversary of the City of Malang and every year they have a festival to celebrate the history. They completely shut down and revamp one of the main streets with stages for performances, stands for vendors and replicas of buildings from the past. The festival goes all day and late into the night for 4 days straight...it was definitely a cultural experience!!
It was so fun walking around, learning more about the city, stopping at the different vendors, and trying new foods(some that are popular from the past).  Everyone in Malang goes and a lot of people come from out of town for the festival. This results in huge crowds at the festival, which also means lots of attention for being a white person. It's still not normal(or will it ever be) to me to have people asking to take a picture with me just because I'm a white person. Indonesians are constantly saying how beautiful white people are and how they want to look like that(tall, pale skin, blue eyes). I'm constantly trying to reinforce how beautiful Indonesians are and how people in America try to look like them(tan skin, dark features). These people are beautiful! After all the attention we get as Americans, it was so great to experience the pride these people have for their own city of Malang and their own culture. Indonesia truly is a remarkable place and is so rich in culture.
Below are a few photos from the weekend:

A shot of the crowd at night. The one time I'm thankful for being tall here...it would be so hard to see anything, or breath for that matter, if I were shorter!

One of the shops with a bunch of antiques

Vendors sold this everywhere along the street. It's called gulali...melted sugar with ginger that they put on a stick to make a lollipop.

My friend, Ida and her sister, Lila, enjoying some gulali :)

Some traditional dancers before a performance.

This was a cool stop that showed how the city of Malang collects and recycles trash here. There are always trash collectors that go around every morning and this place showed how much money they receive in return for bringing in different kinds of trash. They were also selling different things(stands, purses, tables) that were made from recycled trash.

One of the performances we past of traditional Javanese dancing

This was a video of a guy that was making pottery. I thought it was so neat to see how he was making it.