If you notice, posts in this blog are dominated by activities and food that I did and ate overseas. Don't get me wrong, it's not because I don't appreciate my own country. It's just simply exciting to explore things abroad! I even started this blog when I was in HK, right?
However, to compensate my long hiatus and commemorate Indonesia's Youth Pledge Day on October 28th (read the reference here), this post will be about one of the city in Indonesia. It won't be about our glam capital city Jakarta or our beautiful sunny island Bali. It's the city where I was born an live, SURABAYA.
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| In front of Surabaya's Balai Kota | City Hall |
Surabaya is located in East Java province and being known as the 2nd biggest city in Indonesia. The number of citizens is said to be around 3 mio during the night and 5 mio during the day, since there are many people from suburban come to Surabaya to work. With the private cars and ocean of motorcycle used to commute within the city, high traffic and air pollution are inevitable. Thanks to our Mayor, Tri Rismaharini, under her strict leadership Surabaya now has plenty of open space with trees, flowers and gardens to generate clean fresh oxygen.
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| Surabaya's icon: Sura fish and Baya |
The name Surabaya itself is derived from the Javanese (our local language) of 2 different animals: Sura fish (shark) and Baya (crocodile). Thus, it's not surprising to have both the shark and crocodile as the icon of the city. The icon shows the two animals facing one another as if they are fighting. The statue can be found during your visit to Surabaya Zoo in Darmo street. No worries if you'd like to take picture with the statue but bring no camera, there are some instant photo service ready around the area. With just IDR 10k, you could bring your printed picture home.
Surabaya also played a special role in Indonesia's independence story. Therefore, there are plenty of statues or memorial places to remind us about the past battles. One of the statue is called as Bambu Runcing or the Pointed Bamboo Monument. Due to the limited resource to modern weapon during the colonial period, Indonesian fighters utilized the available resources around them. Bamboo was common to be planted by the citizens, so they have plenty of it. By sharpening the bamboo spear, the fighters use it against the colonizers.
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| Monumen Bambu Runcing | Pointed Bamboo Monument |
We also have another statue called the Tugu Pahlawan or Heroes Monument. This statue was specially built to commemorate the battle of November 10th 1945, one of the biggest battle after Indonesia's Independence Day against the colonizers from the UK that took place in Surabaya. This monument is 41.15 meters tall and is phallus-shaped. Under the monument, there is 10 November Museum that showcasing reproductions of documentary photographs and are dioramas of 10 November 1945 clashes. I remember I went to the museum once during my elementary school field visit in the third grade. It was always fun to learn our history outside the class😉
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| Tugu Pahlawan | Heroes Monument |
In front of the monument, there is a statue of the first president and vice president of Indonesia, Ir Soekarno and Mohammad Hatta, reading the proclamation of our nation on 17 August 1945.
Aside from heroical monument, we also have a historical monument called Jembatan Merah or The Red Bridge. This monument is literally a red colored bridge which was utilized as the main trading access during the colonization era by the Dutch. Now, the bridge remains as a common bridge for daily commutes. As the bridge is quite wide, many pedicab drivers park their pedicabs there and wait for customer.
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| Jembatan Merah | The Red Bridge |
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| Can you spot the pedicab? |
As you notice on the Jembatan Merah pictures above, this part of Surabaya is the old-town of Surabaya or commonly referred as China town. There are many old buildings and houses which remain there since the colonization era. Despite of the dirty wall and aging paint, this old ambience attract us in such a way that many people come to this area to take pictures.
Including me! :)
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| One of the old corner near Jembatan Merah |
Hopefully you enjoyed reading this post and loving the pictures as much as I do. This is my first time writing a planned blogpost; I usually write a blogpost by utilizing available contents from my past travels and activities. As it was an intentional post, I didn't have any material with me which means I need to go and collect new pictures; and it was very exciting as it gave me the opportunity to actually stop by the monuments that I rarely do! FYI, I shot the pics in different days therefore I have different outfits on the pictures lol.
I hope this blogpost could give you a glimpse of Surabaya and trigger your interest to visit any of the monuments above! There are still more places in Surabaya that I can share with you, so please look forward for the next post :) See you!
