Our friends Pam and Brice hosted a dinner for 20 at a local home that is better than any museum in Jakarta. We were so excited for a tour and dinner together! The owners have been traveling around Indonesia and Asia for the past 45 years and have amassed an incredible collection in their home. They spent the first 90 minutes walking us through the incredible home (which is actually 5 traditional houses joined together) so we could soak in the sights. Some rooms had specific themes (like this Chinese guest bedroom) and some were from specific islands of Indonesia.
Tiny shoes from Chinese women with bound feet
Masks from all over the Indonesian archipelago
A complete gamelan orchestra and wayang puppets
A lot of these relics are rare and unique. It made me nervous that many of the rooms were in a basement, because Jakarta floods often!
An incredible array of puppets
Dinner was in the most incredible room, filled with masks and carvings from tribes deep within Papua.
The number of authentic shields and statues was staggering! And thank goodness the tallest ones were secured to the ceiling - one of the servers at dinner bumped into the statues and caused a chain reaction that knocked over several!
Ceremonial masks
We were served a traditional Javanese dinner, starting with nasi kuning, yellow rice with coconut milk.
The food was really delicious, but I didn't enjoy much because, unbeknownst to me at the time, I was coming down with a parasitic infection and I felt pretty poorly.
The entire group for the evening. It was a really fantastic dinner and experience!
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