Before the event, we students were divided into two big groups in which consisted of mix students from three different classes. As my name started with alphabet U, I used to be in the second group. Well, not so much time before registration, all of us had taken a group picture together in front of the museum entrance. There was a chic monument with unique architecture mesmerized our eyes, making the majority of us raced to have a ‘selfie’ in front of it. It was looked like fire circle in the beginning but after getting information from our tour guide, we just realized that the monument was representing ‘time travel’ for the meaning. It was incredible to know about it.

After entering the main entrance hall and passing security-checking system, we were queueing up and standing in line to get tickets and mini brochures about the museum. It costs about 3,000 rupiahs per person as I see on the card. Not so long after all members got their tickets, a guardian asked us to wait for a tour guide in auditorium hall. It was a large room on the left side of registration office. As we entered the room, we saw a large scale of Indonesian map painted on the wall with local faces paintings on its border. The pictures represent local’s culture and outfit of every province of the country. After 10 minutes waiting, an old foreigner man came to us and introduced himself as our tour guide. It was surprising to know that he was able to retell most of Indonesia’s history comprehensively.  

In the first touring session, we started from the Auditorium Hall. Our tour guide, Michael, asked us to saw the huge Indonesian map on the wall. Then he began to re-introduce Indonesia by telling its geographical location, demographic and population, primary natural resources, a little bit explanation about Islamic influence in early 14th century, the distribution of flora and fauna including a brief overview of Wallace line, and significant historical moments of the country. It is interesting to find out about this information from a non-Indonesian's point of view. It was vibrant and knowledgeable opening, indeed. 

The second session was much more attractive. We were led to an opened room that has tens of ancient sculptures from Hinduism and Buddhism era. The majority of them were in a good condition, safe and well maintaned. Michael dropped us in front of Hinduism goddess sculptures like Ganesha, Siva,  Brahmana and then he started to talk about them. It is clearly seen that most of them had lots of symbols from their head to toe. Each symbol represents different meaning related to the beliefs of their worshipers. For example, a finery or jewelry that goddesses wear on their head refers to their ranks and highness. It seems like a crown, the more sophisticated it is, the higher level it would be. However,  not all of them appeared with symbols like that. Ganesha, the god of knowledge of Hindu, only has a simple finery on his head, but he has a dramatic look due to his appearance as half man and half elephant. 

Moving towards to next station, we entered an old and vintage room. It was not so large in width, but the length was tall. The room is called Colonial Office Room. The room was little light and color of the wall was also gloomy. It brings us to colonial period scenery when Dutch commanded Batavia for a long time and influenced most of the architectural design of buildings at that period. Like this room, enriched with wooden ornaments like round table, old-styled cupboard, and vintage chandelier, commonly used for stakeholder meetings and formal arrangements. In the corner of the room, there was a statue of Raffles, which was known as Singapore’s founder and British officer in Batavia. Briefly, Michael explained about Raffles’s existence to us related to his accomplishment that brought many changes such as abolition of slavery, the conquest of Java from Dutch and French military forces during the Napoleonic Wars and contributed to the expansion of the British Empire. 

After having loads of overview about colonial period in the mid of 18th century, Michael invited us to take a look at a site that traveled us far away to ancient history. The site is called Pre-Historic Corner. As it names, the room was full of pre-historic human mannequins. There were Homo Erectus, Erectus Javanicus (the early man of Java), Hobbit Human (founded in Flores Island) and many fragile skulls decorated the room artistically. Nearby the biggest mannequin, there was a portrait of Eugene Dubois hanging on the wall. He was an archeologist that documented the Homo Erectus for the first time in East Java.    

Finally, as our last station of museum touring, Micheal brought us to the 4th floor of main building. What we found there was a luxurious room with brighter lights and pile of glass cabinets that exhibited many antique pieces of jewelry, most of them were gold-made. It was a treasure chamber, maintaining hundreds of jewelry inheritance from Indonesia’s largest kingdom periods such as Majapahit and Mataram. There were golden earrings, bracelets, and necklaces showing inside the cabinets. According to Michael, the each type of jewelry represents different caste. It is quite similar to Hinduism symbols where the more complicated it is, the higher its rank compares to other. There were two types of jewelry have known, the first was containing pure gold for whole part and the second was formed by gold paper with clay inside. It is interesting to think that how could human civilization at that time produced such things without machine or technology influences. The question is still unanswered, even many historians and archeologist still have assumptions about it. 

After strolling around jewelry cabinets, we moved to ceramics exhibition. There were hundreds of ancient ceramics from early century until colonial era found there. Most of the ceramic motives influenced by Chinese culture even though it was made in Thailand or Vietnam. Michael said that there was a massive trading of ceramic in the middle century. It distributes the products to many places in Asia and Europe through land line or ocean sailing. Michael explained the trading pattern to us comprehensively as if he were even traveling at that time. 

Well, after we had long session exploring the museum, we conducted a photo session with Michael at the end of our touring. We did it in entrance hall just before we left the museum for having some lunch together. It was a very insightful and adorable moment we had on outing activity. We got so much information and new things to learn. Many thanks to IALF and the instructors for letting us do an outing. Hopefully, there will be more and more outing in the future!