Officially, Ramadan began today in Indonesia, although some people were already fasting yesterday.

For the last few days, (sponsored) festive banners have been appearing at our local mosque. (They make a nice change from the frenzy of presidential election banners that is everywhere at the moment.) Towards the end of yesterday afternoon, it broadcast an hour or so of Ramadan songs, some of which are now very familiar.

This morning the mosques were active much earlier than usual. And, alas, so were the firecrackers, with our first batch going off at 4 am...

We didn't actually experience much of Ramadan in Yogya last year. Very early on, we got knocked off our motorbike, and I pretty much kept to the house for the rest of the week, while my ribs started to recover. Then we left for Surabaya.

So it was interesting to see that our usual walk into town this morning was very different. No food stalls were open, of course. And it was unwontedly quiet. The adults were staying inside. There weren't even any chickens wandering around. The little pathways belonged to the children, who don't generally fast, and so still have plenty of energy to spend outside.

A group of young men with drums and bells had gathered outside one of the mosques, making stirring music. But the amount of traffic on the city streets was noticeably less.

The same could not be said, however, of the amount of customers in the Indomaret. As happens the world over in the run-up to a major festival, the amount of floor space has been vastly reduced, in an attempt to display the maximum amount of festive goodies. And into this reduced floor space were packed roughly twice the number of people we've ever seen in Indomaret before.

It was quite a relief to climb into a becak and be pedalled home.

One of the things I love about Ramadan here is the custom of saying "mohon maaf lahir dan batin" (I ask your forgiveness for anything I've done wrong, either inwardly or outwardly). What a great way to make sure that every year you clear out all the cobwebs that have gathered round your relationships, and start afresh. We so all need to do that from time to time.