Blogs from Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia, Asia - page 23

ooh gosh i have a lot to get through in a very short amount of time. umm wednesday last week i visited this amazing islamic uni. ok ill try think of the most interesting things: ok well you know the general dude from last blog? seems i left quite an impression with him... on thurs last week we were outside his headquarters when he came out with all these guards with guns and serious looking men marching but he stopped to wave at me from across the yard. oh the reporters were so jealous because apparently they see him everyday and he never recognises them. then his funny reporter called tutus took me to the beach, black sand and deserted with huge waves. jeje takes me to the most amazing places for dinner. this one resturant ... read more

ok well im here! yogya is perhaps not as idylic and peaceful as i expected... its loud and polluted and everything is 'under construction' but its very vibrant and theres always soemthing to see. its probably bigger than i thought it'd be too. mostly uni students as expected because the biggest uni in indo is here, gagah mada. my delayed flight from melb to KL meant that i arrived in kl at about 4am instead of 9pm the night before... soo the LUXURY hotel room i payed for was wasted as i slept on a couch, along with about 11 others. but that was alright. it was only for a few hours, as my flight to yogya was at 9.20am. so all went smoothly after that. i was bombarded at yogya airport by heat and papers. ... read more

We flew to Indonesia with lots of preconceptions of what the country would be like. These were based on government warnings about travel to Indonesia on the FCO website, which had us fearing that all Indonesians would be terrorists intent on kidnapping us or blowing us up, and western media portrayal of what 'muslim countries' are like. It turned out to be completely different to what we expected. The first suprise on landing was that, far from being a bunch of western-hating extremists, Indonesians are friendly, welcoming people. A guard took us straight past the immigration queue at the aiport and people would smile, shout hello, point us in the right direction and be generally helpful. On the train one lady even brought her children over to say hello and shake our hands. The second ... read more

We left India on 15th February, taking a night flight from Mumbai to Bangkok. Our last sight of India was the evening taxi journey from downtown Mumbai to the airport. The centre of Mumbai is a thriving international city with all the trappings of wealth and growth. As we got further from the centre the landscape changed. We drove through roads where makeshift homes had been erected on the street; sheets of tarpaulin spread across bamboo poles providing homes to whole families. Occasionally you could get a glimpse inside one of these homes, where surprisingly domestic life is maintained inches from the thundering traffic - clothes hung on makeshift clothes rails, people preparing an evening meal and, somewhat incongrously, gathered round a flickering tv screen. We were passing through one the slums of Mumbai, where people ... read more

Nach zwei wundervollen Wochen auf Bali, in denen ich die gesamte Insel mit dem Motorrad erkundet hatte, kam ich heute bereits um halb 9 morgens in Yoyakarta an und fuhr die knapp 10 km vom Flughafen ins Zentrum. Da ich viel Zeit hatte schaute ich mir verschiedene Losmen in Yogyas Travellerzentrum Sosrowijayan an, netschied mich dann aber schnell für das Bladok, wo die Zimmer zwar etwas teurer waren, als in den anderen Billigunterkünften, aber das Bladok ist topgepflegt, hat einen kleinen Pool und allgemein eine gute Atmosphäre. Mein Einzelzimmer für 77.000 Rp war klein, aber supersauber und sogar recht stilvoll eingerichtet mit schönem indonesischen Mandi. Das dazugehörige Restaurant hatte sehr ordentliche, aber etwas überteuerte, überwiegend westliche Gerichte auf Lager. Den Rest des Tages verbrachte ich damit Yogya zu erkunden, Indonesiens touristischste Stadt, und sicher auch eine ... read more