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Published: October 19th 2007
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After Lake Toba we caught a crammed bus back up to Medan, then flew to Jakarta. As soon as we landed in Jakarta we decided not to stay long. It's another busy, noisey sprawl so after squeezing in a few hours sleep we booked a minivan to take us to Yogyakarta further south. We were told by the agent that we wold have a lovely spacious, air con minivan, which we did, but we were also told that the trip would only take 9 hours, which it didn't - more like 20! At this time of year the muslim community celebrate the end of their fasting season (Hari Raya) and everyone goes home to be with friends and family so all the main roads were heaving with traffic! It didn't help that we had a blown tyre half way through! So we finaly arrived at 7pm the next day and found a place to stay. The first day we were in Yogya we caught a Becak to visit the royal palace only to find out that it was closed for a few days (also to do with Hari Raya) so instead we decided to have a look in one of the
many Batik art galleries in the city. Some of the work is pretty amazing - a lot of it very intricate. An Indonesian man we met told us that Batik (the art of dying fabric using wax as a barrier between colours) actually began in Yogya. We encounterd our second Hari Raya related problem when we tried to find something to eat - we hadn't even thought that perhaps all of the restaraunt owners might want to go home to their families too! Hari Raya problem number three: since a lot of people are off work over this time, it also meant we were stuck in Yogya for a few days as tickets for all transport methods were sold out, and many services were cancelled! We took the oportunity to have a couple of lazy days, with a bit of temple gazing in between.
On the Friday we took some time out to explore Yogyakarta a bit. Our wandering took us through the bird market (also closed due to Hari Raya!) and in to the Kraton. This is the Sultans own little walled off part of the city where all his workers and family live. Edy, an Indonesian man,
joined us on our walk and explained that the pools are where past Sultans used to watch their 7 wives swim and would decided which one would get to sleep with him that night by throwing a lavender leaf in to the pool and seeing which wife caught it. We also saw the Sultans secret tunnels, built in 1757 by a Portuguese architecht who was then stabbed and killed upon their completion in order to keep them a secret!
On the Saturday we joined a tour which took us to Borubudur and Prambanan temples for the day. Borubudur is a multi-tiered Buddhist stupa built in the ninth century standing 34.5m tall, making it the worlds largest Buddhst stupa. The Prambanan complex is the Hindu faith's awesome response. Six large temples stand within a courtyard, the biggest three are dedicated to the three main Hindu deities: Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu; the three smaller temples house the three animal statues that would accompny each god: Hamsa the swan, Nandi the bull and Garuda the sunbird respectively. At each of these places we were made to feel like celebrities by the crowds of people there all wanting their pictures taken us! We
found out that in the East it is considered to mean good luck if you have your picture taken with a person with blonde hair, and Kirstie's has turned quite fair from the sun. At this point we had to remind ourselves that "we are dolphins!". Between seeing the two temples we were also taken to Gunung (Mount) Merapi which is aparently one of the 5 most active volcanoes in the world, but unfortunately it was hidden behind a huge cloud.
After another chilled out day, we left Yogya early to begin another (supposedly) 10 hour journey to Gunung Bromo. It of course turned out to be longer, but on the bus we met Mark, Johan and Rinaldo. We arrived at our accommodation at 11.30pm and managed to fit in 4 hours sleep before we planned to visit the Bromo-Tengger-Semeru Nationalk Park for sunrise. Unfortunately the experience was tainted firstly by our sleep deprived, drunk tour guide, who had told us that we would be sharing a jeep up to the view point with our new friends but had managed to forget this within 4 hours and decided to shout at us when we asked if we could still
go together. After having our money thrown back at us and being told that we could not go, another man from our guesthouse managed to talk some sense in to our 'guide' and we eventually got into separate jeeps just about in time for the sunrise. At the heart of the park is a huge volcanic crater with walls over 300m high, formed when the 400m Gunung Tengger erupted. Within this, smaller volcanoes rise from the Sea of Sand, including the still-smoking Gunung Bromo. When we arrived at the viewpoint the second thing that tainted our experience was the hoards of holiday makers already there! However, the views are indescribable, pictures do them no justice. Then we were driven in to the park to the base of Bromo where we spent an hour or so climbing up to the crater's edge and taking in more amazing views before being whisked back in time to catch our bus to Bali, where we are now!
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Paul
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Wow
I can't believe it's that bright at 4:30 in the am, you must be pretty far south...Pictures are awesome, remember, if it's on your plate and moving, don't eat it...