Jogjakarta

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4th day - Jogjakarta

Once i arrived in Jogjakarta i noticed 2 guys looking through the trusty old lonely planet guide, I asked them what they're plans were and we decided to go off and search out a place to stay. After 5 or so failed attempts we came across a good one, i say good but i saw 2 rats outside the hostel the size of cats, maybe not the size of cats but still. Because we'd arrived at 4am we weren't allowed into our room yet so decided to go and see a huge Buddhist temple, these are relatively rare in Indonesia due to being the most populated Muslim country in the world. I found that hard to believe at first, you'd think the Middle East would be. Bogden and florent are french, they both have okay English but Floret's is definitely better, it was a relief because i can't remember any french from school.

While on the bus to the temple i glanced out the window and saw a middle aged women on her motorbike with a kid on the back and a sniper rifle strapped to her front!! A sniper rifle!!! I looked away and then back again to make sure i wasn't imagining it. After a while the bus stopped at a terminal to let more people on etc, a man walked through the bus playing guitar and attempted his best singing voice, failing miserably. He then held out a bag asking for money and I thought what the hell, I'm never gone spend all this change I've accumulated so far so i gave him a handful. As soon as he got off the bus on stepped another one so i ignored him, it was Bogden's turn to get rid of him this time. This happens a lot actually, there's all sorts of so called busking going on. It's nothing like your good old English busking, this stuff is painful on the ears!
The bus arrived at its destination and we set off in the direction of the temple, or what we thought was the temple. We must have walked an hour before we realized we'd circled the temple grounds, which is a fair distance! We did see hand sized spiders on webs stretch across trees above our heads, they look horrible but are still interesting to see. We eventually got to the temple, was really quite a sight and we had 3 Javanese girls showing us about who were acting as free guides to earn extra points for university. That night i forgot to hose myself down with insect repellent and because of the heat you pretty much sleep naked all the time so the next morning i had maybe 30 or so mosquito bites....which was nice.

5th day - Jogjakarta

The next day we looked about the main city of Jogjakarta, stumbling about on damaged pavements and generally getting in everyone's way. Crossing the street or "jaywalking" which you have to do because cars don't seem to stop at the crossings and traffic lights, is a bit of an acquired skill which i had a bit of practice with in Jakarta on my 1st day with Dan. You have to run, stop in the middle of the road until the next side of the road is clear because there's rarely a break in the steady stream of motorbikes and trucks, and then run again.
We stumbled upon a bird market where people were bidding for racing pigeons. They had plenty of other animals there too which was a bit sad really because they're all in small cages etc, one of which was the world's largest species of snake, the reticulated python. We'd walked past it on our way into the centre of the bird market and noticed the door was half open. On our way back past the snake cage i went to get a closer look but a local who was sitting nearby seemed to think I wanted to get it out, so she flung the door open proceeded to drag it out. I'm quite into snakes actually but i know what one of these can do/eat and the fact it's kept against it's will in a small cage probably pisses it off even more. It turned out to be quite docile though, but it was scarily big though. I knew going to Borneo near the end of my trip was the best chance i had at seeing one of these snakes and i planned to get a guide who knew where they could be found but never thought I'd actually see one, I know its not like seeing it in it's own habitat but I was still really excited. I left a bag of shopping there and one of the locals ran after me to give it back, most Indonesians are really nice people and always willing to help you out. It can be difficult though sometimes to know when someone is genuine/trying to help you and when someone is just out to scam money from you. I end up ignoring a lot of people because they're just shouting things from across the street and they have a motorbike, I put 2 and 2 together and just assume they want to give you an expensive taxi ride, I'm normally correct though.
Kids seem to find foreigners really interesting, saying "hello mister!" then running ahead of you and repeating the process again and again, I guess it's good that I give them some amusement.

That night we headed for a place called Probalingo on the eastern end of java by night bus. It was all going well until the driver dropped us off at a bus station in the middle of no-where at 2 in the morning. We were told at the tourist information office that we could get a bus from here to Probalingo but through broken Indonesian with a local I managed to get the impression we'd been given shoddy info. There was a young group of kids surrounding us saying things like "Rooney" and "Beckham", it's Ethiopia all over again! It was obvious that this town doesn't see tourists, people were coming from all corners of the station to get in on the action....the action being laughing at us tourists. We were told to get a bus to Surabaya and then get a bus from there to Probalingo, when a bus pulled in saying Surabaya across the top, a man said that it was full but I think he just was just saying that to keep us there for longer because we were good entertainment. We got on the right bus in the end and then got dropped off in some other town, and the nightmare continues.....Hardly anyone speaks English in these parts, I don't expect them too and why should they?, but it just makes it difficult to know what directions people are giving you etc, should we get off the bus or stay on? That question presented itself often. It was now 4:30 in the morning and we were starting to feel the stress when a small bus drove by with a guy shouting the word we all dreamed of hearing...PROBALINGO! So, we caught up with it and squeezed on. It was a 2hr journey but we had a rather amusing man next to us keeping us entertained, until he diverted his attention to watching porn on his phone.
Bogden and Florent have done quite a bit of travelling amongst themselves and are used to doing it as cheap as possible. They like the whole traveling at night thing because it saves on a nights accommodation but you also lose a night of sleeping because no one really gets good sleep on trains and buses, not me anyway. Because your traveling through the night you end up getting somewhere too early and having to wait in restaurants/cafes until check in time.

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Photos

Orb weaving spider
This Orb Weaving spider was huge!

Borobudur
View from Borobudur temple

Reticulated python
Reticulated Python at the bird market