As we were waiting for the night train to the Perhentian Islands to leave KL Sentral, we came to talk to a young man sitting beside us. He turned out to be an Indonesian currently working in London and was on his way to a beach holiday with his fiancé. He was very nice and refreshing, and when we left for our platform we told him goodbye in Indonesian, which left him quite surprised. We could only get to the platform and on the train half an hour before departure, the platform was closed up to that time. Trains in Malaysia [View Full Entry]

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Malaysia’s capital is an important transport hub in Southeast Asia and we had used it several times, mostly to or from Indonesia. Up to now, we have been in Kuala Lumpur four times, twice only at the airport and twice we stayed in the city. This is mainly due to Asia’s first low-cost airline, Air Asia, which is based in Kuala Lumpur. The airport is very modern, filled with light and convenient, it has only one serious drawback: it is 72 km from the city centre. There is a fast express train to the centre but this is very expensive (RM [View Full Entry]

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Our last destination on Bali was Ubud, the city with the highest concentration of cultural sites on this island. It is not very far from Lovina and normally we would have taken a public bus, but we wanted to see more temples lying on the way, so we hired a car and a driver. The main receptionist of our hotel in Lovina made a good and honest impression on us, so we accepted when he offered to arrange this for us. We left Lovina, but not without bidding a hearty farewell to M. Hamel and headed towards Mount Batur. The road [View Full Entry]

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They say, everybody needs a second chance and so we thought that the island of the gods also deserved one. We were hopeful but it did not start well; as a matter of fact the trouble started as soon as we set foot on Bali. And this is not a question of different cultural backgrounds, as a reader suggested, we had come perfectly along on Sumatra and Java. It seems that for the Indonesian government the country consists mainly of Java and Bali, some attention has gone to Sumatra due to its northernmost province of Aceh, but it seems that east [View Full Entry]

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We left Yogyakarta with a pinch of regret, it had been such a pleasant place to stay. But once again we were wanderers, new environments were ahead, and this thought also excited us. We learnt that there were six passengers in the minibus, but we were the first ones to be picked up and thus could secure the best seats. The second couple was picked up in Yogyakarta’s second tourist agglomeration close to the train station. But where was the third couple? The driver had some trouble finding them, looking for them all over the second place. After a couple of [View Full Entry]

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Sometime before the 5th century AD, the influence of Hinduism and Buddhism spread southward from the mainland of Southeast Asia to the islands of Sumatra, Java, Bali and a few others in the archipelago currently called Indonesia. There are no archaeological remains of temples in the Indianized states of Java prior to the end of the seventh century as the early Hindu structures were built of wood and have long since decayed in the moist tropic climate. The greatest concentration of Javanese sacred architecture lies on the plain around the present city of Yogyakarta, here stands the beautiful Hi [View Full Entry]

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When you travel by air from Bali to Yogyakarta in Central Java, you will inevitably see the massive Hindu temple complex of Prambanan. If you travel by road from an easterly direction, you cannot miss it - Prambanan is only 100 metres from the road. Whichever way you first see this massive complex, its towering temple structures are awe-inspiring, and its beauty, breathtaking. Prambanan is located in Central Java, roughly 20 kilometres from Yogyakarta, the renowned cultural centre of Java. Built during the Sanjaya Dynasty in the 9th century, the central area has three main temples ac [View Full Entry]

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The train ride from Bandung to Yogyakarta was long and uneventful, it was actually quite boring. What a difference to Indian trains! The train station area was blocked by heavy metal bars, so that people don’t linger around the tracks without a ticket or run across them, it was very effective, maybe people have to be forced into discipline a bit. The train left on time, was very clean for Asia, and everything was well organised, you could rent cushions and vendors were only allowed in at certain moments, in order not to allow too much competition to the official food [View Full Entry]

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Our idea had been to avoid staying in Jakarta a second time, the first time we only changed planes at the airport. The cancellation of our morning flight from Medan and the subsequent late arrival seemed to have this plan go up in smoke, in fact we arrived at Jakarta airport only around 9 p.m. But we had found out that there were direct buses from the airport to Bogor and we decided to give it a try. If there were no more buses, we could always get to the centre and find a hotel there. As very often occurs in [View Full Entry]

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Our sightseeing trip from Bukit Lawang to Lake Toba was undertaken in a minibus, which by itself was not really uncomfortable but we felt the bad road conditions (potholes etc.) much more strongly. The first part of the trip led us back to Medan, crossing wide plantations of oil palms whose fruits were just being picked and transported to oil mills, and huge plantations of gum trees. The crossing of Medan did not consume too much time, there were relatively few congestions. Our next stop on the way to Lake Toba was Brastagi, a hill resort town established by the Dutch [View Full Entry]

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