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Published: September 6th 2009
We reached Jakarta at around 10pm along with Jamie who was also on the same flight as us after his tooing and frooing about whether to leave Danau Toba or not (long story!). None of us had planned to spend any time in Jakarta and wanted the first bus or train out of there but the cheapo minibuses to the city stop running at 6.30pm (why?) so we decided to spend the night in the airport to wait for the first bus in the morning.
It was our first airport sleeping experience but was quite comfortable, the terminal we slept in is brand new and was deserted so we got a reasonable nights sleep apart from the man who was building his new coffee shop drilling and hammering all night. We were up at 4am to try and get the first bus to the city but not one person who worked there (even those on the info desk) could tell us at what time the first bus actually was. We had hoped it was at 4am but as 5am came and went with no bus and us wanting to catch the 6.20am train we called it a day and caught
Men playing chess
They do this alot on the streeta taxi, something we really begrudge doing unless it's absoloutely necessary!
The information desk at the airport proved unhelpful again by sending us to the wrong train station for the 6.20am train so we had to dash to the other station again by taxi and arrived just in time to get tickets and get to the platform as the train pulled in.
We had business class tickets but this train was far from our idea of business class! It was quite comfortable but was much like the 3rd class Thai trains in that you have a constant flow of people selling things like food, drinks, stickers, hats... these are the more useful things.. you also get lots of random things like people spraying air freshener under your seat and people sweeping the rubbish from under your seat and then wanting paying for it.. bloody cheek! Of course you also get the music people.. well we will call them music people for the sake of argument but we didn't really have what we could call music to our ears! Our favourite were 2 transvestite tambourine players dressed from head to toe in Lycra!
Our first impressions of Yogya
were very good and not at all as we'd expected. For a city that was devestated by a huge earthquake in 2006 they seem to have rebuilt the city very well and we only saw a small amount of buildings that were still being restored. We found a ropey guesthouse called Supermans, which was far from super but was owned by a man, in one of the gangs (alleys), dumped our bags and went to see what was on offer in the city. It was Indonesian Independence day when we arrived so the main street of Maliolboro was jam packed with bikes, cars and people but we enjoyed seeing what was going on and took a walk round, there were a few processions but we mainly found people trying to sell us things or get us into their dodgy batik galleries so retreated to our rooms for a good nights sleep ready for sightseeing the following day.
We'd decided to take a walk to the south end of Maliolboro Street to see the old Sultans palace or Kraton found inside the Greater Kraton Compond (the old city with it's own walls and community). It was a nice enough walk
apart from the countless "hey where you froms" which were swiftly followed by "we have an exclusive batik gallery on today" which can get a little annoying by the 10th time! We found the old city to be really nice and got caught up walking round and round the little white pained alleys and streets that made it up. We did visit the Kraton which is still home to the Sultan but there really wasn't that much to see in there so we didn't feel we'd gained that much of an insight into the history of this monarch which was a shame.
Round the corner from the Palace is a bird market which is supposed to be a must see. At first it is all quite novel seeing lots of birds in various fancy cages all singing away, there are also many types of fish with the Japanese fighting fish being the favourites all lined up in jamjars! After these though things get a little more harrowing as you see tankfuls of baby turtles with most of them dead, cages stuffed with bats, gekkos, cats, rabbits and monkeys most of which can't move and look scared to death stuck
out in the bright sunshine all day. The worst had to be the animal stuck in a cage with a huge eagle perched on top.. it all made for uncomfortable viewing, especially as it was obvious that most of these animals had been caught in the wild and caged for sale with no care as to whether they lived or died, we also had to wonder why people would want a bat as a pet anyway and why they need so many hundreds of Gekkos when we didn't see one person buying one?
Down another few alleyways we stumbled on the water palace, which is neither a palace or has water! It used to be the bathing area for the sultan and seemed quite grand even though they were in the process of restoring it when we saw it. After that we got a bit lost walking the maze of the compound but after taking a few wrong turns with people pointing in all directions to get out we made it back to the more modern and busy streets of the main city.
The rest of our day was spent trying to find out information on our forthcoming
Local artwork
and another Bekak rider! trip to Mt Bromo. We were convinced we'd be able to get there cheaper than the package tour so spent our afternoon checking on train times & classes. We thought we'd found our answer when we were told about the economy train that went all the way to Probollingo but quickly deciding against it once we saw the train pull in crammed with people and designed much like a London Tube Train with rows of seats on either side .. cheap it may be but sometimes comfort wins!
Our 2nd day was spent seeing the ultimate must see in this area and perhaps in Indonesia.. the huge Bhuddist temple of Borobudur the biggest of it's kind in the world. The temple is made up of 2 million stone blocks with 6 square terraces topped by 3 circular ones which you are supposed to go round in a clockwise direction from the east side in terrace order. We started to go round each floor in this way but by the 3rd one we got a bit tired, it was 38°C and incredibly hot so we skipped a few of the levels and made our way to the top! The top
3 terraces are crowned by 72 huge stupas all containing a stone buddha. It is supposed to bring good fortune to touch the robe of the Buddha nearest the east steps but we couldn't work out which one it was so touched as many of them as we could which is no easy task. We were also told whilst being up there that it was actually the foot you were supposed to touch but there was no way we were going to do it all again so just hoped that some good fortune would rub off on us by making the effort anyway!
After a few hours exploring the terraces and having our photos taken with various Indonesian residents including a Sumatran Policeman who tried to impress Sophie with his gun, we were desperate for some water so took in our final views and ticked off yet another famous temple from our list! Borobudur is quite spectacular, maybe not more so than some of the Angkor Temples but the setting of it makes it quite unique and from the top you get a 360° view of the volcanos and jungle as the background which is quite breathtaking in itself.
Not yet fully templed out and having never seen a big Hindu temple we set our sights on the Prambanan Temples for our final day. Jamie came along with us to this one and we were also accompanied round by a nice Indonesian student who visited the temple to practise his English so we had a nice day out leaning more about Indonesian culture from him which was lucky as the main Candi Shiva Mahadeva temple isn't quite as amazing as we'd hoped. This is mainly due to the huge restoration project that's going on there so most of the spires are covered in scaffolding or are in pieces scattered all around the site. What really annoyed us is that this is not reflected in the price and we were still fleeced for $11 to get in when the locals have to pay just $1. Something we are getting increasingly frustrated about here in Indonesia as the Westeners seem to be totally supporting the local tourist sights for the pleasure of the locals. Sure you get free tea & coffee as you go in but we'd rather skip this and just pay $1! Anyway, that's an argument going on
across the blogs and amongst travellers everywhere so we won't go on about it too much! We took a walk round the park which houses 2 other smaller temples including a Bhuddist one, these were deserted so we could relax here from the soaring heat a bit before making our way back again.
It was our last day to spend with Jamie before we went our separate ways that evening so we spent them eating, drinking and having fun watching a washing machine in the shopping centre pretending it was a tv.. the locals were quite confused about the whole thing! That was until we stumbled across a modern art exhibition when walking around some of the back streets looking for a supermarket.. the exhibition was excellent as you can see on the photos and we were yet again impressed with the art scene here in Yogya which is encouraged at every corner you turn from graffiti murals on the walls to traditional leathercraft, batik (in the real galleries!) and shadow puppets.
Our train wasn't until gone midnight but we bid Jamie farewell at a more reasonable hour and spent our last few hours on the internet which
is a great time killer at ungodly hours like this then boarded our train for our first of 3 consecutive no sleep nights on our way to Mt Bromo and all that it offers...
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Roy
non-member comment
Train in Indonesia
Hi there, Nice report. Just curious, which train did you guys take? For the class of service, you should always go with Executive Class, anything less is actually only coach / "upgraded" coach class. As for the trains, there are different train names, you should go with ARGO trains, they are the best. (e.g. ARGO LAWU for Jakarta-Jogja). Hopefully this may be of help. Enjoy your stay in Indonesia and have a pleasant and safe trip. Cheers, Roy.