Yogyakarta - Batik, Bintang and Borobudur

---

We are sitting on the balcony of the Bedhot Resto at the moment, having a nice chilled Bintang and weird crisps (I want a package of Walkers Cheese&Onions crisps NOW!). We actually planned to have a massage tonight but as the girl who was meant to give me a massage was very busy with her blackberry there is no massage tonight. But first things first.

The last entry ended with the wonderful train ride if I remember it right. Okay, so after 10 sweaty hours on a train we arrived in Yogyakarta (Jogja) and made our way to Sosro where all the guesthouses (losmen) are. We walked around for quite a while and saw loads of different places. A guy thought he'd do us a favour (and his wallet with the commission) by dragging us to one guesthouse after the next. After a sleepless night there is hardly anything that could be more annoying. After we found a nice place to stay we had a little nap until around midday. Once we were awake and freshened up we found a nice little place to have some food which was going to become our favourite restaurant here. Great local food for amazing prices and the fresh mango juice is sooo yummy. Afterwards we took a bicycle taxi down to the palace just to let someone tell us it was closed and we should go and see the carriage museum instead. As Ryan's and my interest in carriages is rather limited we decided not to go and made our way back to the guesthouse. We passed loads of Batik stalls but the tiredness didn't make them very appealing to us and everyone offering us "transport? soup? ..." was quite exhausting as well. As we finally made it back we relaxed in our room for another while before we looked into how to get to Borobudur the next day. We found a good deal to get there and after we had booked it we went to our favourite restaurant again and ordered some more mango juice. The guy served the juice (!) with the words "enjoy your meal". He was so cute and whenever he came to the table we said "excuse me". He must think we are weirdos though as we are drinking mango juice all day long and don't seem to do anything different. Aww now I lost track of what I actually wanted to write.

Hmm.. Right, I reckon we had some food afterwards (that is unavoidable every two hours when travelling with Ryan. haha) and we called it an early night once again. We both actually slept quite well that night and the next day we were quite relaxed and had some Java fried rice for breakfast and a nice ice coffee. Afterwards we dropped the postcards off at the post office. (Yes, we have already written some postcards, but I am not going to reveal to whom as I don't want to spoil the surprise. Maybe you are one of the chosen ones?) Once we had found it and were back at our guesthouse it was about time to go to the minibus which should bring us to Borobudur - the biggest Buddhist monument in existence which was built in the 8th or 9th century and was rediscovered about 1840. It was completely covered by volcanic ashes after an eruption of Mount Merapi which is about 40 km away.

On the way there we stopped at another Buddhist monument and had a little stroll around. Once we had seen enough we continued the drive to Borobudur which was just a few minutes away. As we walked the way along towards the monument the sky turned grey and once we had finished the first of the 7 square levels it started to rain. I sat down in a corner and tried to talk to the rain and persuade him to stop - without success. As if I hadn't had enough practice in rainy England. We bravely made our way up to the top and once we had reached it 3 random guys wanted to take a picture with us as a memory. Our long lost friends are finally reunited with us and we have to celebrate this with taking a picture. haha. Once we got down of the monument it was pouring down and we got absolutely soaked (now you have to feel good as we are not having great weather all the time). We both enjoyed seeing Borbudur and all the reliefs that where telling a story on the levels. Besides the orangutans it was the highlight of our trip so far.

In the evening we went for a nice meal and a ... guess what... YES! ... a mango juice and afterwards we had a chilled Bintang in the place where we are sitting right now. We went to bed at around 11ish and had a very good night.

Today there is an invasion of Indonesian teenagers in our guesthouse who are apparently on a weekend trip to Jogja. Apart from that there is hardly anything to report about today. We had some more mango juice (what else?) and walked around for a bit and looked at all the Batik clothes and bags. Hm, what else did we do? Not much. Just having a lazy and relaxing day and we booked our bus away from here to Mount Bromo for tomorrow morning. We are going to stay there for a night and the next morning we'll climb up the volcano and then we are off to Bali. Yay!

We'll keep you up to date on here and I'll upload some pictures soon, I promise. And as I am talking about promises Ryan promised that he is going to write about Mount Bromo. ;-)

So yes, that was going on in our last few days and as I mentioned earlier we are sitting on the balcony and enjoying a nice cold Bintang and that is what we are still doing.

---