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Published: December 18th 2008
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Leaving Padang we flew down to Java on a nice quick 2 hour flight in to the Capital Jakarta, easily saving ourselves a 35-45 hour bus journey... Quick exit off the plane through the airport to the local taxi rank we head then in to the city and main back packer strip Jalan Jaksa Road. As we turned up we noticed straight away it was nothing like Bangkok (we thought they might of been similar). No where near as developed and a lot more run down. Yes it has its big buildings and stuff but none of the glam! Anyhow checked in to a single room hotel and went out to check the local scene. As I said all a little run down but nice to see street stalls again selling fantastic satay chicken, pork beef and fried rice dishes all cheap as chips (about 60p for a large size meal). Had a meal then settled in for the night as there was not a lot going on apart from lots and lots of people stoned out of there mind. Bit minging to be fair.
Following day checked out a few malls and tour agents to see if there was
anything worth doing while in the capital but it was all a bit crap! Jakarta hasn't got that much to offer apart from the odd museum and a ‘raving’ club scene as far as we could make out, nothing recommended in the trusty 'Bible' as I now call it (the Lonely Planet guide - our best friend!) So we checked out and booked the over night train to Yogyakarta which is in mid Java and 12 hours away.
YOGYAKARTA
Arriving in Yogya at 6am we were greeted by a local guide wanting work. Helped us search around for a place to stay and finally finding a very nice and cheap home stay room down a little lane. Very, very cute place with nice place to eat opposite. Slept for a few hours then headed round the town to do a little sight seeing. In true typical fashion all the sights were closed so we went to the recommended Batik school, as we had been told by quite a few locals, is only open 2 days a week and has all the students and professors. They made it sound like it was going to be a great big fair
type thing, for us to find a little art school with some of the artists work on sale. They did have some magnificent stuff, but of course the only ones we really liked were way out of the price range, we have expensive taste! So we took a few large file sized pictures to print them ourselves when we get home! (naughty) We then went around window shopping and through the mile long market of Maliboro road.
Following day we hired a bike and headed up to some large Buddhist temples, Borobudur and Prambanan, but unfortunately the latter was closed due to reconstruction after an earthquake, they were still charging people full price to get into the car park to take pictures from there even though you couldn't go in the temple itself! madness… luckily we had found out about this before hand so didn't bother making the trip all the way there to be disappointed. So we headed straight for Borobudur instead.
Gareth was having some ‘bowel malfunction’ (to be polite) so decided to stay down at the entrance and not come in to the site so as not to be caught out!!
The temple itself is really
different in comparison to a lot of the temples in Asia, and nothing like Prambanan which looks similar to Angkor Wat (from the pictures I've seen) Its in very good knick, doesn’t look as though it was built in the 9th century, that’s thanks to the eruption of a nearby volcano that erupted and covered it in ash for 800 years only to be rediscovered by jolly good old Raffles!
I don’t think it is as awe inspiring as Angkor, but beautiful nonetheless, and great for pictures (see below!)
The next day we hired a cyclo to take us the Palaces in Yogya, there is the Sultans Palace - which was a waste of time, not that great at all, and there is the Water Palace- which was much nicer, where the Sultans used to go to have their swims etc. There are also these underground passages criss-crossing underneath the palace and there is a part that is no longer connected to it that we could not figure out the purpose for but it was really rustically beautiful with 3 staircases that used to lead down to water we assume… Probably a harem of some sort!
We had
BROMO + TEMPLE (184)
Gunung Semeru volcano booked a tour to go to Mt.Bromo and follow onto Bali, so the next day we left for a 9 hour bus trip to reach Bromo. Of course this didn’t include the stop to change the punctured tyre, then the stop to fix the punctured tyre… We eventually arrived at a town where we were told we had to change buses and were asked if we wanted to trek up to the view point at 3am or get a jeep up at 4am, needless to say which we chose!!!
So finally got to the hotel at Bromo which we didn’t realise was actually overlooking the volcano but we couldn’t see it as it was pitch black by the time we arrived, and pitch black when we woke up at 4 to get up to the view point!
The sunrise at 2700metres was spectacular, there was this mist/fog hanging very low for a very long time so much so that we couldn’t see our hotel with the sun up either! Got some great pictures of the volcanoes and of Gunung Semeru in the distance doing mini eruptions every 10mins or so. We then got driven down to the valley and
BROMO + TEMPLE (158)
Gunung Semeru Volcano walked up Bromo where they have put a convenient stair for tourist to climb up, thankfully. We were surprised as to how active it was, there was a constant stream of sulphuric (smelly) gas coming from the crater… And even more surprised to see that some idiot had gone down into the crater and spelled out there name in stones visible from the top! Nutters!
It was then back to the hotel for a quick breakfast and then to get the bus to Bali. This is when we noticed the fabulous view from our hotel, looking right across the plain towards Bromo…
BALI
Bali is to Aussies what Ibiza is to Brits. It is full to the brim of Aussies of all ages, surfers, families, travellers… We stayed in Kuta, where all the action is, even though I didn’t really want to as this is where the bombs happened, and later we discovered that the tragedy happened literally 200 metres down the road from where we were.
But there were stayed nevertheless…
It was definitely ‘action’ millions of shops and hundreds of bars. We were constantly getting hassled whether it was to buy something in a
shop or getting beeped at by a taxi wanting a fare, it got quite irritating after a while. We didn’t do very much in Bali, we tried to find out costs to get to Komodo to see the dragons but no one could give us any straight answers about tickets and travel so we decided not to go, and tried to find out info about getting to Borneo but that was not very successful either, and so we spent the next day at the (not very nice) beach, which had loads of dead mangled fish at the waters edge from fisherman catching too many fish and chucking them out of the nets! Lovely!
The one saving grace of Bali, and the disgusting beach, is that when I was walking back home I got stopped by a man doing a promotion for Royal hotels and won a 14night holiday in Goa at one of their resorts! (which we have booked for the 28th February) and the man gave me a lift back to the hotel - bonus!!
We decided to find our own way to Borneo and decided to go to the airport in Surabaya to get a flight
direct and cut out the middle man as we thought we’d save money. So we caught the overnight train and arrived in Surabaya and went straight to the airport, but the cheapest flight was the next day…
So that takes us to where we started this blog, next up is Borneo so stay locked on channel Blog!!
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Norshidah
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Greetings from Singapore
Hi Gareth and Liane! Thanks for sharing your journey... Your photos look amazing. My friend and I will be travelling down the same route as well, Jakarta, Yogya, Surabaya, Bromo and Bali from this Friday (Boxing Day) and have got those sites that you guys have been to on our "must see" list. How was the journey from Bromo to Kuta?