Hotel Ibis Solo

... of Roda Warung @ Jl Slamet Riyadi No. 275 tel. 0271734111 (Javanese style restaurant) beside the tourist information and the museum. They serve dim sum as well as other dishes. I was interested in trying the dim sum. It was hard to tell what anything was from the menu so the lady brought me to the dim sum table and showed and tried to explain what everything was. Basically different types of shrimp dishes and some chicken dishes as well.
I tried a ...

... in Solo. Again, when was the last time any of us did that back home?!

In Solo we took a great bicycle tour of the local area seeing cottage industries at work and it ended up being one of the most interesting and worthwhile tours we have taken in quite some time. The pictures will take you along with us...enjoy!

Until next time,
Jon and Liz

Solo , only a couple of hours from Yogyakarta and is similar to Yogya but without all the tourists so I thought it would make a nice stopgap as it broke the journey on the ...

... for the next leg of the adventure. I wish I could tell you about the car ride to Solo. However, I was so sleep deprived that I made Chris take a 20 dollar taxi for an hour and half ride, just so I could sleep. The sleep was wonderful and by the time we got out of the car I felt refreshed and recharged. Solo maybe one of my favorite places so far. It is much quieter than the other towns I have seen. There are not a lot of ...

... attacks in an amusement park, listening to a band playing Indonesian pop, which is up to globalised standards, observing the people who still flock in. My stay in Yogyakarta was great but Surakarta, one hour away, is not so bad either. The Kraton, as the Sultan palaces are called here, has a decent museum and nice serene courtyards with funeral chariots and replicas of neoclassical European statues slowly rotting away interestingly The royal band here plays a slow motion version of ...

... now because the next real opportunity will be New Zealand in November. I'm sure New Zealand will be completely awesome but it seems a long, long way away. In reality though, it's only a little over two months from now before I fly to the north island from Sydney. I've had a pretty uneventful day today, surfed the internet for a couple of hours, walked around town, bought some small souvenirs and had an afternoon nap in preparation for tonight.

... slaps it down on the cement floor, then another... and these are good-sized cobras...he keeps his SANDALLED foot on the tails and starts slapping them on the back of their head with his bare hand. In their anger, they do the hiss and puff out the neck wide thing that cobras are known for...it's quite a scene. He's so casual about it...smoking a cigarette and chatting at the same time with the Indonesian man we are with who does some translating ...

... of Bali, the view over the volcano in the centre, Gunung Batur, is staggering with typical terraced rice fields stretching throughout the crater. After a spot of lunch gazing down into the crater, we head down towards Ubud to a spice and coffee plantation and get to try the products while wandering through the beautiful grounds. Then onto Ubud to the famous monkey sanctuary which also contains the local temple of death, an interesting venue to watch grey monkeys cavorting. Heading back ...

... gado-gado in an earlier blog so by rights I should delete that bit. Yeah right - and have to come up with more material? No way. After lunch we headed up to the main mall for some air-con comfort. On the way we came upon a group of chess players on the sidewalk (I'd call it a 'pavement' - to assert my Anglo-Saxon roots - but that would imply some kind of uniform paving, which there isn't). There are lots of chess playing folk to be ...

... Batik shop. We chose this shop because the store had fixed prices (ie. no pushy touts) and we wanted to learn about how Batik painting is done. This area is famous for Batik art. We surprised ourselves by buying a small Batik painting (we are not usually shoppers). Yesterday we went on a tour. First the tour went to Borabadour, which is an ancient Buddhist temple - one of the best in Asia and fully restored several years ago. We also toured a large Hindu temple ...