Puri Artha Hotel Yogyakarta

... man dropped us off we were so pleased with his service that we gave him 50,000 rather than 20,000. He accepted graciously and said he would come back and take us to the show that night.<br><br>Now, having high expectations of 300 performers and magnificent grandeur was silly. We got there and were lead to a theatre very much like the one where we watched the show in Bali. In fact the whole show was like the Balinese one we watched, only a little bit faster paced. From what I could ...

... first. The three Russian girls and me then remained; the girls had foolishly not booked a hostel. The ****wit driver now decided, instead of dropping me off, to tour round the city going to his mates' hotels and running inside each one to see if they had spare rooms. This happened three times, and each time the answer was the same: fully booked. By this time it was about 10.30pm and I was absolutely livid. I started to shout to the driver to get to the train station ...

... images that sit inside a series of latticed stupas and there is amazing decorative sculptural work on the panels along the corridors which depict Javanese life as it would have been a thousand years ago. On the way back to Yogya, we visited the Mendut Temple, which was built in the 10th century and which houses a large figure of the Buddha, unusual in that the statue is sitting Western-style with both feet on the ground rather than in the usual lotus ...

... when someone is trying to sell you something that you don&#8217;t want and you are trying to avoid them, they will pop the question just to get you to start talking. If you say you&#8217;re from America, they will inevitably shout something like &#8220;Obama!&#8220; or &#8220;**** Bush!&#8220; If you say you&#8217;re from Australia, you get the &#8220;Oy, Mate! G&#8217;Day!&#8221; English people have to put up with some horrible rendition of their accents, and all other ...

... I was looking for some new 3/4 length trousers ...<br><br>Day three was a sad day, a day I accepted defeat, the day I finally decided I could no longer save my dying 3/4 length trousers [Tom: About three weeks too late]. We had spent many beautiful years together and I wore them with pride, they went so well with so many of my outfits! Over the last few months we'd spent many personal moments with one another; I'd spend hours of my life sewing them up. I knew our ...

... s impressive to most people because it's new and more perfect. I like old stuff. Sue me. I suppose if we went at sunrise when the orange color of the stones is accentuated it would have been better. Anyway, we walked around it in the proper Buddhist way. You enter from the east entrance and walk around the three levels clockwise to the top. Then you exit from the north (I think, don't quote me on that). The ...

... of days, when the conversations run dry, but it a daily occurrence to be replying to msg's or speaking to new friends. Nice though

... cut to fit together in this massively organized and artistic pile of rocks. As I ascended higher and higher in the pyramid, I could feel loose rocks and see gaps between some of them following 1200 years of wear and tear. Finally reaching the circular summit platforms, every one of the 72 stupas contains a Buddha statue inside. The entire time I was ascending this pyramid, I was rewarded by 360 degree views of palm ...

... una memorabile partita a scacchi con Matthew, uno strano (ma entusiasmante) gioco di carte maltese (Scat), una bella cena e tante risate, soprattutto quando mi raccontano di cosa gli succede ogni volta che qualcuno gli domanda da dove vengono. "Malta", "Malta?, Dov'e' Malta? Cos'e' Malta?"; una volta Luke ha anche cercato di sfoderare una cartina per spiegare dov'e', ma non c'era neppure sulla cartina e ha dovuto disegnare l'isola. Io li piglio un po' per il ...

... Parangtritis on the South Java coast and paid my respects to Nyai Loro Kidul, the Queen of the South Seas. It was easy as our hotel was practically on the Parangtritis road so I just pretty much stepped out of the door and onto a bus - despite Mamon our tour guide telling me "Kate" (as he pronounced my name) "you'll be targeted by pickpockets" (he seemed to think I'd be safer with a private taxi service) - actually everyone was very friendly and the whole trip cost ...