Quality Solo

... walking around the courtyard and visiting a couple of rooms. I quite enjoyed this palace which is the most restored - small but most impressive. Having the rooms furnished and ornaments, photos and art exposed also makes a difference!!

After the visit, the guide did ask the couple if I could join them to which they agreed but I had already reserved my room for that night and I have never really been great at being spontaneous ...

... there is still someone (??) living here but I did visit the inner courtyard and the museum. I then moved on to visit the Mosque which is right beside it. There were prayers going on at the time which made it quite interesting. Of course, I didn't attempt to enter the prayer room for the men but I did inch along inside the women's prayer room and took a few photos but as you can see the lighting was off. I then continued on to ...

... and hectic. lol. However, I was quite happy with my guesthouse, and the little warung (food stall) across the street. It was the perfect tourist-friendly place: local food at local prices, but with an explanation in English under each dish so I can know what I am ordering. So I had fun trying lots of new exciting dishes these last few days! My Indonesia vocabulary is pretty much limited to food...nasi=rice, mie= noodles ...

... s of Indonesian boy bands pass the journey. Plus if not broadcasting Indonesia's other obsession with soaps then the television in public places always seems to be ...

... Bali, Solo is made up of alleyways. These alleys are filled with awesome little shops. Most of the shops are batik shops. Solo is wonderful because its just a cleaner city than I am used to. I spend most of the time just wandering through the city, happy as a clam. One draw back to having no tourist is having no western bathrooms. But, you deal with that like always. My butt was very happy to be home back on a regular toilet that ...

... to check out the batiks....and the market is very cool...although it's sweatingly hot and there is no room to walk, let alone shop or actually try on things. I hang in there pretty well until I can't take how closed in it is anymore and I head out the back to the food vendors. As I look down the row of vendors, I don't see anything that I recognize in particular. But so far whatever I've ordered has been pretty good...except for the dish of ...

The culture shock encountered leaving the airport in Denpassar is more extreme than that from London to Rio; passing from the quiet, well manicured streets of Darwin to the bustling, organic sprawl of the capital of Bali. After getting through customs with a nice new visa in the passport, Inga and I share a taxi to Kuta and I check into a hotel. Great value and right in the heart of the resort. After a refreshing swim with the rain pouring down, I head to bed. Kuta is a collection of ...

Java - Solo or Surakarta (take your pick) An old city with royal connections dating back many years. We spent an excellent day cycling about Solo and it's suburbs across the river. We watched men fish using electricity, we watched eight men hammering the bjesus out ...

... Fortunately it was easy to slip out so we gave up after 45 minutes (the whole programme is about 3 hours) and went to a local bar for a beer and some impromptu karaoke, in English this time. In between these two cultural highlights we both indulged ourselves. I searched out the chess-playing becak drivers once again and played three more games (3-0 to yours truly this time - hooray!), while Rach made her way back to the cool mall ...