Santika Yogyakarta

... a guilt payment to the disgruntled hotel receptionist when we told him we wouldn’t be staying. I really shouldn’t have given him anything because the room was so bad, but having said that, I shouldn’t have checked us in if we hated it so much, we should have just said no from the start. Another case of ‘we’ll know for next time’. We scoured the area for a room that was of a better standard, and came up with a room at The Grand Rosella on ...

... jaunt. When we stopped we parked to the side of the road behind a shitload of other cars going all the way up the hill, and had to walk the rest of the way.<br><br>The road upto the view point was pretty hideous. There was literally about a thousand motorbikes or mopeds, all of them either coming down the hill or going up the hill, and always vying to fit into the tightest space possible or run us over, or both It took fifteen minutes or so to get to the viewing point ...

We left Bali for Central Java and based ourselves in Yogyakarta ("Yogya" for short) which is the cultural heart of the country. The flight was a short hop (as opposed to a very long bus ride) and we arrived in the early evening. We had booked a hotel which was recommended in the Lonely Planet for our first night. Our room, although not cheap, was modelled in the "Nelson Mandela Robben Island Retreat" style. It was dark, depressing and was directly under the ...

... circuit got so spread out that we stopped seeing repeat travelers again. Many people just skip these areas altogether and head straight for Australia, which I think is a shame because some of the most fascinating stuff has been in this region of Southeast Asia. <br><br>The other large group of people we&#8217;ve seen here is Australians, but only in the Kuta Beach area of Bali. Apparently, it&#8217;s cheaper to fly to Bali from some parts of Australia than it is to fly to Sydney ...

... settled in, and fought over who would get which room (one was furnished with AC Milan bed sheets, the other with Chelsea bedsheets); Chris and I managed to get the AC Milan room, the most desired room [Tom: i.e. they whinged the most].<br><br>We all slept until midday, and then set off to find the tourist office. Yes, it was shut. We've discovered that tourist offices tend to be shut on weekends; the time of the week people generally partake in tourism. Maybe something ...

... smiths are in abundance. A big export of the area is jewelry so the lady had to see it. With purse strings firmly tied (joke) she was let off on a tight leash to the shops. Needless to say she bought a small something, but was very restrained. Back to our digs to listen to the evening call to prayer competition - we were based in the middle of 4 mosques that compete for hollah's. It was quite amusing listening to them go at it. It was in Jogja (short ...

... gave us about two hours. Unfortunately we didn't see the museum or get a guide and so I felt like we didn't learn about the history of both the religion and the temple. A shame! We also were nearly scammed hear in 'Jogja' by the Batik art exibitions. They are everywhere and tell all sorts of lies, like they're the artist, just to sell them and lead you on by saying its the closing in a half an hour and closed for the rest of the ...

... a set of Hindu and Buddhist temples built in the 9th century AD. The main attraction is the Loro Jonggrang complex, which is a group of spires worshipping all three main Hindu gods: Wisnu, Siwa and Brahma (Javanese spellings). Unfortunately, the complex was significantly damaged in the 2006 Java earthquake and has basically turned into a massive archaeological recovery site. However, the spires are still mostly ...

... ich kenne Dich, od**?' War echt ganz cool, ** hat den Tanz für seinen Freund auf Video aufgenommen, d** da mitgemacht hat und danach ist ** mit mir durch den angrenzenden Teil des Palastes gegangen und hat mir bissl was **klärt. Wir haben Telephonnumm** getauscht und ich war schon raus aus dem Palast und hatte mich v**abschiedet (als ich seinem Onkel, d** Tante und Oma vorgestellt wurde, dachte ich ich v**schwinde lieb**....) kommt ** mir nachgelaufen, weil ** mir am ...

... Kate and i relied quite heavily on him to shout "Now!!!" when it was a relatively okay time to cross. People were great though - no harassment - yay!! Lots of stares (I am sure we are quite a motely crew - especially since we saw very few Caucasians out and about in Bandung) and "hallos" but nothing more... We did cause a huge disruption in one school's story time... the poor teacher was trying to read a story to about 40 kids outside as we passed by ...