Saphir Yogyakarta Hotel

... rather tedious. Asan was also rather tedious too, asking Lisa to take his photo, then complaining because it wasn't exactly how he wanted and patronisingly telling her how to take a photo. After this we headed the short distance back to Yogya.

In the evening me and Devon had dinner with Robert, Crystal (Dutch girl who works for Robert), Asan, and a Serbian couple in their early thirties, Miriam and Luca, who own a top rated hostel in Serbia. Asan was ...

I lived in Yogyakarta for three years and it was great! The weather was nice although for some it could be a little hot. But you can't beat cool mornings and evenings and once in a while, a spectacular view of an active volcano.

... Islands off the coast of Malaysia, we encountered perhaps the strangest creature I’ve seen so far -- monitor lizards. They are enormous lizards (as big as small Komodo dragons!) that hang out by kitchens and swamps in the hopes of snagging a meal. They are surprisingly fast on their feet, considering how big they are, and some of them are quite bold and will go right up to where people are nearby. For the most part though, they try to avoid people. We saw a pair of ...

... hours to catch my 4am minibus I actually felt alright, but loaded up on Immodium all the same. I arrived at the temple just as dawn was breaking and was dumbstruck by the scale of it. I went straight to the top in order to watch the mists floating over the surrounding landscape, a sight I will never forget, which is useful as it's bloody hard to take photos of mist from within mist in low light levels! Anyway... I returned to the base of the monument and began ...

... take me to his art exhibition, but I sadly told him that I could not because I was on my way to Vietnam.

I met back with the others and had breakfast. I then showed them where the money exchangers were and where a nearby better internet cafe was (on the advice on one of the other Indonesians I met), where Chris and Andy hurriedly left to print off plane tickets and Vietnam visa letters.

We left at 12:30pm and headed to the airport. Goodbye Indonesia ...

... to have enough energy to go to the shadow puppet show that night (Wayang Kulit). Traditionally, these puppet shows go on all night, from 9pm to 4am. Yes, Indonesian people actually attend these things. But the one I went to was a condensed version for tourists into just 2 hours. Of course, I couldn't understand a thing because it was in Indonesian, but I was happy to just watch how the puppets move and the amazing detail in them. The theatre nerd in me really loves Indonesian ...

... ceiling fans.... Also i am looking forward to a break from the unrelenting heat every day it hovers around 40 and a cool evening maybe gets down to 28, its funny coz back home 28 feels really hot but here 28 is like cool and refreshing. Well not much else to say perhaps that i havn't been sleeping well my pillow is made of concrete my shower is a bucket and the toilet is a hole :P and the bathroom is like a hot humid sauna but doesn't smell fresh....

... route I have a 18+ hour trip back to Yogyakarta, a flight to Singapore, a train to KL and then a flight from KL to HK, but all for under a £100 and a fraction of the cost of doing the route from Bali.

... decide que l'incognito etait plus chouette. Malgre qu'ici, avec notre couleur de peau, difficille de passer inapercu. Les cyclo-pousse nous repere de loin . . . "transport sir", les taxi nous klaxonne, et on ne mentionne pas les vendeurs itinerants. Rejean affirme qu'il a du dire non merci 2,000,000 en trois jours. A notre retour a l'hotel, on prenait un petit lunch dans un resto du coin et on a ete surpris par 2 secousses sysmiques. Tout le monde s'est levee d'un coup ...

... do. It's the most popular jump point to get to Borobudur (the largest Buddhist temple in the world) and Prombenan (the largest Hindu temple in Indonesia). We did a day trip to see them both. Very impressive! They were both built around the eighth and ninth centuries. Borobudur sits at the base of Mt. Merapi. Not the one we hiked in Sumarta. I guess Merapi means "Big Fire" so the name is fitting for a number of volcanoes ...