Yogyajakarta
Trip Start
Aug 31, 2008
1
9
47
Trip End
Apr 30, 2009
Yogyakarta,
Java,
Indonesia
Monday, October 6, 2008
The place is called Bladok Losmen & Restaurant and we were only able to book a room on the first floor, which was obviously going to be noisy. They offered to move us an upper floor the following day though, which would make this place even more attractive. After I quickly disposed of a large cockroach hiding out in our mandi (washroom), Lisa and I quickly changed into our swimsuits and hit the pool. The pool is 1.50 meters deep, so there is no diving board, but the water was cool, clean and refreshing. We were very hungry but still spent quite a bit of time cooling off in the well decorated pool area.
Our hunger was not going away that easy however, so our next stop was to find some good food to eat. We wandered down the street our hotel is situated on and saw a "Superman" sign near the end of it. Superman's restaurant is one that we had highlighted in the Lonely Planet, but we found another great looking place (Effsam) before we made it there. The restaurants in Yogyakarta seem to mostly put their menus at the front of their establishments and (unlike anywhere we had been in China), they let you read through it without constantly beckoning you to take a seat. We found the prices to be cheaper than anywhere we had eaten in Jakarta, so we were happy to take a seat. It turns out that we were actually eating at "New Superman" though as found the original Superman further down Gang 1 later (but it did not look as inviting anyhow, so we did not eat there.)
Lisa ordered a beef rice dish (17,000 Rp), while I ordered "ayam goreng" (fried chicken) which was served with rice (15,000 Rp) because I had read that was one of Yogyakarta's specialties. We also both ordered pineapple juice (6,000 Rp) and split a large Bintang (15,000 Rp) since it was happy hour. The pineapple juice was as good as it always is in the tropical countries and I may have eaten the best piece of fried chicken that I have had in my life. I was so hungry though that it is hard to say that I was judging fairly. Lisa's meal was good, but it was hard to guess that her meal cost more than mine.
After dinner we were both ready for another swim. We had to be quick though because the pool is only open from 8:00 until 20:00 and it was already 19:15. We were able to enjoy the pool by ourselves until it was time to close and by that time we were both ready for bed anyhow. We were up since 5:00 and the train ride was more exhausting then it was relaxing. We started watching the 3rd season of Oz and went to bed after that.
We were right about the first floor being noisy and around 5:00 the guests and staff started waking us up with the noise. I can pretty much sleep through anything though and stayed in bed until around 9:00. After getting up and enjoying a complimentary coffee, the staff of Bladok offered us a room on the second floor. We quickly inspected it and found out it was actually quite a bit bigger than our current room while also being tucked away in a quiet corner, so naturally we moved on his offer.
Once we had moved, we were both very ready for breakfast and headed out along the same street as the night before. This time we made it to New Superman and found the prices to be quite attractive for most of their meals (although beer seemed to be more.) Lisa ordered a avocado, garlic tomato and cheese jaffel (8,500 Rp) with a pine-apple lemon juice (7,500 Rp) while I ordered a triple egg omelet with ham, cheese and tomato (15,000 Rp) and a carrot-orange juice (6,000 Rp). My breakfast was served with fries and vegetables and reminded me of the breakfasts that I got when traveling to all inclusive resorts in the Caribbean. Lisa's tasted even better and is something I plan to have myself very soon. All-in-all, I can understand why we highlighted this restaurant in the Lonely Planet because it seemed like outstanding value for such great food.
I am all caught up to where we are in our journey now. I have my swimsuit on as I type this and will be in the pool within seconds of finishing this paragraph. We plan on visiting the Yogyakarta Kraton later today, which is a walled-in city within a city of 20,000 people that is a huge palace for the local sultans. We also have to figure out if it is safe to climb the 3,000+ meter volcano Gunung Merapi and maybe camp there for a night. Of course we also must see the ancient Buddhist temple named Borobudur, and there are dozens of tour companies that offer trips there. I guess it is time to hit the pool now because a waterfall just turned on that we had not yet noticed.
Oct 7, 2008
We have been in Yogyakarta for many days now and it has been quite a relaxing stay. We did not end up seeing the Yogya kraton the same day we moved rooms at Bladoke Losmen because as we were walking up the main shopping street of Yogya, one of the many batik sales-people informed us that it was not open on Sundays. He also mentioned that it closed by 1 or 2 PM every other day, and since it was 12:45 when I was chatting with him, he suggested we start earlier when we went the next time.
The shopping street was very heavily populated with proper brick & mortar stores, road-side sales vendors, and shoppers (who were almost exclusively Indonesian), so we decided to look for a different path to the kraton for the following day. The shopping on this street was actually pretty good, with a wide variety of tourist related goods that were listed at very reasonable prices; not like in China (especially Yangshuo) where goods started at 10-20X what they should be. T-shirts could be had for 12,500 Rp to and even department stores like Robinsons had nice shorts/jeans for 50,000 Rh. Masks and traditional art seemed also very reasonably priced, so we will likely be doing a round of shopping before we head out of Yogya.
By the time we got back to our room, we were both a sweaty mess, so we headed straight to the pool again. The Bladok Losmen pool has been a really nice treat for us because it gets sweltering hot here during the day. It seems to cool down earlier than we are used to (in Toronto) with the peak heat hitting around noon and it feels noticeably cooler our by 2 PM. Of course the low in the middle of the night is still 26 degrees, so it is never that cool and that makes this well kept pool a very good feature of this losmen.
For the rest of the day, all we really did was eat, swim and drink. We ate at the FM Kafe again, both Lisa and I had chicken and rice (15,000 Rp) but Lisa tried the broiled chicken while I stuck to the fried variety. Later in the night, we went looking for some street meat (chicken satay) and after the first vendor offered us some at 2,000 Rp a stick, we found another that offered 10 for 8,000 Rp and shared 10 between us. By the time we had finished this, it was past 8 PM and we could not go for a final swim in the pool. This would come back to haunt us because our room turned out to be much hotter than the room we had the previous night.
Our new room was situated directly above the kitchen and all the windows we facing on the same side as the door. Without a cross breeze, the little fan in our room did not do an adequate job of keeping us cool. Even by using the door as a giant fan, manually pushing it open and closed, barely kept the room at a comfortable level. The temperature outside was 26 degrees but it was probably closer to 35 degrees in our room. The fan at least kept a steady flow of air on us, so we did manage to sleep through the night. All in all though, I'd probably rather have kept our original room on the first floor, despite the lack of privacy.
The next morning we got up around 9 AM and enjoyed a coffee on the little table by our room. The Bladok losmen is setup very nicely with this sort of detail, and we saw the cleaning staff working hard to keep the place looking spotless. Following our coffee, we headed out to the New Superman for breakfast. The omelets (10,000 Rp) were great and so was the orange-lemon juice (6,000 Rp) that we ordered. Following breakfast, we went back for a quick swim and then headed out for the Yogya kraton.
This time we took a street to the east of the main shopping street of Yogya and found it to be a much quicker and easier walk. We made it to the kraton entrance by 11:00 and bought tickets to get us in for 5,000 Rp each and an additional camera license (1,000 Rp) and video camera license (2,000 Rp) as well. The part of the kraton that was open for the public was rather disappointing. Normally there is a bit of show with traditional dancers and such, but with this being the holiday season, there was not very much to see at all. The highlight of the visit was from some Indonesian students that asked to interview me for a school project. We took a few pictures and left about 10-15 minutes later, quite unimpressed and glad it did not cost much money to get in.
After leaving the part that you paid for, we found the rest of the kraton to be of greater interest. We navigated through some small side streets and found the bird market, which was full of vendors selling dozens (or maybe even hundreds) of different types of birds. Of course we were still being bothered by the batik salespeople every few seconds, but this seems to be the norm anywhere in Yogya. I am glad that I mentioned this annoying fact of Yogya to the students that interviewed me but I know this won't make any difference.
From the bird market, I noticed an old building in ruins that loomed far above the rest of this flat city. Since it wasn't far away, we decided to see if we could figure out how to get up to the top of it. We ended up going around to the back of it, where there were lots of examples of old Javanese architecture that was in good shape. From here we were able to find stairs which led us to the top of the ruins and this was an excellent spot to see Yogyakarta and the Merapi volcano looming in the background. I personally found this much more rewarding than the part of the kraton that we paid money for and this was totally free.
Now that we were satisfied that this walk in the heat wasn't a waste of time, we decided to head back for a swim and some food. It was not tough to navigate our way back, as we used huge antennas as navigational aids and the streets of Yogya are mostly in a grid pattern anyhow. We were tempted to finally use the services of a bicycle-taxi or horse drawn carriage, but Lisa wanted to stop in at a drug store she noticed on our way to the kraton, so we toughed it out by foot instead.
We came back by 14:00 and after a relaxing swim, headed out to the FM Kafe for some beer and food. I ordered the fried chicken for the third time in as many days, but got an asparagus cream soup (8,000 Rp) to accompany it. The asparagus was white and the soup was delicious, but I love asparagus so this was an easy call. This time I tried a beer other called Balitai Premium and I think I prefer it to the Bintang. It is slightly more expensive though at 17,000 Rp for 620 milliliters vs. the happy hour prices of 15,000 Rp for the Bintang.
Following our meal (and another swim) Lisa went shopping for Internet access and found a place very close to us that offered it for 6,000 Rp/hour. The place is called Chaterinas and it also offered the cheapest menu that we have seen so far in Indonesia. We used a virus plagued laptop and tried to upload some pictures, but the virus had too good of a grip on this laptop to let that happen. I guess I should change my email password soon though because both Lisa and I logged into our email accounts before we noticed how bad the problem was. There was a power outage of a few seconds that hit Yogya in the middle of our hour so we were kind of lucky that we were on the only laptop that was available.
We ended up having dinner at Chaterinas, both Lisa and I ordering a chicken fried noodle dishes (I went for the rice noodles) that cost only 10,000 Rp each. I got a pineapple milkshake for 6,000 Rp and Lisa got a pineapple juice for 5,000 Rp. The meals were among the best we have had in Indonesia so far, but the juice was pretty watered down. My milkshake tasted very creamy, so although it was quite good for my appetite, it was probably not so good for my waist-line. All-in-all, we both regretted not trying out this establishment earlier because it was excellent value for the money.
Update: In the middle of writing this, we have checked out of Bladok and are now checked in to Chatarina Home Stay. Lisa was able to pay for our three nights at Bladok using the Visa credit card at no extra charge. It cost a total of 449,000 for our three night stay and the dozen swims were included with the price.
After enjoying dinner at Chatarina's, we went back for another swim and relaxed outside of our room. It was rather hot inside our room yet again and this time we were both sunburned from the morning walk, so we hung outside our room for the most part. When it was finally time to sleep, we both had trouble due to the heat. We figured out that we needed a room with windows or vents on at least two different sides, so we decided to see what Chatarina's rooms looked like the following day.
We woke up the following morning as a sweaty mess, but still enjoyed a hot Indonesian coffee outside of our room before hitting the pool. After a quick swim, we got dressed and headed to Catharina's for breakfast. I got two eggs with a large portion of french fries (9,000 Rp) and Lisa got the Indonesian breakfast (12,000 Rp) that came with rice and a fried egg, a fruit salad and a coffee. We inquired about vacant rooms and fortunately one of the guests heard us and informed us that they would be checking out at noon. We asked about the heat level in the room and were told that it was not a problem. We went back to Bladok Losmen and we both spent the rest of the morning swimming and I caught up on this journal at the side of the pool as well.
Oct 9, 2008
Our new room at Chatarina's Homestay is not quite as nice as our last room, but it seems better vented and includes a portable (but small) fan that should help with the heat issue. I was also surprised to see that this room included a western style toilet, although no toilet paper or towels are provided here. Indonesians do not typically use toilet paper and instead use water from the mandi and their left hands to clean up after business. This is not a tradition that I want to become familiar with however, so I will ensure that I always bring some tissue into the bathroom with me. For this reason, it is also important to remember to always shake the right hand of anybody that you greet.
At Catharina's Homestay we are still paying 100,000 Rp a night, but now we will get a free breakfast and two hours of Internet access included with the price. Shortly after arriving we started using the Internet, but I noticed that all of the computers here are plagued with viruses, so bad that the virus somewhat trashed the USB thumb drive that I inserted into one. However once I brought my own laptop down, the owners offered to turn on the wireless Internet and even once I finished (and told him he could turn it off), he offered to leave it on so I could use it further from my room. I was also able to fix my thumb drive with my laptop of course.
We ended up eating lunch and dinner at Catharina's too. We have sampled most of the things on their limited menu now, and everything has been quite good except for the juice we tried before. The prices are also very low with salads and soups costing 4,000 or 5,000 Rp and being ample portions. Lisa has also tried their club sandwich for 14,000 which was comparable to what we would get at home. The Bintang costs about the same here as everywhere else though at 16,000 Rp for a large (and 8,000 for a small, but they are all sold out of those.)
The last two days have not been very eventful. We have practiced learning the Indonesian language using Rosetta Stone on the laptop and caught up on everything we had to do with the Internet. I finally finished downloading Mummy 3, a project which I first started while we were in Xi'an several weeks ago. We have mostly eaten at Chatarinas except last night when Lisa wanted to go to Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut tastes the same here as it does at home, only here it around half price. My personal pan pizza was 19,000 Rp and Lisa's medium pizza was 39,000 Rp.
We enquired at the post office at how much it was going to cost to ship packages home. The small post office that was down the street from us offered only airmail services and it was 300,000 Rp to ship 2 kilograms and around 100,000 Rp to ship 500 grams. I have been hoping to ship back some of the excess clothing that I brought along (anything long sleeved, my jeans and the special lined socks), but at these rates I am better off to just donate it all. Our research showed that Indonesia is an expensive place to ship things from but we also expect it to get much cheaper in Thailand and Vietnam. I'll have to consider whether or not it is worth paying baggage overages when the time comes. I know Air Asia only allows 15 kilograms and I figure our bags weigh that already.
Walking the streets of Yogyakarta is very tiring, with the becak drivers and the batik salespeople constantly bothering any foreigners. When you manage to get away for a little while you can see some odd things though: women balancing their merchandise on their heads including lit barbeques, horses and buggies filled with nearly a dozen kids, and of course everybody here drives on the left hand side of the street (although lines are really only used as suggestions, anybody can drive anywhere they like it seems.)
Oct 10, 2008
Yesterday we went on a tour of Borobudur, which is a 9th century Buddhist temple situated about 45 kilometers from Yogyakarta. Although we knew of ways to get there on our own, either via public buses or renting motorcycles, we decided to pay for an organized tour via a travel agency. I am pretty sure we did the right thing even though everybody else seemed to want to do it on their own. It was definitely easier to do it through the agency and it was likely even cheaper as well.
We paid 65,000 Rp for the bus ride there and paid the tour agency price of 85,000 Rp for the entrance ticket. Had we decided to on our own, the entrance ticket is US$11 (or 110,000 Rp I believe) and although we have not shopped around for motorcycles, I saw one place that rented them out at 50,000 Rp per day. Taking public buses would've involved taking a becak to a bus station and then finding the right bus to go to Borobudur (plus doing the same thing to get home). We were the only people on the air-conditioned minibus that we took, so we got to go straight there and leave straight for our hotel when we were ready to leave. There was no pressure to go to any shopping trips either way so it was an easy and pleasant drive.
The people that were renting motorcycles probably did not have a great time getting there or back because it rained both ways for us. We were very lucky in that it actually did not rain at all while we were at Borobudur, although we did leave a little early. We opted for the "sunset" Borobudur package, which entails picking us up at 14:00 and driving us there in about an hour. Once we arrived, the bus driver gave us our tickets and accompanied us to through the toll booth. The driver waited in the parking lot and we had until 18:00 to return for the ride home. Since the sun sets around 17:30, this was ample time and I think the park actually closed at 17:30 anyhow.
Since it rained for the entire hour we were driving out there, Lisa and I were happy that it was not raining when we arrived and we hurried to take some pictures before the rain started again. There were lots of threatening clouds around, but aside from a few drops it didn't rain for the next two hours. Two hours was ample time to take over a hundred pictures of the ancient stone temple. It was obvious that some vandalism had occurred over the years, since most of the Buddha statues were missing their heads, but aside from the missing heads the temple was in a much restored state.
The crowds were not nearly as bad as I had imagined, considering that we were still in the Indonesian holiday period, but the top of the temple attracted enough people that it was a little crowded. Most of the visitors were Indonesians and dozens of them asked us to have us in their pictures. Family after family asked us to pose with them in their pictures and we were happy to oblige. You sort of feel like you are famous when there are lines of people are forming to have their picture taken with you. I regret that we didn't take many pictures of that whole ordeal, but I did take lots of great pictures of the temple and even managed to get some with a blue sky showing somehow.
Although we were on the sunset tour, after two hours of climbing up, down and around the temple, both Lisa and I were quite exhausted. After rubbing Buddha's feet for good luck, we sat down and waited for the sunset to come. However we also noticed that some new rain clouds were blowing in and even saw some lightening strike, so we decided to head back early. There wasn't going to be any great pictures of a sunset when you are in the middle of a rain cloud after all.
Immediately after leaving after leaving the temple gate, we were accosted by a half dozen sales people who followed us relentlessly for the walk back to the bus. Both Lisa and I had no intention of buying anything, but they were offering some wood masks and shadow puppets that we bad been eying up in the Yogya stores before. We ended up breaking down and buying two masks and two shadow puppets for 100,000 Rp. Still too much though because before we got back to our bus another woman offered us the same thing for 80,000 Rp. I am not sure how we are going to get these things home, but they sure will look nice on our wall if we manage to get them back safe and sound.
It turned out to be a wise decision to leave early because almost immediately after getting on the bus, it started to really pour. It was so dark and cloudy that nobody was seeing a sunset that day anyhow. We were both still very happy with the experience and still managed to get dozens of quality photographs and plenty of video. We were also happy to enjoy the air-conditioning on the bus because we hadn't had any real time in an air-conditioned place since leaving Jakarta.
We were both pretty tired after the day at Borobudur, so we just ate dinner at Chaterina's again, enjoying the good food and free Internet. At night, we splurged on some Pringles (17,000 Rp) and I tried some iced honey flavored green tea (4,000 Rp) that tasted almost like pure honey. We shared the chips over another episode of Oz and then went to bed.
Today we got up and booked our tickets to Bali via Gurung Bromo, a 2 day-trip with a night at Bromo for 280,000 Rp each. We had shopped around before we bought our Borobudur trip and so we knew this was a good price using the same agency (situated on Gang 2). After this we headed out for the main post office to find out if shipping good via sea was much cheaper than via air. The main post office is very close to the Kraton and we walked straight to it. Although goods will take around two months to ship to Canada, the rates are much cheaper.
It costs 131,160 Rp to ship 1 to 3 kilograms, which means I may get to send my excess clothing home after all. We also have three tshirts, two masks and shadow puppets and a bunch of digital tapes from the camcorder that we would like to get home. I doubt all of that together is more than 2 kilograms, so we may wait until we have picked up some more souvenirs before we ship anything. It only costs around 50,000 Rp to ship the next two kilograms (3-5 kgs is 182,040 Rp), so we may end up buying a lot more souvenirs in Bali & Lombok before we have to catch our next plane.
After walking to the post office, we figured we may as well see the Kraton area again, and I am glad that we did. We found a separate entrance to the compound which cost 12,500 Rp which is probably the main one, instead of the one we went to previously (and were disappointed by) which cost only 5,000 Rp. Before I paid to go in however, I noticed that they had a schedule of events and that there was a shadow puppet show for Saturday (tomorrow). Lisa had wanted to see this, so we plan on going back and watching it tomorrow.
We wandered around the bird market again, this time we explored it a little deeper and found out there were much more exotic animals being sold as pets there than we saw the first time. There were a few types of monkeys, mongooses, snakes, spiders, frogs, bats and other mammals which I cannot name. There were also crickets, bugs and bug larvae crawling around somewhat freely, being sold as food for these exotic pets. Although the crickets were somewhat in a cage, there was no roof on the cage and one managed to jump free on to my arm. I am glad that this happened to me and not Lisa because when I told her about it she got freaked out. Right after that happened we walked by a rooster cage and the rooster tried to attack Lisa. This caused her further grief and finally she screamed and it was time to go.
Since it was Friday, we decided to go Bintang Bar for some happy hour brews. This place had only been open for the last few days and offered the cheapest beer that we could find in Yogyakarta: 14,000 Rp for a large Balitai Premium or Bintang. After a couple, I decided I wanted to get a cheap souvenir tshirt, so we ventured down Marlioboro Street once again. It didn't take me long to find a place that had a wide variety of decent looking tshirts at 11,000 Rp, a little cheaper than the beers we just consumed. Lisa didn't want her own though, so I just picked out an exotic looking one for me. Now we have 4 souvenir tshirts to carry around with us, but we will be shipping them all back from Bali likely anyhow.
Friday night got very busy at the Bintang Bar. It was definitely the most happening place in town and there was a live music rock band playing cover songs. The crowd was comprised of around half Westerners and half locals. We could see some of the locals refilling their bottles with beer they had brought from home, even though it was only 17,000 Rp to buy fresh ones there. I guess we are still not finding good prices for beer if the locals are refilling their bottles from an outside supply.
Satuday was essentially a day of rest, as we had already seen essentially everything that we had wanted to see in Yogyakarta. We just chilled at Chatarina's, enjoying the cheap food and free Internet that they offered. By 4PM though we were both ready for a beer, so we ventured back to the Bintang Bar. This time we met an older Australian guy that gave us some advice about Bali and even put me on the phone with a Chinese girl that he said would help us with anything we need there. One beer quickly turned into two, three and then four as we chatted with a young couple from the UK that had just arrived in Yogya. Being there for eight days now we felt like veterans and definitely had some ideas on where to find the best prices for tours, water and Internet.
As it started to get dark out, a stage was set up on the middle of the street. We asked what it was about and soon found out that it was a celebration of Yogyakarta culture. It was to start around 8 PM, so we figured it was time to stop drinking beer and start eating dinner, so that we may be ready to watch the show. Again we ate at Chatarinas; I think we have tried everything offered on their menu now. It is too bad they don't offer more because their prices are way better than anywhere else we ate and the food quality is about the same.
The cultural show started before 8PM and was already going strong by the time we showed up. It was mostly locals watching with dozens of kids lined up and dancing in front of the stage. At first there were two young girls that were doing a traditional dance in traditional clothing. We videotaped a lot of this, but they were soon replaced by a local rock band that sang a few ballads in their native tongue. After the original pieces they started doing cover songs of U2 and some Western bands and that is when we turned in. The music was still playing at 11PM when we went to bed, but we had to get up early to catch the bus to Bromo the following morning.
