Yogyakarta Hotels
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Yogyakarta
Entry 30 of 32 | show all | print this entry |
We flew to Yogayakarta's tiny international airport from Kuala Lumpur and it was nice to arrive somewhere not having been doused in other people's sweat and at a reasonable hour. Not that everything went smoothly of course; the visa needed to get into the country was only payable by Indonesian, US or Euro currency, none of which we had and so I had to negotiate my way out of the airport without a passport or visa and then back in past the same border controls to get some Indonesian rupiah, it actually was worringly easy as I just said ATM to anyone who questioned me and pointed. Ill remember that next time I want to get in.
A quick note about Indonesia, there are 240million people living here, look at a map, it's not that big. That has nothing to do with this entry but I repeated that fact to almost everyone I met so it's only fair that you should be privvy to such information and pass it on to your astounded and sllightly bewildered friends. Thank me when I'm home.
Yogyakarta (pron Jogjakarta or just Jogja) is supposedly the cultural capital of Java and, according to most of the people we met, a welcome change from Jakarta which we decided to ship over. We stayed in a hotel down an alley (or "gang") which was one of the best places we've stayed so far, very cheap, with friendly staff and psychadellic murals everywhere, including on our bedroom celing which is a bad idea considering a beer costs about 20p here. The guy who ran it also had a gleaming colledtion of vintage Vespas (6 or them) and LAmbrettas (2 of them) which had set him back a fair bit I'm sure, I complemented him about them and pretended to know what he was talking about in the vain hope I could have a go on one.Ha
The alley itself was nice, clean and filled with cheap places to stay and eat. When we arrived a man called 'Andy' took us down the street and to our hotel and got us checked it, half an hour later we went out for some food and Andy appeared again, took us to his mate's restaurant which was nice and told us about his travel agency - fair enough, we decided to go to Borabadur with him tomorrow, the company was legit (and fine as it turned out) and we thought he worked for the hotel so why not? He then took us to an 'arts festival' where his sister was displaying her work and which was free and better still, closing tomorrow. We were met by a bloke who Andy called his sister and showed around what was basically a Batik (traditional Indonesian painting on silk) shop. It was nice and cheap so we bought one painting and left. If ther's one thing I got sick of in Yogayakarta it was "arts festivals," "Government art schools," "National Art Schools," or just "my brother's studio." Everyone has somewhere to take you and they are all esentially shops which have bought paintings en masse and resell them, no matter how much shpeil they give you about supporting their students, its not that the paintings are fake or bad quality - some are really nice - but the rubbish that you get fed as you walk around gets annoying. All of the drivers or blokes on the street taht take you to these places are interested to know how much you spent because they all work on comission, Andy, we realised, in an hour had got us a hotel, tickets, dinner and a friggin painting, we probably made his day.
So we went to Borubudur the next day, I didn't mention before but we had to leave at 5am, for sunrise and the spectacular view? No, actually I have no idea why, a source of annoyance later on. Anyway on our way there we passed several bustling markets; anyone who talks about places being "24 hour cities" has never been to Java where they have markets everywhere which are literally open for 24 hours, 3am-8am being the peak time for customers. Borabudur itslef was one of the best temples we've been to, an intricate and huge Buddhist monument in the world's most populated muslim country and despite that fact, Indonesia's most well known site. The top of the temple provided great vies of the countryside and mountains and was impressive with all of the stupas and buddhas surrounding the place but we managed to go up there when some 60 or so kids from an English language program were visiting and so we ended up spending about 40 minutes answering questions like "Do Arsenal fans get together and go hiking or camping?" "What is your opinion of the view here?" And more heartbreakingly "why did Arsenal lose to Liverpool." If I knew the answer kid I wouldn't be here on a rock in Indonesia, I'd be on a plastic seat in North London screaming it toward the dugout, now leave me alone before I get depressed al over again. It wasn't that bad.
After Borubudur we went to Prambanan, a HIndu temple nearby. Hindus make the best temples I've decided, this one was the best yet (apart from Angkor) despit being half collapsed from earthquakes. It was basically a colection of 5 or 6 towering spires with lots of detailed pictures etched into them and gargoyle like statues staring down from them. It was really imptressive but it was also really hot walking around in the midday sun so we were glad to be on the minibus back.
That night we went to indulge in some cheap Bintang beer and watch some music at a bar which was cool and then went on with some nice Indonesian guys we met to a club nearby which was surprisingly good and devoid of cheesy Asian music although they did have some sort of girl group oon stage at one point mumbling and shouting alternatively to American songs.
Our third day was 'one of those days.' We went to see the 'Kraton' - the old city centre which turned out to have very little there apart from rooves on stilrts which looked like they should be housing something apart from 'Keep Off' signs. A security guard told us that the nearby Water Palace was better but wasn't open for a while so why didn't we get a cab (actually more like a fella an oversized basket on the front of his pushbike) to the Government Arts centre for an hour, so we went and it was another BAtik shop, great. Half an hour later and obviously not satisfied with how much we'd spent, our driver spent the journey to the palace trying to get us to go to craft shops, batik clothes shops and silverware shops, it was annoying and what made it even worse is that he wa sgetting visibly annoyed himself and charged us ten times what he'd original said he would, we didn't pay of course and walked off towards the palace. A man came up to us and said we should be careful of people like the cab driver because they just wanted our money, this man also just wanted our money and followed us around the palace giving us information and eventually lleading us to two batik shops which were really provoking some angry replies by now. To top it all off we stopped at his brothers, which was another f*****g batik shop and it started bucketing down with rain so we couldn't leave, after about half an hour of awkward conversation I gave the guy a little money for being our "guide" and proceeded to get drenched waiting for a cab back to our hotel.
Al in al though, Yogya was a very cool place and if you took away the hustlers dragging you into those flipping shops it would be a great place to stop for a week or so. We didn't though so bit of a pointless conclusion really. Onwards
Latest Comments (1)
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so.... (reply)
Apr 17, 2008 09:37 EST by matt4tune
Yeah Sean, why did Arsenal lose to Liverpool.... My belief is that the ground lacked a chant conductor - I did my best mate and kept the Kop quiet for half an hour but there was something missing.... you and your drunken slurrings!
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