Monday, December 27, 2010

Yogyakarta summarized - Indonesia's cultural capital

Well to summarize our day, the aces that we visited in Jogja are

1. Borobudur
2. Prambanan temple
3. Mount Merapi
4. Some beach that they refer to as sand dunes
5. The sultan's palace

Now this was a very eventful day and we spent ample time on most of the above. The Sumtan's palace is overly hyped up and there really ain't nothing too much to see especially when you're from India and have seen the royal palaces of India.

They also talk about some beach in Jogja that they refer to as sand dunes. Basically it's just a beach where they have some ATVs ( All terrain vehicles) that you can rent for about 20 mins to half an hour. There were a bunch of rogue looking guys there and I wouldn't advise single girls to come here by themselves. You wouldn't have missed anything here.

I gave already updated individual posts on Borobudur, Prambanan and Merapi Volcano and hence I'm not gonna repeat those here.

After this long and tiring day, we were looking for some hotel that would loan is a room for a couple of hours so that we could take a shower and get changed before the nights train to Malang. The rest rooms at the station are pathetic and don't seem to be fit for human use! We scouted around and most hotels were asking us to pay the entire days rent for just 2 hours.

We however did manage to find a small dingy room with cold water for around 75000 IDR ( around USD 8). Have attached pics of that room! Also, the shower was like the best shower that I've ever had in my life. Not because of the dingy bathroom but it made me feel like I'm back to life!

There's a hotel called Abads right opposite the Jogja station. The place looks and feels fancy but the restaurant is really good and highly recommended. The food was good, the service good and also excellent value for money.

We were to catch a train to get to Malang. This place was originally in our itenary since we had planned to visit the Bromo crater. However since the crater exploded only recently, we were told that the area was closed. We decided to carry on to Malang and see this town before we get to Banyunwangi for Dempasar, Bali.

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