Yogyakarta

After our usual first night, dodgy hotel charade, we found somewhere decent, which conveniently was near a decent coffee shop – heaven! It felt strange to be in a city again, but quite nice in a way. We explored some of the sights, including the local markets. The bird market was interesting but a little sad to see some of the birds in such small cages. Despite being it being a bird market, there were also bats, cats, dogs, lizards and poisonous snakes (much to Em’s relief, they were safely locked up!) Less impressive were the live maggots and various bugs and creepy crawlies that also were for sale, presumably as bait or food.

Yogyakarta - Spice stall at the market

The local produce market was huge and really interesting. We had a personal guided tour of a spice stall by the owner where he insisted we sniff, scratch, smell and taste everything presented to us! The array of chillies for sale was incredible and we managed to get some good pictures. Our visit was cut a little short by Em sighting a rat as big as a cat, this was somewhat perturbing as you could barely move through the labyrinth of stalls. We made our exit as quickly as possible!

Yogyakarta - Chillies at the market

We made friends with a becak driver and, after several different journeys, Tim insisted on having a go. The driver was most amused to sit in the front for a change and let the tourist do the pedalling.

Yogyakarta - Tim Becak

After pedalling for about 3 Kms with this guy in the front, Tim was pleased to get out of the saddle and hand the responsibility back to the driver!. These Becak drivers are incredibly fit and some are relatively old. One guy, cycles 20 Kms into town each day to pick up his Becak, then spends all day pedalling other people around town before cycling home again.

Borobudur

We had booked a bus trip to Borobudur, which is the largest Buddhist monument in the world. Unfortunately 5 minutes before we were due to leave, they told us it was fully booked and the only way we could get there was by private car i.e spending a lot of money! As it was our last day and, not to be defeated, we hired a moped, and managed to navigate the 40 Kms there without incident.

Borobudur

I don’t think pictures prepare you for the sheer scale of some of these landmarks, Borobudur was no exception – it was immense with 5 or 6 different levels and some extremely steep stone stairs in between. We had a good look around, it was quite sad to see that some of the ancient Buddha heads were missing due presumably to stealing. We were meant to be there for the sunset but we were kicked out just before which was quite annoying –unbeknown to us, you had to buy another ticket from the local hotel to watch the sunset at further expense!

Borobudur - Tim & Em

Borobudur is the top tourist attraction in Indonesia but, once again, Em & I seemed to be a walking tourist attraction to the Indonesians. We were asked for numerous photo’s including one large group – each one wanted their own picture, so a bit of a photo-shoot followed. We thought this rather amusing so we took our own photo of the group. It had now got to the stage where I suggested that perhaps we should start charging!

Borobudur - New found friends!

Yogyakarta, Indonesia