Activity Summary
Wednesday 26th October - Day 55
Travel to Surabaya (Indonesia)
Thursday 27th October - Day 56
Travel to Yogyakarta
Malioboro street
Palace of Yogyakarta
Friday 28th October - Day 57
Borobudur temple
Mendut monastery / temple
Prambanan temple
Attempt to see Merapi
Saturday 29th October - Day 58
Admin day
Awor Gallery & Coffee
Roaster and Bear
The House of Raminten
Summary
Surabaya
Our research showed that most of the things to do in Surabaya was actually outside of the city so we had no initial intention of staying here were it not for the flight. So a short stop over in a terrible hotel and then we were off back on the tourist trail.
Yogyakarta
Luke’s opinion of Yogyakarta: I enjoyed the city. While not having masses to do, there were plenty of places to chill at and recover. The temple tours were spenny but I would absolutely not drive here so we have no choice really. 2 days is plenty of time, 3 days allows recovery.
Accommodation
Surabaya
Kertajaya Residence Syariah Surabaya - 1 night - £3.38/n/p
Probably should have guessed this would be awful based on the price. Clearly damp problem, mould in a lot of places and the bathroom was so small it couldn’t house a sink so the shower acted as this function. Basically the toilet was just soaked the entire time from the shower.
These aspects however we could get past very easily as we were only there for 1 night. The constant odour of tobacco from the residents was bad (mainly for Nicola) but the permanent smell of cleaning products was pretty toxic. Luke ended up using his eye mask more of a nose vent.
Fortunately it was only one night, but this place really messed Nicola up for the next morning.
Yogyakarta
The LaWang Yogya - 3 nights - £5.91/n/p
It was an interesting room set up, with a pull out bed making up the two singles which took us by surprise. Sadly this (Nicola’s) bed was rather squeaky but could get past that. The single glaze windows even could have been fine had the road been apparently an unsuspecting major route through for the most loud and obnoxious motorbikes all night… earplugs it was again.
Travel
TO
Homestay -> [metro] -> Singapore Changi airport -> [flight] -> Juanda International airport (Surabaya) -> [taxi] -> Hotel
FROM
Hotel -> [failed Grab attempt so walked] -> Surabaya Gubeng train station -> [train] -> Yogyakarta (Stasiun Yogyakarta) -> [grab] -> Hotel
Diary
[Continued from Singapore]
The airport in Indonesia was relatively painless to get through. First check in was to clear the covid checks which simply involves showing and confirming how many doses we have. Next step was the visa on arrival, which we missed initially and had to double back around, and sadly only accepted cash so had to settle in USD as we didn’t have enough IDR at this point (IDR 500k each but accept IDR or USD). We were prepared for this however.
Passport checks were a little slow and Luke fumbling over his answers to when he was leaving Indonesia and incorrectly telling the guard he was going to exceed the 30 day limit allowed probably didn’t help his cause. Fortunately this isn’t the states so were both ushered on our way and though a final big bag scan check.
Through the airport we took out some much needed cash out and tried to get a grab. This sadly failed so Luke was forced into trying to communicate with one of the local taxi booths by the departure exit. This appeared to work out just fine when purchasing the ticket but then sheer confusion seemed to put our airport departure plans to a complete standstill. The drivers didn’t speak any English which theoretically should be absolutely fine given Luke had a complete map of Surabaya in his palm and the exact point of our accommodation. 4 guys later and standing around for 5 minutes not knowing what the f is going on Luke eventually lost his patience and suddenly we were priority and on the move. Nicola was tracking using the 1GB overseas data allowance from her SG SIM and after taking some interesting route decisions made it into the general vicinity of our hotel. When the driver (as expected) took a wrong turn Luke had to try communicate with him half in English and half in Indonesian using ‘left, right, straight’ while waving a clear map and direction in his face. The man was completely oblivious and after a while we just gave up and walked the last bit. Worst part - he even had a smart phone he could have used.
At the hotel a similar language barrier was obliterated with the use of Google translate (technology is great) and we were checked in. We were in real need of a sim card (especially where English is not spoken) so took off to a mall to try and find one. Turns out we couldn’t find a provider so after wandering around aimlessly and talking with various mobile phone sellers we gave up and went to the food mall for very cheap but delicious ramen.
Back at the hotel we started to find out how terrible our accommodation was. The aircon unit was pathetic and took about 2 hours to make the room remotely comfortable. The constant odour of tobacco from the residents was bad (mainly for Nicola) but the permanent smell of cleaning products was pretty toxic. Luke ended up using his eye mask more of a nose vent.
Luke managed to get some sleep but Nicola was far less fortunate.
Sleep deprivation had a toll on Nicola who was ill in the morning and lacking much ability to function. Fortunately for Luke the morning was pretty easy to navigate. The traffic in Surabaya (second largest city in Indonesia) is horrific and the booked grab taxi wasn’t moving at all towards us. We deliberately booked accommodation such that we could walk if needed and so settled on this option.
The 15 minutes walk did Nicola some good (Luke did offer to carry her big bag) and arrived at Surabaya Gubeng with plenty of time. We exchanged our online tickets for the required paper versions, stocked up on some pastries and water, Nicola sat down and Luke clarified on where our train was and where to go. Once the train pulled in we followed the crowd and were comfortably seated in the equivalent of first class for our 4 hour journey to Yogyakarta. Pretty tidy to be honest.
Getting a grab outside the station was simple enough (minus their inability to actually go to the pick up points but we get by with a little bit of rage) and checked into our hotel. Infinitely better than the last place but windows/ walls were wafer thin, traffic noise was constant and the calls to prayer at 2.30-3.30am every night meant we didn't sleep well.
We took off to Malioboro street to have a wonder around the street, grabbed some food and walked down to the Palace of Yogyakarta which was closed so we just slid around the outside. The many many local people were very helpful in telling us it was closed and when it would open but couldn’t quite understand we just fancied a walk. The most important part of our outing was to book a tour for the next day so found a company / wooden booth that was rated fairly highly and signed up.
Tired, we went back to the hotel and ordered some grab food (like Deliveroo) for the first time. Turns out, not overly user friendly and we had no frikin clue what was being offered on the menus. With no visible peanut controls in place we copped out and ordered a pizza.
Our day would be temple hopping around the city and started at a respectable 9am. There was an option for a 4am start to catch the sunrise but was sensibly turned down for fear of Nicola just turning into bile. Breakfast consisted of a quick run to the corner shop and swiftly regretted the chocolate banana bread choice.
Awi, the tour guide, picked us up and was essentially our personal chauffeur for the day and we were very pleased with our decision. The streets of Yogyakarta are pure chaos: streets are rammed with traffic, bikes flying everywhere and cars aggressively cutting harder than muscle heads getting ready for bikini competition. Awi was a bit of a nutcase but fortunately we had seatbelts and the people he would likely kill would be the bikers.
Our first stop was Borobudur temple, a Buddhist temple built in the 9th century and a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was very impressive but sadly were not able to fully appreciate its intricacies in the step platform design as prior degradation from tourists has (rightly) been addressed.
Here began the many many photo requests that came for Nicola and I. India was very much the same, except for the huge difference that the Indonesian locals are very polite about it (one of the best experiences in India was Nicola just having a baby dumped in her lap as she was resting) and they tend to hit Luke up first in their requests. After starting to believe he was special he swiftly realised he’s not actually sought out in isolation when they drag Nicola in with him. Luke thinks after this trip he may have PTSD from anyone saying ‘mister, mister’ behind him. However we did oblige on many occasions - the first group did however take about 10 photos which did take the biscuit somewhat.
After a few hours walking around (and finally getting out of the absolute maze of market stalls / streets at the end) we met up with Awi to head over to Mendut Buddhist temple. This obviously didn’t remotely compare to Borobudur and was made less appealing from a lack of material sustenance at now 1pm.
Pushing this point, Awi took us to a great Indonesian restaurant and even managed to get some much needed veg (rice and meat and lack of fruit has been quite noticeable in our diets of late).
Indonesia has a wealth of dormant and active volcanoes, one of which is Marupi that was quite close by and despite our research seemed like it would be expensive and difficult to get up to. We asked Awi to do a drive by so we could get a view but sadly cloud cover and a poor choice of location meant this was a bit of a waste of time.
Prambanan temple is a 9th century Hindu temple compound with a number of monuments on the site. Once we arrived we walked around and felt this time we were really able to appreciate its detail and the whole area was more extensive and enjoyable than Borobudur (in our opinion).
More local celebrity shots at the end and we even completed a school survey (one of the questions was what’s our hobby - Luke really hopes they will Google ‘canoe polo’) we took off back to the hotel after a 10 hour day of templing but mainly just being driven around.
We went to a local place to our hotel for food before turning in.
The 2 days prior had allowed us to do and see most of the interesting things that Yogya had to offer (as Marupi was a no go) so we planned our day to really do very little but catch up on admin. We had been pretty full on since leaving Malaysia and it seemed sensible to get more of an Indonesia plan together given it was visibly harder to work out how and where to go.
First task for the morning was finding a self service washing machine. This was ridiculously hard. The only one we could find that was a sensible distance away had closed and moved, of course realising this once arrived as Luke’s research failed the team. Half rage quitting we went for breakfast and coffee at Awor (absolute right decision) and then onwards to the open machine. Nicola took charge of that while Luke went about drawing what seemed like an insane amount of cash out.
Indonesian Rupiah is a particularly challenging currency to transition to given the exchange rate is roughly £1:IDR17,500. While fairly easy to work out costs of things (for Luke anyway) the sheer quantity of notes is a pain in the ass. We were going on a tour to Mt Bromo and Ijen over the next few days which cost IDR3.3m. The machines however often only dispense 50k notes (shown on the top of the ATM the denominations) and not wanting to carry around fatter stacks Luke had to visit quite a few ATMs. Next annoyance, they only allow minimal drawdowns. The one that did give 100k notes would only allow IDR1m per transaction so Luke ended up going through that process a multitude of times. To reiterate - pain in the ass.
Phat wads lining the pockets and clean knickers in our bags, we dropped the stuff off at the hotel and the went over to Roaster and Bear for lunch and hours of sit down coffees / iced teas to basically chill out, research the rest of Indonesia and blog. Sadly they brought out peanut veg so Nicola had to scoff the lot.
4 or 5 hours later we went to a local restaurant called The House of Raminten. It was a cool dig, the waiters dressed in traditional clothing and tables served on the floor. Luke’s food was excellent.
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