đYogyakarta, 16th of August 2018.
A lazy day with ordering in
Since we finished working on our blog at around 3:30 AM and were only in bed by 4, we took it very easy yesterday and dedicated the day to researching, planning, organizing the following days. Being also super lazy we tried out a local food delivery service. After an hour translating from Indonesian/Javanese to English (there are not many pictures of the food), we gave up, picked some random restaurant and ordered a bunch of stuff. In the end it turned out we had ordered from the restaurant next doors, but still ended up paying for the delivery đ I still donât know what we ate, but was an interesting mix of, letâs say, Indonesian tapas â some chicken, some veggies, mushrooms, shrimps, dried fish and rice. It was alright and lasted us for the whole day.
A day on a scooter around Yogya
Not knowing how long weâd stay in Yogya, we had only booked three nights in the Red Doorz hotel Pose In. As we still had an extensive list of things to do in the city, we decided to prolong the visit. After a tedious process of trying to extend our stay (front desk doesnât have the rights to create new nor extend existing reservations, we were advised to use booking.com insteadâ it hurts my brain), it turned out that the hotel was sold out (front desk wasnât aware â againâŠ).
Since Yogya is a prominent tourist destination, it was not very easy to find a budget-friendly last-minute accommodation. With a little luck, we found and moved to a lovely homestay Tirto 27, which was cheaper and much better than the previous hotel. Until this moment we didnât fully realise how much we truly madly deeply disliked Pose In â the room smelled unpleasantly, the WC door couldnât be closed without it locking itself, the bathroom itself felt unclean, window curtains always had to be shut since the windows faced the courtyard everyone was passing by, the internet moody and unstable... By contrast, we were so pleasantly surprised and happy when we opened the huge wooden door into our new room â the room was massive with a gigantic king size bed and beautiful wooden furniture. Although the homestay could really use some renovation, the room smelled fresh and was very cosy. If only we had found this place from the beginning!
The Sultan Palace
Finally on a scooter, we started the day by going to Kraton (aka the Sultan Palace), which is basically a courtyard with a couple of exhibitions with pictures, photos and some valuables from the royal family. The only descriptions we saw in English were âdonât touchâ and âno entranceâ, which didnât help puzzle together what we were looking at. So, the only thing we can report from the visit is that Sultan IX was a good-looking man who appeared to be smiling throughout his life (based on the photos of him). (In the last section of exhibitions we did actually find some English text â we let you try decipher it. Eh, what would life without Google Translate be?).
On the way to the ocean
After an hour of driving around the city (and donât forget the week-long learning by observation), David felt comfortable enough with the Yogya traffic to allow us to travel a bit further to explore more. We decided to finally go to an Indonesian beach (did not get around doing it so far!). After we got out of the city centre, the route turned very scenic â we passed through smaller suburbs, rice fields, villages; which felt very refreshing.
After about an hour drive at last we were at the sea at the Parangtritis beach! The joy and excitement of jumping into the water didnât last very long though, namely, until we saw the huge waves. There was not a single person swimming, but quite a lot of people just strolling on the beach. Although a bit disappointed, we truly enjoyed just looking at the waves break, feeling the warm water on our feet, observing the fisherman pulling his net out of water and watching the sunset. Was a very lovely & peaceful afternoon.
