June 14-19, 2012 Yogyakarta Area, with Borobudur, Prambanan and Merapi Volcano

We took a cab from the train station to the Puri Artha Hotel, some distance from the train station and main tourist attractions, but with a nice pool and comfortable rooms and decent WiFi for about $50 per night including breakfast. This was a hotel that Connie remembered so we decided to check it out. Located about 300 miles southeast of Jakarta, Yogyakarta is kind of the cultural center of Java, and had served as the capital of Indonesia for a short time in the 1940’s. It is well-known for its traditional handicrafts and performing arts.

On the 15^th we first visited the bird market, Pasar Ngasem, which surprised us because it had moved further away from the center of the city since our guide book’s publication.  It was amazing to see the various birds that they capture and sell to be caged songbirds.  Many of them we had seen at a distance in the wild, like Green Leaf Birds or types of Golden Orioles, but it was fascinating to see them up close.  They also had unusual animals like flying lizards, various snakes including some beautiful green ones, and some pythons and cobras.

We then made our way to Taman Sari, which were the bathing pools for the sultan and the palace wives, concubines and children built by a Portuguese architect in 1758 -1765. While war and an earthquakes have damaged the site, the series of bathing pools have been restored.

We then visited the central market, Pasar Beringharjo, where Leslie finally managed to find the type of Batik sarongs (Pekalongan) that she wanted to purchase. We had lunch in the Matah Hari mall after cruising Malioboro Street, (named after the Duke of Marlborough) and returned to our hotel to swim.  For dinner we enjoyed the live jazz at the ViaVia Restaurant at a cost of about $20 including wine.  There are in essence two “tourist” areas to stay in with a mix of Indonesian and western restaurants, one being near the train station off Malioboro, known as Sosrowijayan area, and the other is the Prawirotaman region where ViaVia is. The city is quite a sprawl of low rise buildings so it can take some time to get from one area to another.

Batik Tulis - canting



Yogyakarta is a center for batik both the hand drawn (batik tulis) and the stamped batik (batik cap). The colors of the Yogyakarta batik are shades of browns, black, indigo and dark yellow on a white base. There is even one sarong here, Batik Tiga Negeri (Three Country Batik),  which is colorized in three cities: red in Lasem, blue in Pekalongan, and sogan in Solo. These three cities were called countries (negeri) because they had autonomous governance under the Dutch.

Puppet Master and Musicians

White symbolizes the Good Puppets

Traditional Puppet show

Next day we visited the Sultan’s Palace, Kraton, which is still owned and occupied by the royal family of Yogyakarta.  It had interesting artifacts of the royal family’s social life, but very little information about anything they did for their people – perhaps they were largely irrelevant as the Dutch ruled the area for several hundred years, then the Japanese during World War II, and with Indonesian independence, rule moved to the central government. We watched a few minutes of the traditional puppet show at the Kraton which was included in our entry fee.  It was interesting to see all the virtuous puppet characters (good guys) arranged on one side of the screen and all the evil puppets on the other side of the screen, with the master puppet maker sitting in the middle at the back with all of the musicians behind him.

We had lunch at Gadri Resto, the house of Prince Joyokusumo of the Yogyakarta sultanate, the little brother of the ruling sultan at the present time.  There are several rooms of the palace open for wandering through and viewing.  One of the old royal drinks is a ginger drink, with fermented ginger, cloves, and lemon grass, which was wonderful if you like ginger.

We decided 2 of us in one becak
would be too much!

 Yogyakarta is interesting because bicycle rickshaws called Becaks are still a major part of transportation within the cities, and we used them several times to get from one market to another, or to a palace or restaurant. The metered taxis are also very good and a 15-minute ride usually costs $3 or less.

Since we have arrived in Indonesia we have negotiated our way through the throngs of school kids and Javanese sightseers who all seemed eager to have their pictures taken with us. We have been obliging as we consider it pay back for all the pictures we have enjoyed taking of people in various countries.  We are delighted to see the school children out on class trips to museums and heritage sites.

We left Yogyakarta and traveled to Mount Merapi to see the volcanic lava flows from the 2010 eruption, which killed hundreds, and then continued on to Kaliurang where we visited the Ullen Sentalu Museum. All visits are with a guide as the materials displayed are not well documented.  Our guide spoke good English so was able to answer our questions about the female Princess and Queens who were the subject of the museum.  There was a very nice textile display.  We had lunch at the restaurant there at the Museum and it served good European food and was playing Dutch music in the background.

Sarongs and sash are required for visiting Temples

We then drove on to Borobudur and arrived before sunset at Manohara Hotel Borobudur which is the only hotel located nearby the 8th-century Buddhist sanctuary of Borobudur, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  From the dining area you can see the temple and it is an easy walk.  We climbed up the levels to the top to see the sunset while studying some of the stone carving on the walls (both sides) of each level as we went. Borobudur was built between the end of the seventh and beginning of the eighth century A.D.   In 1814, Sir Thomas Stanford Raffles discover the Temple buried under volcanic ash. The ash helped in the preservation of the carvings.  The Temple has been restored a couple of times, in 1905 to 1910, and the last restoration was done in 1973 to 1983.  While we were there volcanic ash was still being power- washed off the temple  from the 2010 eruption of Mt. Merapi. Borobudur Temple was built about 500 years before Ankor Wat and about the same time as the Hindu temple Pambanan in just the next valley over from Borobudur. On the Borobudur Temple on the very outside bottom carved area there are even carvings of Hindu gods and goddesses. Unlike most temples, Borobudur was not built as a dwelling for the gods, but rather as a representation of the Buddhist cosmic mountain, Meru.  Accordingly, the base is the real, earthly world, a world of desires and passions, and at the summit is nirvana. Thus, as you make your way around the temple passages, studying all the carved lessons and slowly spiral to the summit, you are symbolically following the path to enlightenment.  We climbed up the Temple three times: once at sunset, again at sunrise the next morning (5am – not worth it as sunrise had no color) and then went with a guide after having our breakfast. Are we now enlightened?

Staying at the Manohara is good value because you are right at the site and your entrance fees to the site are covered by your room costs.  The Hotel also shows a video on Borobudur on an in-house TV channel which we found very informative.

Traditional herbal drinks

After Borobudur we spent our last 2 nights in Yogya at the Phoenix Hotel a lovely restored 1918 Dutch colonial hotel that was just charming.  We believe it was initially built as a residence and was used by the Japanese during WWII as their headquarters and only after WWII did it become a hotel. The breakfast buffet was outstanding and excellent value.  We would recommend other tourists just come for the breakfast buffet – even vegetarians would be very happy with the selection. The tradition herbal drinks of the Jamu-Gendhong-(Indonesian-traditional-herbal-drink-seller) were available at the buffet as well, with labels as to the name and what was the intended purpose.  A great cultural experience!  Our previous hotel also had a Jamu-Gendhong in the breakfast area but you were not sure what you were drinking or the purported benefits. (Time Magazine did a short article on Indonesia’s Jamu drinks in its March issue).

The Prambanan Temple we visited in a late afternoon to avoid the heat, have excellent lighting for pictures and to catch the 200 cast Ramayana Performance with the Temple in the background. You can hire a guide directly at most tourist sites to give you the information on the site and answer any of your questions at a very reasonable rate.  Interesting facts here was the idea that while both Prambanan and Borobudur were built with large volcanic stones from Mt. Merapi, because of the lava flows and rivers moving volcanic stone downstream, the workers did not really have to go all that far to get the volcanic rocks. Our guide used one of the temples in the compound to tell us the Ramayana story so that we would be all up to speed on what was happening when we saw the show.  Sunset closes the Temple grounds, so then we had some time to kill before our buffet dinner in conjunction with the show.  Buffet was basic and we would advise others to skip.  We had bought the VIP seats for the performance so we were right in front with excellent viewing and even bathrooms just for our section of seats. Though we left at intermission (2 hours into the 4 hour performance) because we would be getting up early to start our road trip to Bali through East Java, we did enjoy the performance and would recommend it for those who like cultural dance performances.