By After our visa-run to Singapore, we flew to Jakarta, and thereby back to Indonesia. Jakarta is a gigantic city, and the world’s second largest urban area (after Tokyo) with more than 30 million people in its greater area.
Coming straight from Singapore, we didn’t really crave big city life, but we did spend a few days there. And we were pretty impressed with what we saw, already knowing that we would come back for a few more days since we wanted to store some luggage there.
The area we stayed in is famous for huge shopping malls, and they were actually quite good. As good as a shopping mall will ever be. There were a lot of dining options, play areas for the kids, and decent shops.
Likewise, our hotel room had an amazing view over the Selamat Datang Monument, which is in the middle of a huge roundabout with loads of traffic.
We spent some time exploring a few areas of Jakarta. Among others the famous Taman Fatahillah square which seemed most famous with local tourists. And suddenly we found ourselves being the main tourist attraction (this actually happened quite a few times during our stay on Java).
We also did a really nice – and very local – walk around Jakarta and ended up in the very scenic Sunda Kelapa harbour where they still use old wooden sailing ships.
It was very unique walking among these old ships while daily life went on around us.
After spending some days in Jakarta we took an 8 hour train ride halfway through the island and ended up in Yogyakarta.
Yogyakarta is a big tourist destination (rightfully) due to its surrounding sights, and somehow we ended up staying a week there. Not entirely voluntary, but it was a nice place to hang around.
Two things prolonged our stay there. First of all we again had bad luck with renting our own car. We spent a long time looking for the Avis office, which we found looking like this:
“Avis pic”
After some more search and help from some friendly staff in a hotel we stopped at, we finally found the right office. We were now several hours late (the traffic in Indonesia is horrible everywhere you go!) and the car did not have a child seat. The rental car guy suggested we could use his private one, and his wife could bring it in a few hours…? Well, we left without the car and with some extra days in the city instead of our intended road trip.
The second thing that prolonged our stay was a visit to the hospital with Carla who had gotten an ear infection.
I have not been much to hospitals in other countries (nor in Denmark), but I always get surprised at the efficiency of hospitals around the world. We did not wait long until Carla could see an ear specialist and the wait was enjoyed with good coffee and juice from the hospital cafe. And luckily the ear infection was quickly over again.
Yogyakarta itself has some nice areas, and we found the best restaurant which served the best beef tenderloin we had had since we left Denmark. We came back several nights, and even got food delivered to our hotel from there. Which, by the way, is extremely easy. There are two delivery service apps available, and you can get anything from food to groceries and medicine delivered. When staying in villas later on during our travels we used this service a lot – 15 minutes and you had an espresso and croissant delivered at your private pool villa. Thank you digital-world-meets-labour-excess!
Yogyakarta was very distinctive in its look, and almost everywhere the city was full of very colorful grafitti. A nice touch to the city.
But the real reason people come to Yogyakarta is for the Borobudur and Prambanan temples. Borobodur which is one of the worlds largest buddhist temples is famous for sunrise views, so we got up really early, drove an hour, and climbed the steps to the temple for the sunrise. The view was really great with misty clouds, mountains and jungle. But there were so many tourists which ruined the peace – as well as the picture perfect kodak moments – a bit.
The second major sight is Prambanan, a hindu temple on a huge compound. Again, there were a lot of tourists, and here we (mainly the kids) ended up being more of the attraction than the temple itself 🙂
There were some tough decisions to be made about what to do after Yogyakarta. Either we spent time exploring some of the island in more remote places, or we moved on to one more highlight. Given the fact that we never knew when we would get the visa, we chose the last option and went to see the highlight of our Java trip, Mt Bromo. Bromo is one of the 45 active volcanoes on Java.
From Yogyakarta we chose the easy option and hired a driver to take us all the way. We could have done the trip with two train rides and a bus over a day and a half. But I’m happy we chose to drive all the way in a car. It was about 12 hours to get there, but then it was over and we could enjoy the magnificent mountains.
The highlight of Bromo is getting up early and see the sunrise, so we went more or less straight to bed after arriving at the hotel and got up at 3 am! At 3.30 we left in an old jeep which took us some of the way up the volcano. The rest of the way we walked – and how amazing kids can you get? Carla walked all the way herself in the middle of the night, and both of them waited patiently for the sun to get up. But at sunrise they were ready to leave 🙂
This is one of the most amazing sunrises I’ve seen. What an amazing and surreal view! Mt. Bromo was really truly magnificent!
I know I have said this before, but my mission is to see the whole world, and there is no point in going back to the same place again. But to any rule – even mine – there are exceptions. Those places that have gotten to my heart, can of course be visited again …and so it happened that we eventually went back to Bali for the third time in less than a year.
Now I really think we have seen it all. There are not any areas of Bali I still need to explore. And with my knowledge now, Canggu is definitely my favorite place. Not for the beach (never that on Bali), but for the cool, still somewhat low-key atmosphere. Great villas and great restaurants.
During our visit to Bali this time, we stayed in Canggu and Ubud where we had our own private villas with nice pools.
During our time on Bali we got to spent some time with new friends that also live in Sydney, so luckily we will see much more of each other soon.
We had to go back to Jakarta to collect our stored luggage before flying to our next destination. I had never thought we would not go to Australia after 60 days in Indonesia, but the immigration authorities were really letting us wait for it…! In Jakarta we met Sorens old boss from his time at the Danish embassy in Bangladesh, and we stayed with him and his family for some nice days.
Now it’s time to say goodbye to Indonesia after spending 60 days here. It has been a great time and a new travel destination has opened up to us. It will definitely not be the last time we are here. It is an amazing country to explore. Extremely easy to get around. And not only on Bali where all the tourists are, but also the other islands we have been to. There are so many more places to explore like the Flores and Komodo islands which we didn’t visit this time because of malaria risk.
In writing about the amazing country of Indonesia I have to mention the people, which have been a huge part of the good impression this country has left us with. The people are extremely trustworthy – they always keep their word, have always met us a few minutes before the agreed time, and nobody ever tried to cheat us or tried the usual tourist scams to get extra money. In addition, they are extremely welcoming – they absolutely adore kids, and we have felt so welcome in their country. Despite the many tourists they do not seem to be tired of them like we have seen other places (very much so in Fiji).
I look forward to coming back here one day. But now it’s on to our next destination, Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia.
GoCargus 