Yogyakarta

Yogyakarta is a huge improvement over Jakarta, but not of that much interest on its own. The landscape of the city is dominated by Mount Merapi, an active volcano that tends to erupt now and then (no such luck this time). The volcano is climbable both independently and as a part of a tour, but due to periodic rains we gave it a miss. What makes Yogyakarta worth a visit are nearby temples of Borobudur and Parabanam. Both are lovely, but Borobudur is truly majestic (as featured in the movie Baraka). Otherwise, the city is full of dubious sights, tourist shops, restaurants and travel agencies. It feels right for a little while, but gets tiring very soon. Two full days there and we were so ready to continue the journey.

Horse-cart is one of the modes of transportation in Yogyakarta. Bumpy, expensive and slow. Hardly recommended.

Each bus-stop has dedicated staff selling tickets, guiding passengers and just hanging out. This is what you get when you have vast human resources.

Eating Street food on Jalan Malioboro.

A bicycle lady selling mysterious drinks.

A cute caged owl in the bird market of Yogyakarta

And some geckos too

Asia weirdness: color dyed chicks. I have no idea why.

Borobudur temple in all its glory.

Stupas on top of Borobudur

Each stupa contains a statue of Buddha

Headless buddhas. There are a lot of them.

Locals chilling (sleeping) in the temple.

Rainy Parabanam temple

We made it to Parabanam just before the closing and it was heavily raining too, but on a positive side there were few tourists. I shudder to think what it's like on a good day.

Jakarta – the start of the journey

Having heard so many negative things about Jakarta, my expectations were pretty low. However upon arriving Jakarta did not seem all that bad. The first impression was that it was another Bangkok – oversized, noisy, polluted and with way too many cars on its roads. Which is not such a bad thing, at least in the context of Bangkok. On a closer look, the biggest problem of Jakarta turned out to be a lack of anything remotely interesting to see or to do. Kota Tua, the old town, lacks any charm and is just plain dull. Same goes for the national monument. In fact all the empty space around it is way more interesting given it is such a rare thing in the otherwise crowded Jakarta. Architecture wise the only notable thing about Jakarta is anonymous statues scattered around the city and Istiqlal Mosque. The latter is the biggest mosque in South East Asia, big enough for 100000 people. With its brutalist architecture it is a curious sight, but I guess it would be more entertaining to visit it when it is full.
Getting train tickets to Yogyakarta was a highlight of the short stay in Jakarta. Two days and it was more than enough of spending time in traffic, constant noise and filthy infrastructure. In this respect Jakarta reminded of Ulan Bator, but fortunately unlike in Ulan Bator getting out of the city was dead simple. The clerks in the train station ticket office even spoke English and a debit card was one of the payment options. Such a rarity in South-East Asia.
Later in the travels we met a Dutch couple, who skipped Jakarta altogether and proceeded from Jakarta airport to Bogor, a neighbour town. Apparently it is nothing special, but is a huge improvement over Jakarta. Or even better fly straight to Bali leaving Java behind.