Yogyakarta- From South to North...To further South.

21.10.11

We started today with our free breakfast (Well not free but included in the price of the hotel)

and we were ready to go Exploring.

Our hotel is in the south of the city, on a road filled with 'mid range' accommodation called Prawirotaman. We were armed with a map we were given on check-in and 2 our flasks filled with already luke-warm water. We headed north (obviously) and quickly found ourselves on road names nowhere to be found on our map, however we knew which direction roughly to head and figured we'd be fine. We were busy comparing the city to other places we'd been and to India in general. It felt very different, the roads were smooth and had pavements, ones you could walk on at nearly all times and that weren't covered in rubbish and/or excrement (which is always a bonus!). Every few feet there was huge pots of shrubs and flowers, it felt a lot 'greener' than similar places in India. We began to notice many of the shops had bird cages hanging outside, I remembered reading somewhere something about song birds being prized possessions here.

Along the pavements there where vendors selling glass bottles of fuel and pouring them into motorbike tanks with a hosepipe. I guess access to Petrol stations isn't as common or easy as back home and the bikes have small engines, the guys selling the petrol seemed to be doing good business. There were lots of places making their trade through motorbike maintenance or similar.

We found our way through lots of little winding streets to places we could see on the map, but actually this pottering around, no real clue of where we were was the highlight of the day. We got to see lots of places you wouldn't bother to go looking for and we greeted warmly by the people, homes and businesses we walked past, with lots of people wanting to just say hello and wave as we walked past, with lots of smiles and giggles thrown in. Smiling seemed to be a lovely theme here, all in all it has to be the place we have been with the happiest looking people (possibly joint actually with the smiling and excited faces we saw in the slums in Pune).

So we made our way to the main street in of the town, which has markets and stalls everywhere, it is very popular with tourist and local students and also some of the markets looked to be doing very good business with the locals. This road leads from the area called Kraton (The sultans Palace and surroundings) up to the north towards the train station, we had missed seeing the palace on route up to this road as we had taken lots of little side roads. We walked up and down the best part of Malioboro road, although it is much the same as many similar roads in cities across south east Asia that we have seen. Now we headed back south but this time to find the Sultans Palace, which we promptly found a few minutes later at 12.20, only to find that today the palace shuts at 12.oo. No looking around there for us today but it was no drama as we can easily head back another day if needed.

We then went looking for the Water Castle, which was used by the Sultan to bath. Before we could find it a 'Guide' found us and showed us to the temple. He followed us in and when we explained we did not want a guide and could not pay for one, he said it was included in the price of the ticket and we would not have to pay. So we allowed him to show us around, he was very nice and quite informative as he ushered us around the Sultans water palace. This was built as a kind of playground fore the sultan, with 3 pools, sauna rooms, a tower that the sultan could watch his wives bathing from and underwater tunnels. There was even an underwater mosque. Much of the area is in ruins, a recent earthquake causing part of it to be inaccessible. Our guide actually lived in the grounds of the Castle. He took us around the narrow streets and showed us his home and the homes of his family members, most of which were employed by the current Sultan as he is. The current sultan has 1 wife and 5 children and one of his daughters had just got married. The royal wedding was held on the 18th October in Jogja, so we just missed it! Our 'guide' did take us to various Batik and puppet making emporiums, but there was no problem with us not buying anything.

From the Water Castle, we continued south along a wide, busy road hoping to find the Bird Market. The Bird Market is permanent and there are rows of small stalls/shops selling mainly birds in beautiful decorated cages. There were all sorts of birds, including huge cockerels, owls, ducks, pigeons, tiny songbirds, ducklings tied all kinds of weird and wonderful colours and more colourful parrot like birds. It was fascinating to walk around although quite upsetting at times, as the cages were usually tiny and quite often had large numbers of birds inside. There were also bats, lizards, ants, maggots and crickets on sale. At a couple of other stalls we came across gerbils, that were quite entertaining as they kept standing on their hind legs and then toppling over backwards!

By this point we were really quite tired and had been sweating buckets all day so we walked back to the hotel for a refreshing swim before going back to Via Via for another delicious meal!