Yogyakarta: UNESCO site, ballet show and movie star sighting

After Cirebon, we rode the train again for four hours to Yogyakarta. The train took us southeast across Java (the island we are on), going thru a mountainous area where the rice fields were terraced.

It began raining while we were on the train, a daily occurrence in Yogyakarta.

The Y in Yogyakarta is pronounced like a J, and sometimes the city name is shortened to Jogja. Jogja proper has about 375,000 people, but the metro area has a population of 4 million, still well below the crowds of Jakarta. We took a Grab from the train station to our hotel. The Grab app is not as easy to use as Uber, but I am getting used to requesting rides on it. During our first evening here, we just enjoyed the air conditioning of our hotel room.

On Thursday, we toured the Prambanan temple complex, a UNESCO World Heritage site. It is the second largest Hindu shrine in the world, eclipsed only by Cambodia’s Angor Wat. 

This shrine was built in the 8th century AD, 200 years before Angor Wat. Also, the stone used here is harder than that of Ango Wat, so the details of the carvings are more visible. 

We walked around the main temples and went inside one to see the chambers and their statues. Around the temple, carvings told the epic story that would be presented through the Ramayana Ballet. 

Prambanan is not fully intact. Earthquakes have turned many of the shrines into rubble. Archeologists had separated stones into piles of ruins for the shrines that had fallen over the years.  In the entire complex, 508 shrines have been identified. 

Our tour guide took us to the other side of this main area for another view of the main Shiva temple and the other intact temples next to it.

Our tour included dinner before the ballet, a buffet of Indonesian food. From our outside dining area, under a pavilion, we had a great view of the temple complex when it was lit after dark.

At 7:30 pm, the Ramayana Ballet performance began, lasting until 9:15 with an intermission. Musicians played, five singers sang, and dancers danced. Two screens showed brief plot descriptions occasionally in Indonesian and in English. The story, an epic love story with heroes, villains, and misunderstandings, was secondary to the costumed dancers. My favorite character was the Golden Deer.

Phillip liked watching the monkeys because a small boy, probably about 4 years old, was part of the dancing group. It was cute watching him keep up with the moves of the bigger dancers and avoid being stepped on.

Yesterday, we took a Grab to the Taman Sari, which translates to the Sultan's Playground. Near the palace, this was a collection of bathing pools, ancient walls and even an underground tunnel with a mosque that was used centuries ago by the Sultan and his family. 

The site had three pools. The two above were for his 12 wives and his 24 children and the one below was the sultan's private pool. 

All entrances had low clearance so that anyone entering had to bow. "Watch your head" was the most frequent saying from our guide!

entrance to the tunnel that led to the palace

As a side venture while near the Taman Sari, our guide took us to a coffee house that served civet coffee. I tried it in Vietnam, where it is called weasel coffee. The civets (look like cats with a ferret head but are not in the feline family) eat the ripe coffee beans. They poop the coffee beans out after their stomach enzymes have affected the flavor of the beans. 

civet coffee bean poop (dried)

And the beans are cleaned and roasted to make civet coffee!

It was in this coffee shop that we saw South Korean movie star Ma Dong-seok. The coffee shop owner had customers write in his book, which I did (closing with "live long and prosper"). He approached a man at another table who was initially hesitant. Then thru questioning by the owner, the man explained who he was. I looked him up later and yep, the man was indeed a Korean action movie star, known for his tough guy roles! South Korea's version of Jason Stratham. I did not get a picture because the Mr. Dong-seok was trying to be low-key about his identity. 

We planned to walk to the palace from the Taman Sari, but there was no sidewalk and the motorcycle taxis and tourist vans filled the street from side to side, so for 20,000 IDR (about $1.15 US), we hired one of the motorcycle taxis ourselves for the trip. Unfortunately, long pants were required to enter the Kraton (palace). I, wearing a long skirt, could go in but Phillip declined to rent long pants to enter. So, he sat in the shade and drank a bottle of water while I went in without him. I didn't tour it extensively but did find pavilions full of traditional musical instruments used for a traditional music performance called a gamelan. 

bonangs (pot-looking instruments on left), huge gongs,
drums, and metallophones

After the palace, we walked back to the hotel, traversing the entire JL Malioboro (a famous tourist walk with many, many shops). As it was May 1, May Day, we came across (and avoided) two political gatherings. May Day is workers' day, like our Labor Day, but more political as workers use the day to demand more rights and better working conditions. 

Police, wearing lime green vests, monitored traffic
amid the small crowd at this May Day rally.

This afternoon, we have our first cooking class, which includes visiting a market and preparing an Indonesian meal.  

Train to "Prawn City," Cirebon, Indonesia

We took a 2-1/2-hour, 185-mile train ride from Jakarta to Cirebon. Only two nights here as I planned the stop just to break up our travel from Jakarta to Yogyakarta. We love train travel, more than air or bus travel. Yesterday's train ride did not disappoint. Our seats were roomy and comfortable enough. No security screening, the station signage was clear, and the train left exactly on time. The only difference between yesterday's train and European and US trains is that Indonesia uses narrow gauge tracks.  Instead of 4' 8" apart, the tracks here are 3' 6" apart. Narrow gauges allow tighter curves, smaller tunnels, and lighter rails, making them cheaper to build and operate. The downside is that the ride is less stable, with more swaying and jerky train movements. It wasn't too bad, just a different experience. What wasn't different as we were leaving Jakarta, was the mass of vehicles waiting at the crossings for the train to pass.

Jakarta had a haze across the city. We at first thought it was just from all the cars, but from the train, we saw that locals burn their trash, so part of the haze was actual smoke.

Once out of the city, rice fields were numerous. These fields were nearing harvest, so flags were placed in the field to keep birds away.

Because this is a tropical area, we passed rice fields in all different stages, including the newly planted flooded stage.

We couldn't assume that all flooded fields were rice, because we also passed fish farms. We knew what these are because we were up close to them on a motorcycle ride in Vietnam a few years ago.

Most of the rice fields that were being harvested were done by hand by groups of workers.

We did see a few fields that had mechanical rice harvests. 

Our hotel in Cirebon was just a few blocks from the train station, so we walked to it. In most cities, the neighborhood immediately next to a train station is not the most picturesque. So, Phillip was concerned about my judgment as we walked, but once we turned on the main road, he was relieved to find a really nice hotel. A 3-floor hotel, it had been remodeled in 2025, so it was extremely clean and well-equipped. The lobby and main hallways have koi ponds!

This morning, we walked south on Cirebon's main street for about 3 km to the historic palace area. A portion of the road had the sidewalks elevated by over a foot, with business driveway entrances at street level. We were constantly walking up and down for this portion of the stroll. 

Between our hotel and downtown, we saw a building that had shrimp decorating its fence and walls. This building is the office of the Mayor. Cirebon is a coastal city and that means fishing is a big industry. An official nickname for Cirebon is "Prawn City."

When we entered the downtown area, the sidewalk became quite a bit more crowded.

Before the palace area, we came across the city's Chinatown area.

Cirebon's Chinatown was much cleaner and more pleasant than the one in Jakarta had been. 

We kept walking and made it to the palace area. However.... If you were thinking Buckingham Palace or even Kensington Palace, you would be way off. Four palaces (called kratons or keratons) were built here in the 1700-1800s when the royal leadership split into four royal houses. The Dutch were in control for a while during the city's history as the area was a Dutch protectorate. These four palaces, which were never grand by European standards are today in various states of decay. 

A goat wandering around the palace

According to Google maps, this is one of the palaces.

Each palace had a palace square, which showed on Google maps as a park. This palace square was a concrete slab inside an ornate wall.

Being a bit underwhelmed by what we found so far, I didn't try to find more palaces. Perhaps we just didn't walk to the right entrance or the right palace, but we were hot and sweaty so we headed back toward our hotel. We took a slightly different route and came across different vendors. Used tools, anyone?

Farther down the sidewalk, we noticed a few blocks of jewelry stores. In the same blocks, but not directly in front of the jewelry stores were individual glass cases, about 3 feet tall with a person sitting next to each of them. Visible in the case was just a calculator and a scale. Over a dozen of them along the sidewalk. I used Google and "beli enas" translates to "buy gold." This is where the jewelry stores got their stock, from locals selling their valuables. 

Tomorrow, back on the train for four hours, traveling to Yogyakarta where, among other activities, we have a cooking class!

Jakarta: most populous city in the world

Friday, we left Brunei for Indonesia. A final example of how few tourists Brunei has… we had the same immigration officer check us out of the country as we had check us in. She remembered us and, because there was no crowd, we had a nice chat as she processed our exit stamp. 

Our flight to Indonesia took us to Jakarta, the most populous urban area in the world, larger than Tokyo or New Delhi, with a 2025 population of over 41 million people. (New York City is #22 with 14 million). It took us over an hour and a half to go the 16 miles from the airport to our downtown hotel in the middle of the day. We had a nice hotel with an excellent breakfast, but it had no internet connection! That’s why this post and the Brunei post are delayed.  

As Jakarta is not only populous but geographically large, we rode the elevated subway to one of its highlights, Glodok, the Chinatown neighborhood that has been settled for centuries. 

Brunei had great infrastructure and sidewalks. Jakarta: the opposite end of the spectrum. Electric wiring was of the overhead spaghetti wire type. Construction everywhere blocking access. When we left the train station, barricades prevented us from walking directly to Glodok, we had to detour in the opposite direction and then go almost a km to find a way to cross the street. 

Once we were headed in the right direction, sidewalks looked like this.

We finally made it to the Glodok area, but we’ve experienced better stall-type shopping in Mexico. 

We did not stay long. I found a bus stop closer than the train station stop we had used to get there. The bus took us to the National Monument about two km from our hotel. However, we could not cut thru the National Monument park because, even though it was a Saturday, the entrances were closed. This park area was 1 km square and we needed to get to the exact opposite side, so we walked around the park. At least this sidewalk was open and clear, just no gates into the park.

We finally found a gate on the other side of the park, so I took a picture of the famous national statue. This 132-meter Monumen Nasional was nicknamed “Sukarno’s Final Erection,” a reference to the former president who ordered its construction decades ago. Sukarno was removed from power by a coup in 1967 and, at the end of his tenure as president, was very unpopular and corrupt.

I mentioned our hotel and the weather everywhere in SE Asia. We had a really nice swimming pool that we used after being out in the heat. Although we saw people in the pool at other times, when we were there, we were the only swimmers... our own private pool.

Breakfast wasn’t the only meal good at our hotel, we also ate dinner here as it was just too darn hot to walk and find a place to eat. So, here’s some local food we ate:

Indonesian fish cake grilled in banana leaves

Indonesian satay, very tender meat

Phillip went with lumpia, inside was chicken and veggies

Today (Monday), we rode a train from Jakarta to Cirebon, Indonesia, a much smaller city. I haven't processed the scenery pictures yet, wanting to catch up on the posting instead. Because internet access is not guaranteed, I'll try to take advantage of it while I have it!

Brunei, the richest little country you've never heard of

On Tuesday, after five nights in Manila, we flew to our second stop, Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll just refer to our destination as Brunei. We didn’t leave the capital city because just about everything to see in the country, which wasn’t much, was there. Brunei is very wealthy, with oil/gas reserves and production serving to make the Sultan of Brunei the richest monarch in the world. During the 1980s, he was the richest man in the world. Even considering his 1700-room mansion and fleet of Rolls Royces, the Sultan shares wealth with his people, providing universal free health care and free education thru college, as well as maintaining the roads and infrastructure in excellent repair. No income tax, no sales tax, no property tax.

Brunei is a Muslim country, so it has many mosques. We saw a huge gold mosque from the taxi as we were leaving the airport for our hotel. Another huge white mosque was near our hotel and had a fixture, called the Frame Brunei, in a park, thru which people took pictures of the mosque. 

We went to the most visited location in the city, the Brunei Regalia Museum. It showcased gifts from heads of state that have been given to the Sultan since his coronation in 1961. Photography was limited in the museum, but we were able to photograph the Sultan’s Silver Jubilee chariot that he rode in for the ceremony. 

Brunei is quite hot and humid, with temperatures in the 90s and a heat index over 102 every day. There is no public transportation system because the locals all have cars and tourism is very minimal. This is a typical street in the middle of the work day. 

Another sight was Kampong Ayer, the world’s largest stilt village. We had to take a water taxi across the Brunei River (cost: 1 Brunei dollar, about $0.78 US). Our water taxi driver offered to take us up the river to see probiscis monkeys, about an hour total time for the trip, for 30 Brunei dollars ($23.50 US). Since the formal monkey tours started at $98 US per person and I had not booked one, we went with the water taxi driver tour. 

The proboscis monkeys are small, light brown monkeys with an unusually long nose. A shy creature, it lives in mangrove forests and eats mangrove leaves. 

We saw a family of them, including an adult whose nose we saw, but that one stayed farther away, mostly with its back to us, so I only got pictures of the young ones with smaller noses. 

While we were walking earlier, we saw murals decorating a construction fence. One of the pictures was of the local monkeys, so here’s a cartoon version what they looked like.

After visiting the probiscis monkeys, our water taxi driver took us to our original destination, Kampong Ayer. It began to rain, so we walked on the boardwalk to the Cultural Gallery to see the exhibit covering the history of the stilt village. Over 1000 years old, the village features over 4000 structures, homes, schools, mosques, and a fire station. 38 km of boardwalks connect the structures. The Cultural Gallery had a viewing tower from which we could get a good picture.  

We didn't venture on into the stilt village because of the rain. The "sidewalks" were narrow wooden boardwalks and they had become a bit slippery. When we got into the water taxi, the signage at the dock warned of crocodiles. Not wanting to become their lunch if we lost our footing, we crossed back to the main city on another water taxi.

We ate local food at a restaurant across the street from our hotel. The waitress said her favorite was bakso biasa (translates to “basic noodle soup”). I ordered it, very tasty broth. The meatballs had a springy texture that I wasn’t used to, but they were beef. 

Phillip had nasi goreng ayam, chicken fried rice, which he said was good. 

We added Brunei to the list of countries we are glad we visited, but to which we probably won’t return. The people were friendly, but few spoke more than a couple of words of English. We certainly felt safe. The Sultan decreed Sharia Law about ten years ago, so crime is non-existent in the country. The local women wore head scarves with regular Western-style clothes. I saw several local women driving cars, so the country is not completely fundamental. Foreign female visitors are not required to wear a headscarf or cover their knees, but I wore a long skirt while there just to be polite. It isn’t the religion that will keep us from returning. We won’t go back because we visited all the main sights of the country.