After an eventful Christmas I headed back to Pontianak on Boxing day. I decided to ditch the idea of getting to gunung palu national Park as it would have taken around 3 days to get there and then I’d have to sort out a guide. The limitations of having a 30 day visa in a country where it takes quite a while to get anywhere reared their head again so I hopped on a cheap flight to Jakarta instead. I figured I could spend a week or so checking out a little bit of central/eastern java before heading back to Kalimantan.

I arrived in Jakarta close to midnight thanks to a 3 hour delay. Its strange how every time the flights that you have to rush to check in on time always end up being delayed. This time around I spent over an hour walking around trying to find a bemo (shared taxi) to the airport. The guidebook claims that they do exist but buggered if I could find one. I was a bit pissed about the delay because I was told that the airport buses into town stopped running in the evening so I’d have to get a taxi. Luckily the info was wrong and I got dropped off at one of the train stations near the national monument, a giant white obelisk which is more commonly known as ‘Soehato’s last erection’.

I only stayed in Jakarta one day and that was more than enough. It was huge city with the worst traffic I’d seen so far. I wandered around a few different areas most of which had huge shopping malls. At times I felt like I was walking through Sydney CBD. I was basically killing time until I could get on the overnight train to Yogyakarta. So after a movie (national treasure 2, it was predictable but for $2 if was pretty damn cheap) and internet I was waiting at the station. I bought a business class ticket earlier in the day but didn’t realize that there were economy tickets which were 4 times cheaper than the one I got. Glad I didn’t get one as business class meant that you got a seat. Having an economy ticket means that you squash yourself into any available room on the floor. The aisle was absolutely packed and I wish I had of taken a photo of everyone sleeping because it looked like a giant tin of sardines. Fortunately, Indonesians have an uncanny ability to be able to sleep anywhere, even in positions that cirque du Soliel contortionists would feel uncomfortable in. I, on the other hand, have the ability to stay awake on any form of transport no matter how good the seat is. In this case the seat was a straight backed piece of shit that ended below the top of my shoulders. 12 hours later I was in yogyakarta.

The weather was absolutely shithouse when I got off the train and it didn’t get much better for the rest of the week. I later found out that the end of December/start of January is traditionally the worst time of year for rain. Parts of central java were already experiencing major flooding and mudslides. I spent 3 days in Yogyakarta. My main reason for visiting was to check out the World Heritage listed Buddhists temples of Prambanan and Borobudur. They were definitely worth the trip. After checking out the kraton (Sultan’s palace – not interesting at all) and the water temple (also very crap) I joined a Korean guy on a trip to borobudur. We thought that there was a good chance that it would be quite because of the poor weather in the morning. Unfortunately everyone else had the same idea. It was absolutely packed with groups of locals on holidays (we didn’t realize it was a holiday long weekend). Strangely most of the groups seemed more interested in me than they were in the temple. I lost count of how many people asked to have a photo with me. The poor old Korean guy felt a bit left out because hardly anyone wanted a photo with him. Being of Asian descent he obviously wasn’t exotic enough.

The temple had seven or so levels, each with intricate carved reliefs or various stories about the life of Buddha. The top level had stupas containing statues of Buddha. Legend has it that if you reach in and touch the statue then you get good luck. It must have worked because the next day I managed to sneak in to the temples at prambanan for free. Not bad considering they charge foreign tourists$10US entry. Locals only pay 10000 rupiah (about 10 times less). I had accidentally walked along the wrong road to get to the temples and found myself near the exit. There was no security so I just walked through. It must have been pretty obvious that I’d snuck in because I was the only person walking in the wrong direction. Apparently you’re meant to walk clockwise around any Buddhist temple. Maybe because I went the wrong direction, or maybe because of bad kharma from not paying, I started having a splitting headache and feeling generally crap. As a result I didn’t stay that long at the temples. I didn’t miss out on anything really because an earthquake in 2006 had caused some internal damage to the temples. Previously you could walk into each temple and see the large statues of the various gods that each temple was built for. Now the area is fenced off and you just walk around the outside. Their size was definitely impressive though and they reminded me of the temples in Tikal, Guatemala.