Indonesa - Yogyakarta - First Impressions

Well, I'm finally started my extended holiday. The first trip is to see the ancient buddhist monument of Borobudur. Getting there required a fair bit of planning. The most direct way to get there is to fly directly to Yogyakarta. Unfortunately, the only airline that flies there is Garuda. The Garuda Airlines flight that recently exploded on landing was the flight from Jarkarta to Yogyakarta. This is the flight I would have to get, so I didn't much fancy trying it just to see if it wouldn't explode. Time for Plan B.



The next best option was to fly direct to Solo City. There's a direct flight from Singapore, but Solo is a fair way from Yogyakarta. I found a reference somewhere on the net that you could get a taxi from one city to the other for abour Rp300,000 (GBP18). That sounded like a goer, but I had no idea if such an option was actually available! The backup plan was to get a train, but that sounded like a huge faff!

Anyway, today I arrived in Solo City to find out for myself. I was the only white guy on the plane. I was able to get out of the airport in 15 minutes flat. That was pretty good! The airport is basically a rotting tin shed surrounded by rubbish, but at least I didn't explode on landing! I quickly found a taxi stand and asked about a taxi. Straight away, they said it was no problem and would only cost Rp180,000 (GBP 10). Bargain! Not only did they speak English, knew what I wanted and organised it straight away, but it was cheaper than I thought. I'm off to a good start! If I continue this lucky streak, I'll be having dinner with the President before the end of the week!

The taxi took about 80 minutes to make it to my hotel. The road was fairly modern - a 4 lane divided highway the entire way. I wasn't expecting that! Along the side of the highway, whole communities live in the highway fumes. It was rare to see any countryside along the way - it was continuous city the whole way. I wonder if the highway was built to connect these communities or whether they've grown up along the edge of the highway.

The city of Yogyakarta has something of an identity crisis, or is that a naming crisis? The official name of the city is Yogyakarta, but it's also spelt Jogjakarta and abbreviated to Yogya or even Jogya. I think they must be trying to ward off bad luck! Last year, there was a massive earthquake in the area, followed by a major volcanic eruption and just recently, the plane crash. They say trouble comes in threes, so hopefully it will be very quiet for my visit.

One thing that was immediately apparent, was the air quality. There's a constant smoke haze over the entire area. It's worse than just a bit of haze, it's toxic mist that seeps through the car windows, into the car and them into your lungs. It burns. The taxi driver would often pull out a damp cloth and rub his eyes and face to remove the dust. It's pretty toxic and I'm not looking forward to walking in it tomorrow.

Eventually, I got to my hotel. It's lovely. It's built in the local style and is really stylish. Cool! Tomorrow, I actually go out into the countryside, but today was a good introduction to the "real" Indonesia.