Jawa - Indonesia
The first vacation while being in China lead us to Indonesia. By us I mean two guys, a girl I met on exchange and whom became one of my best friends I shared multiple trips with and me.
I already posted some short and longer trips throughout China. They where not in the right order we took them since I wanted to first give some posts about China and then start with the other countries I have been in Asia. The last one and a half week daily posts where all about China. Starting now I will post about the other places I went to during the semester and afterwards. My aim is to post daily even though I don’t may not make it for the same time each day. So far the last 18 days I had 18 posts and since I explored multiple places in 2016, 2017 and also 2018 there are many posts that will follow. I'm already planning some great trips this year as well, but I want to keep you updated with the past ones before I’ll announce anything in advance. Hope you look forward to it.
Back to topick: This vacation was possible due to the golden week in China. It is an official holiday at the beginning of October where each Chinese (that does not work in tourism or is a police man or similar) has the week off. Most of the Chinese gave us the advice to leave the county instead of exploring China since all the airports and train stations in China are on their limits. Same advice was given to us for the Chinese New Year. Most of the Chinese use this time to travel themselves to visit their hometowns and families or to explore their own country. So most of the exchange students left.
We decided spontaneously to travel to Indonesia because the flight was really cheap and the plan unfolded itself during the journey. Before this trip I was lacking information about Indonesia, since mostly you just hear from Bali. Thus I learned while researching, that it's a Muslim country and therefore we girls were really popular with blond hair that was not covered, traveling with two boys while not being married. But everyone (except two Tuktuk driver that tried to rip us off, be careful with that!) was super nice to us. We got asked to pose on a lot of pictures and felt like a famous pop band again. We had nine days in Indonesia and gladly my temporary residence permit arrived one day before our flight took off.
Jakarta
Our firstdestination was Jakarta, the capital and biggest city on Jawa. We heard howdirty and chaotic it is so we just spent a day and booked another flight. Hereare a few impressions:
Cray traffic all over Indonesia!
The Monumen Nasional.
We where not allowed to get in, but this was on of the religious places in Jakarta, as you see all the women wearing a scarf over their hair.
Jogjakarta
Jogjakarta (also named Yogyakarta) is a traditional city in the middle of Jawa. A short flight took us there and we had two really nice rooms in a hostel so cheap as staying in a dorm in most other places. They even had a pool. Have a look:
The Venezia Home Stay & Garden at night.
You’re in love with ancient temple areas? Go and visit Prambanan! It is a beautiful area with some preserved but lots of destroyed temples at well. We went for dawn and I took tons of pictures so it was hard to scale them down in this blog:
The main perserved part of the hindu temple Prambanan.
As you see, so many buildings have been destroyed and still it is a beautiful temple compound.
Yes, hard to see but the vulcano on the back is active and you can see smoke comming out of it.
This picture was not taken by me, since I am on it (yes, the gir in the middle), so shout out to Sophie a dear friend of mine from Switzerland!
Enough temples, sure not! As to me, I can’t get enough of them. We booked an early bird trip to Borobodur, another temple for a sunset over the jungle. I can’t even explain how beautiful it was. Do you agree?
Slowly the sun rised and I got goose bumps!
Isn't this sunrise breathtaking?
This jungle is so huge! I love the nature in Indonesia!
Borobodur on the contrary to Prambanan is one huge temple complex with to many details to spot and to big to get on one shot.
Details...
View from the temple area. Nature in combination is ancient architecture is so beautiful.
Not only the surroundings offer beautiful spots to visit. In Jogjakarta there is a royal palace plus a water palace and a bunch of bigger markets or shops where you can get traditional clothing and more.
Savety first, well, maybe not...
Rooster in a cage at the Palace of Yogyakarta. Poor animal.
The Water Palace, not well maintained but with it's own charm.
Architecture in Asia is a one of a kind. Love all the details and the symmetry it mostly has.
Bird in a cage at the side of a road, I have no clue who fed him or who was his "owner", but he was not the only one we spotted singing.
We spent four days in Yogyakarta and since we couldn’t go hiking as planned on the huge volcano you saw on the background of a few of the photos since it got to be active again, we spontaneously booked a flight to Bali. Stay tuned for the blog about Bali tomorrow.