One of the main reasons people visit Yogyakarta is to take advantage of its proximity to the ancient Buddhist temple of Borobudur. Everywhere you look, travel agents advertise tours to Borobudur boldly describing it as one of the ‘wonders of the world’. It isn’t, like, and having not seen any of the seven I can’t…
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Following the disaster of our first trip we tried again to visit the Yogyakartan Sultan’s Palace, this time on a Sunday, in the hope of seeing some traditional Javanese dance. It’s now more than two months since I first experienced traditional Javanese music and dance and I still can’t seem to get the sense of…
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After Jakarta, arriving in Yogyakarta was like a breath of fresh air. Well, not quite fresh, Yogyakarta traffic is of the same shape and density as Jakarta, if not on the same scale, but it was a breath of different air which means much the same thing. Instead of the tacky and worn grandeur…
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You know the traffic’s bad when people can make their living selling cigarettes and snacks through stationary car windows. Sitting in an airport taxi in traffic that looks as though it stretches from the past way into the future, I can hardly see a thing. It’s only 5.30pm, far too early for sunset but the…
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