Yogyakarta Day 2

Spent the day exploring the city today. It’s not a very big city so I decided to walk the 20 minutes to the water palace. The city isn’t really designed for walking- there are some pavements but they are often blocked with bikes, food stalls or people and often there aren’t any at all! There are also no crossings so you just have to walk out into the street and cross your fingers the traffic goes around you! Indonesians don’t walk anywhere!

I got to the Taman Sani which is the water palace complex about 11 and I was just going to look around but then this student approached me and asked if I wouldn’t mind she would give me a tour- she was an intern and needed to practice her English. This was great as there wasn’t much explanation on the place so she showed me everything and told me some of the history. It was basically a big holiday home for the sultans in the 1700s! We went to the baths and the underground mosque and to another ruin. Very pretty and she was very sweet!

I then walked to the Sultans palace and had a look around that, though I didn’t enjoy that as much- not a lot to explain anything to you!

After that I stopped for a drink (it was very warm by this point) and then walked up to Marliboro street, at which point it started raining, really hard! So I had lunch- Gudeg which is a dish from Yogyakarta and is a jackfruit curry which was delicious! Then I popped into mall (mainly to keep dry) and ended up getting my nails done as it seemed a good idea in the rain. Got a Grab back (car not bike to keep dry!) and then chilled before going out for dinner in the area around the hostel.Read more