Temple Time in Yogya(karta)

After a lot of nature yesterday, we spent our second day in Yogyakarta (aka. „Yogya“) in the city. 🏙️ In the morning we had some coffee ☕️ at the really nice and cosy „Fill in Blue“ café, booked our flight ✈️ from Yogyakarta (Java) to Denpasar (Bali) as well as a room for 1 night there.

Initially, I wanted to travel to Malang to start a tour to Mt. Bromo 🌋 but the train connection was anything but ideal and some of the fellow travellers I met (with whom I get along very well) wanted to fly to Bali - so I simply joined them now. We are planning to explore the islands 🏝️ of Bali and Lombok. Depending on the availability of the ferry and accommodation we might spend a couple of days on Bali before we head on to Lombok (it is supposed to be the nicer one of the two islands).

After organizing the basics for the next few days, we walked to Tamam Sari (a water temple built in the 18th century) and strolled around in and outside the area. On the way we picked up some samosa-like pieces from a local bakery 🥯 and continued our 25 min. march to our first destination of the day.
The water temple 🏛️ seems to be a very nice blend of Javanese architecture influenced by a European style making the temple look special.
It was super-hot 🔥 and humid so we were grateful for every bit of shade and wind 🌬️ that provided some relieving cold. We sat for a while in the tower the sultan has built to be able observe his bathing concubines.
Our second (and last) stop for that day was the Prambanan temple - supposedly the most beautiful temple of Indonesia 🇮🇩 it is a huge and nicely maintained area with massive ancient looking buildings that host many Hindu gods. Besides us tourists there were literally hundreds of pupil 👩‍🎓from different schools 🏫 that were hunting for interviews with the European looking man and women amongst us for some school project or so. For obvious reasons, people with pale skin (and preferably blonde hair) are a real attraction here in Indonesia. I have seen already all sorts of ways (kind and cheeky) by the locals to get a highly desired photo 📸 with one or more of the white „celebrities“ 😅 The pupils at Prambanan were really nice and quite shy though. So, all of them greeted nicely but only a few of them asked for a photo. I guess my fellow travellers were quite happy it was that way 😂
After walking the area and visiting all of the buildings, we sat down at a outdoor cafeteria and waited for the sunset 🌅 which provided the opportunity for some additional colourful pictures of the sight that belongs to the UNESCO World Heritage nowadays.

After sunset we drove back to our hostels. Like the day before, I spent the time until dinner in the hostel of my newly found friends. For dinner we went to another local place. The food was good but not enough to get stuffed - especially not after a day with a lot of walking 🚶‍♂️ (approx. 25.000 steps) and no real lunch 😅
So I got some ice cream from Indonesia’s finest (House of Chocolate Monggo & Gelato Tirtodipuran) on our way to another high class restaurant where we all had some beer 🍺 or wine 🍷 before we called it a day.Read more