Monthly Archives: July 2014

From Yogyakarta

2. 7. 2014

I was considering sleeping over in Jakarta, if only because of shower and doing some laundry, but there was a cheap train to Yogyakarta soon after my arrival, so I went on. While on the station, I found out every Starbucks has the “normal” electric sockets (and later realized the “wrong” ones were perhaps just in Batam as on the train and overall from then on, there were the “right” ones too). So I recharged my poor dying tablet, connected to Internet, found out where to find cheap accommodation in Yogya and next morning checked in there. Went to sleep straight away. Although there was peace and quiet on the night train and it was not full and the sleeping on the floor was all right, a bed is a bed. Sleep was followed by some food, visit of a launderette and a walk around the city centre. Ramadan has started the previous day which doesn’t mean just that there are no food stalls in the streets but also that the sights close earlier. Well, I didn’t really longed for a visit in the sultan’s palace that much. I continued to the crooked lanes behind it instead and it was pretty enough. There are three long, wide and busy roads in Yogya, which might make you think that it is a big city. The reality is that if you turn to any side street and continue in chosen direction, you will find yourself in the middle of a really big but definitely a village. Little family houses with front and back gardens, narrow lanes, cats, dogs, chickens, playing kids, concrete terraces, flowers and the singing of muezzins. At the gate to a water palace, an old man joined me and started showing me around. He was realy very unconspicuous, it took me a while to realize that he will expect me to give him something at the end. So my tour de water palace cost me little bit more in the end than if I had just bought a ticket, but the gentleman was really nice and told me lots of interesting things about a former underground mosque and about sultan’s former baths and local customs et cetera.

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On the Way

11. 6. 2014, on the way to Bangkok

The days flew like a jetplane in Sihanoukville. It is hard to believe that I spent there full 9 days in the end. What were we doing all that time? Nothing, that’s it. Pool, beaches, food, drinks, reading, pool, beaches, chats with Hanzi, Mr. Black, Natalie and most of all Frank. Isn’t it strange that if you do little, time flies as crazy and when you do plenty, the day is soooo loooong? I remember our second day in Jordan with Renia, on which we got up at around 5 am to catch a bus to Petra and then so much happened on that day that in the evening we just couldn’t believe it was still the same one. Continue reading On the Way