jetting across java
December 24, 2024
After two weeks in Bali, we had limited time on the island of Java. We started off spending a night in the coastal town of Banyuwangi. This was a quiet night as there isn’t much to do in the town and it was more of a stop-over. We stayed at a banana-themed hostel (yep) and mostly had some food along the main strip near our place.
The next day, we hopped onto an 13-hour overnight bus from Banyuwangi to Yogyakarta, as the train tickets were all sold out. How bad can it be, right? Famous last words. The bus trip was initially fine in the evening, but we noticed that the bus would make at least one stop every 30 minutes, and that at every stop, sellers from the street would parade through the bus selling whatever it is they had to sell, be it food or trinkets. They weren’t quiet either, and one seller even brought his guitar onto the bus to perform for everyone. That being said, what did I expect?
After arriving in Yogyakarta, we only had a day to enjoy the city (sadly) so we ventured to Malioboro Street which is one of the main pedestrian streets in the city, and we walked past all the shops and ended up at a road-side warung that Jade had heard was quite good. I ended up getting a chicken and vegetable noodle soup dish that had a strong turmeric flavour.
Afterwards, we went into this ‘history’ museum which was more a collection of assorted Indonesian artifacts, many of which didn’t strike me as.. authentic. The museum also had an unrelated walk-through multi-room horror scene which was honestly more unnerving than expected.
The next day, Jade and I caught the train to Jakarta, despite many Indonesians from other cities warning us about it. We wanted to see what was happening in the capital, with its population of 10+ million people. Our first day we made sure to visit the attraction that we were most curious about - Taman Mini. Taman Mini is a large park that shows off what Indonesian daily life and culture is like in each of its provinces (26 or so in 1975 when the park was built), with a section for each province displaying varying architecture, clothing, dance, food, traditions, etc. There is also an IMAX in the park, as well as fifteen different museums. Oh, and there is also a bird park. And komodo dragons. It’s an unreal place.
Something that was particularly strange was their Disney-esque castle they had, which had cracked tiles and was clearly not looked after, but it also seemed to the main attraction of the park? The doors on the front were locked, but we were curious so we walked around the back of the castle and managed to find some stairs to go up into the building.
Later that evening, we got back to our hostel and became friends with a German woman called Aimee, who was also doing a trip across Indonesia. As we were chatting, one of the managers of the hostel starting to us and offered us shots of vodka and gin. After making sure these shots weren’t some kind of home-made brew, we had a few shots and soon he was pestering us to come with him to karaoke.
Fuck it, we thought, lets go - so myself, Jade, Aimee and this middle-aged Indonesian man went to karaoke in Chinatown, in what looked like a huge plaza. Once getting there, we realise this karaoke is a little different from the karaoke joints we normally visit - we had elderly Chinese men and women getting up on stage and belting out what sounded like Chinese oldies. We had a beer and watched, and despite the host of the karaoke trying to coax us to get up, we were definitely not intoxicated enough so we opted to just watch.
Soon this ended and we were taken to another karaoke place - a relatively regular karaoke place compared to the first. We ended up singing a bunch of songs both on our own and with the locals.
On the 24th, we caught our flight from Jakarta to Singapore and bid adieu to Indonesia, and we ended up crossing over into Christmas whilst on the plane.