jetting across java

December 24, 2024

So, we’re in Java. We started off spending a night in the coastal town of Banyuwangi.

The next day, we hopped onto an 13-hour overnight bus from Banyuwangi to Yogyakarta, as the train tickets were all sold out.

After arriving in Yogyakarta, we sadly only had one day to enjoy the city so we ventured to Malioboro Street which is one of the main pedestrian streets in the city and ended up at a road-side warung. I ended up getting a chicken and vegetable noodle soup dish that had a strong turmeric flavour.

Turmeric Dish — The delicious turmeric dish from the streetside warung.

taman mini #

The next day, Jade and I caught the train to Jakarta, despite many locals warning us about it.

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.

Cable Car — The first of many cable cars.

Province Example — Just one of the many provinces shown off in the park.

Two Birds — Sometimes friendship is about tolerance.

Komodo Dragon — You're a long way from Komodo Island, pal.

Tower — Every city has a tower like this, it seems.

Something that was particularly strange was their Disney-esque castle they had, which had cracked tiles and was quite run down, but 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.

Castle Side — 'We have Disneyland at home.'

Castle Front — King of the castle! King of the castle!

Castle Top — Certainly didn't feel like we were meant to be here.

Castle Inside — The unkempt inside of the castle.

karaoke in chinatown #

Later that evening, we got back to our hostel and befriended a German woman called Aimee, who was also doing a trip across Indonesia. As we were chatting, one of the managers of the hostel started talking to us and offered us shots of vodka and gin. After making sure these shots weren’t some kind of home-made concoction, we had a few shots and soon he was pestering us to come with him to karaoke.

Fuck it, we thought, lets go. Shortly, myself, Jade and Aimee found ourselves at 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 drank a beer and watched, and despite the host of the karaoke trying to coax us to get up, we were definitely not intoxicated enough to join in.

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.