Day 47: Yogyakarta - discovering a city we'd never heard of

I must confess, I’d never heard of Yogyakarta until Lonely Planet suggested it’s the cultural heart of Java and we decided it was a good staging post half way to Jakarta.

What a great place!

It’s got a bit of the Bali “chilled out” vibe, with a proper city and plenty of history. It’s still ruled by the Sultan as a quasi independent state, underlining what a strange collective country Indonesia is.

Our base at Oki’s Omah Konco guesthouse

First stop was the Water Temple, where a Sultan had paraded his court around bathing pools, with the adjacent underground mosque, with Escher-like stairs on which everyone wanted a photo taken.

Then to the Sultan’s Palace, where he and his family still live in a modest little building. It could do with a bit of work frankly, but you can see the scale and splendour of the gatherings there.

Then we headed up to the station, as the plan at this point was still to catch a train to Jakarta on Wednesday. We walked up Malioboro Street, the main shopping street of Jogya, as it’s known, is a bustling frenzy of people selling batik, and everything else you can imagine.