2005 Journey Recap - Yogyakarta Trip

[Left picture: Inka and Ene (grandma) at Rina's wedding reception in Yogyakarta.]

On February 2005, our family went to Yogyakarta, Central Java, to attend the wedding of my cousin, Rina, the daughter of Mang (uncle) Yayan and Bi (aunt) Iin. We made use of the opportunity to also visit several places of interests around Yogyakarta.

We took the Garuda flight from Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta airport to Yogyakarta's Adi Sucipto's airport. The airport in Yogyakarta is small, and it's not equipped with aerobridges so we would need to walk from the airplane to the terminal. My cousin Sandra and his girlfriend picked us up from the airport and they brought us directly to the hotel where we'll be staying, a small hotel in the west vicinity of the city. Eventually, there was some electricity issue on the hotel so we moved to Hotel Santika, a much nicer hotel in the heart of the city.

In Yogyakarta, we went to Malioboro to shop around the largest mall in Yogyakarta, Malioboro Mall. We also went to Jalan Pathok to buy the famous Bakpia Pathok, one of Yogyakarta's specialties. We also had the chance to visit Kotagede, Yogyakarta's centre of silverwork. And the most important thing, we also went to the most famous nasi gudeg restaurant near the kraton palace, to buy some nasi gudeg for us to bring back and eat in the hotel.

We also visited Borobudur, the largest Buddhist temple in Indonesia, about one hour's drive north of Yogyakarta. Borobudur is simply spectacular. The complex itself is very huge, and it's quite a long walk from the carpark to the temple itself. We climbed the steps to reach the centre of the attraction, the biggest stupa on the centre of the temple complex. Unfortunately, it was slightly raining when we reached the top, however that doesn't prevent us from admiring the beauty of the temple.

After taking some pictures on the top of the temple, we came back to the carpark area and immediately greeted by a lot of sellers selling souvenirs along the way, which can be quite annoying since they would keep on following us and pestering us to buy their products. Near the main gate, I took Inka and Irza for a tram ride around the complex, and they really enjoyed it very much.

Overall, we really enjoyed our trip to Yogyakarta, and hope that we would go there again some day.