Yogyakarta

The domestic terminal in Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta International Airport is a mess; it actually resembles a refugee camp more with all the chaos and crowd cramped in such a small area. The check-in counters were inefficient and the money-profiting porters were everywhere trying to squeeze some extra bucks out of you. 

Eventually, we managed to get through the check in counters, rest our butts in the departure gate for a few hours, only to know that they had shifted the departure gate to another nearby one 15 minutes before boarding time! Anyway, fortunately we got into the plane safely, had a safe flight on one of Lion Air's new plane, and reached Yogyakarta in a piece.

Lonely Planet describes Yogyakarta as the soul of Indonesia, and I am not surprised. It was the old royal city when Sultans had ruled this island. Nonetheless, just like any other cities in Indonesia, the traffic jam was horrendous. It took us almost an hour just to reach our hostel from the airport, and the view throughout the journey was unremarkable; just plain old shops and slums everywhere. 

Nonetheless, I was impressed with the hostel that we had booked. The design was unique that it has the ambience of a holiday villa, in the middle of this chaotic city! The rooms were designed to be rugged, with kois swimming in the moat outside the rooms and an open ensuite bathroom! The only drawbacks were the mosquitos and the weak wifi. 

We started touring the city after having checked in our rooms; we walked 4km to and fro to the cultural area of this city. We missed the kraton (royal palace) as it was already closed when we reached there hence we walked around the area and somehow ended up in Malioboro street, surpassingly the busiest street in this city.

We were welcomed with the local students upstaging a street demonstration, as well as the usual flocks of tourists swarming the area for cheap souvenirs and trinkets. Disappointed we walked back to our hostel empty handed as we couldn't find any fridge magnets at all! Most of the vendors were selling tees and handcrafts and batiks, which I wasn't interested in at all. 

Anyway, a good rest did us good as we had booked a sunrise trip to Borobudur and Prambanan the following day.