Jakarta and Yogyakarta

We've actually been in Indonesia for a fair while now, but 10 months of travelling seem to have made me more and more lazy, and so I've been finding it harder and harder to motivate myself to do, well, anything! I think it's probably no bad thing that we'll be coming home in under 2 months.
The journey from Coron to Jakarta took us via Manila with a lovely 5 hour wait in a fairly boring airport. However, flying from Coron to Manila was spectacular - rising up over the ocean where all we could see was tiny islands surrounded by white sand and turquoise reefs in the deep blue of the ocean and clear blue skies. Just like a postcard, absolutely beautiful. Strange contrast to 40 minutes later when we began to descend, flying over murky seas, the sky grey and miserable over Manila. The Manila to Jakarta flight (once we finally got on it) didn't disappoint, as we got to play another of Cebu Pacific's finest in flight entertainment games. This time we had to produce objects named outo f our bags. sadly I didn't have a phone charger or an OAP pass in mine so was unable to win a fabulous prize.
We hadn't heard very great things about Jakarta. From anyone. Even the Lonely Planet describes it as being 'hard to love'. So we had no real expectations - a good way to start in a new place as we couldn't be disappointed. As it was, we both quite liked the city (as big, polluted cities go). On our first day (having had no sleep due to arriving at the airport at midnight and waiting until the first bus at 6am) we intended to walk to the National Museum, however it was shut due to the Islamic New Year. So we jumped on a bus and found that there were big celebrations going on in the city - food stalls, games, big podium with lots of shouting which we didn't really get. It was entertaining though, and we wandered happily for a while then found a HUGE shopping mall where we tried in vain to find a new bag, but managed to buy the world's most useless towel instead.
The following day, things had opened up so after a long walk to book train tickets for the following evening we actually got to he museum where I spent a happy couple of hours tutting at how badly behaved all the school kids in there were. And obviously appreciating all the lovely things on show from around the country. We considered doing some more cultural things the following day before catching our night train to Yogyakarta - but instead decided to go and watch the new Narnia film... First impressions of Indonesia? Well, there is certainly more hassle than we have been used to recently (a little closer to India in that respect). The traffic is the worst we have seen in our travels (that was Jakarta though. It is truly unbelievable). The food is cheap and tasty and there are beautiful things to see everywhere.
The overnight train to Yogyakarta (Yogya from now on - far easier!) was... interesting. Long, hot, noisy and I spent most of it sleeping on the floor. Needless to say, we were pretty relieved to arrive and get to a guesthouse. We did manage to push on and get out for the afternoon, although a lot of it was spent making full use of the free tea and coffee provided in our accommodation. We also met a mice French couple (Charlotte and Syl) and had a few beers with them in the evening. I have to confess, we then spent the next few days not actually doing a huge amount. We did some shopping (presents and souvenirs finally being bought!), looked at a lot of batik (and tried to avoid endless scams), drank a lot of coffee (well it was Java) and eventually managed to take a trip with Charlotte and Syl to see the ancient site of Borobudur - a 9th century Mahayana Buddhist monument. The journey to see this was actually the most fascinating part of the trip, as it took us through villages affected by the recent eruption of Merapi. Ash still everywhere, and rivers burst their banks due to the force of the eruption. We were pretty lucky to also have great views of the volcano on our way through. The site itself was impressive - although slightly less so having been to the temples of Angkor and sadly we were unable to climb to the top as it was still being cleared of volcanic ash. Still, a nice day trip, and the volcano was certainly impressive.
Talking of volcanoes, our next plan was to make our way to Mount Bromo further East - hopefully to be a chance to climb one (albeit a fairly short one). As it happened, this wasn't to be as it turned out to be erupting fairly spectacularly - but that's for next time. There's a whole, long, scary journey to cover before that involving mountain roads at night with no lights...