Travel on: February 2014 (3 nights)
How: by flight
Type: city/cultural tourism
With: my husband
Total spent:
- flight from and to KL 2.2mill IDR; -- expensive because bought on wrong date n had to pay additional fee for changing date -__-"
- airport taxi 60k IDR
- meals-snacks-drinks 500k IDR; (meals are actually inexpensive, we spent a lot cause we bought lots of snacks)
- homestay 760k IDR;
- canned gudeg (traditional food) - bought 10 cans @25k IDR
- car rent 48 hours 450k IDR + fuel 75k IDR
- bus fare to Bandung for two 320k IDR + transport to bus terminal twice 60k IDR
1 USD is about 11,800IDR when I write this
The main reason we chose Yogyakarta was because we wanted to visit my husband's relatives. My husband used to come here almost every year when he was still in elementary school. There are many places he wanted to show me.Other reasons were because Yogyakarta is beautiful and famous for its cultural heritage, people's hospitality, cheap prices, etc.
I did not make detail itinerary for my visit here, cause the main target was visiting all relatives. I just made few list of places I want to visit if we have spare time, such as Keraton (palace), Taman Sari (royal garden), Malioboro and Pasar Beringharjo (shopping area), and Pantai Parangtritis (beach).
We arrived at Bandara Adi Sucipto at 5 in the afternoon. The airport is located in air force area, similar with Bandara Husein Sastranegara Bandung. The situation was also reminded me of Bandung airport. Not spacious, a bit hectic in baggage claim area, only 4 immigration counters, etc.
The airport taxi is monopolized by air force cooperative taxi (Primkopau). The mechanism was we were given coupon and ticket fare was paid at the counter based on our destitation area. The airport taxi fare is more expensive than regular taxi. The difference with the one in Bandung was airport taxi in Jogja is more well maintained.
Our homestay is located about 6 km from airport. Airport taxi was 60k IDR, and it took only about 15-20 minutes to reach our destination. The homestay was as expected, as shown as in the website. The name is Andelis Homestay (http://andelishomestay.com). It is actually a house with lots of rooms, each has attached bathroom/shower, has one door refrigerator (height about 1m), air-conditioned, tv channels (local n kids channels). Room was clean and spacious. The rate was 260k IDR per night including breakfast. When we were staying there for 3 days the breakfast were tea with: [day 1] fried noodle+egg, [day 2] sausage fried rice, [day 3] bread+nuggets+sausage. Nothing fancy, but good enough.
We arrived at the hotel at around 6 or 7 at night, so there was no plan
to travel on first day. We were only walking around to see the nearby
situation. Terminal condong catur is within walking distance from the homestay, only about 350m. From there you can take TransJogja (minibus, public transport which connects you to most places in Jogja, only 3k IDR per person per ride). Next to terminal condong catur is taman kuliner (culinary park) where there's a lot of foodstalls. You can find any street food here. On our way to terminal Condong catur from the homestay, we saw traditional fried chicken (not the floured-crispy fried chicken as in KFC) restaurant named Warung Akam (ayam goreng kampung). We had our first dinner there.The price for a piece of ayam goreng was 17.5k IDR. At first I thought it was expensive for Jogja, but when the food arrived, I realized it was worth it due to the size and taste. Other things located nearby was warung, minimarket (Indomaret), JNE (logistic service), photocopy center, etc.
The next morning when we woke up and watch the news, we found out that the preivious night when we were asleep, Mount Kelud was erupted. It is located more than 200km from Yogyakarta, but apparently the ashes from the eruption were blown to the west (including Yogyakarta). We looked out the window and found that the view outside was like seeing instagram pictures filtered with sephia or black and white. Everything was covered with thick ashes: cars, trees, rooftops, etc. The mount was erupted around 10 p.m.(means about 4 hours after we arrived in Jogja), and the ashes arrived in Jogja around 4 in the morning.
We desperately checked out the news again to see the condition in the main city of Jogja. It was .. I don't know how to describe it. Dusty? Well, it reminded me of a scene in the latest 007 movie where they used boat to an abandoned island. Well, that's how the city looked like. Like it has been abandoned for years until everything was covered with dust.
Well, with that we had to say goodbye to any plan of visiting any tourism objects in Jogja. Candi Borobudur and Prambanan were closed to public, as well as Keraton, Museums, and everything else. It was even too dusty for the sellers to open their shop. The first thing I planned was to buy us masks, any masks will do in that condition as I was sure it would be sold out in most places. Luckily, when the homestay's staff brought our breakfast, he also gave masks for us. How thoughtful.
It was not a situation where anyone would leave their shelthers unless necessary. Well, for us, there was something we needed to do that day. So we waited for our car rent, and went out. Driving was a huge challenge. We hardly can see anything. Our car moved with the speed of walking man. Visibility was only 2-3 metres if there were cars moving in front, and almost 10 metres if the cars stopped. It was a totally different Jogja with the one I just saw the previous day. Amazingly, in such hot weather, full of ashes, in some intersections, I saw some people standing, ready to give masks for anyone needed them, for free. May God bless them.
In spite of the ashes, we decided to still visit our relatives around Jogja in our day 2 and 3. It was a very careful driving, took longer than usual, but we made it. We even managed to visit several restaurants such as Gudeg in Wijilan area (near keraton), sate kambing in Godean, ayam kalasan in Klaten, etc. Well I wasn't sure that the food was totally clean as the restaurant itself was a bit dusty, but we decided to just enjoy everything we found. Who could stop the ashes from coming anyway. No matter how often the shop owners clean their shop, the ashes were keep coming. Everyone waited for a big rain to wash out all the ashes on the street.
On our fourth day, we decided to leave Jogja early. We were supposed to leave by plane the next day, but it seemed impossible as the airport was closed until further notice. (It was not opened until three days later). So we bought bus tickets for us to Bandung (and planning to buy another flight ticket from there). The bus would leave at 5 p.m. in the afternoon, but if we want the ticket we must come to the terminal before that. Due to the high demand, we couldn't book the ticket, or pay/buy online or via bank transfer, etc. It means we should go to the terminal twice. It would be very troublesome if not because of the kindness of our homestay owner. He drove us there and back that day, twice. And let us stay in our room even after check out time so that we could have a rest before leaving Jogja. I was so grateful that we chose to stay in Andelis Homestay. If we were staying in some hotels, the situation would be very difficult for us, we might have to wait for hours at the bus terminal with our big luggages with all the ashes plus dust from big buses.
As for our unused flight tickets, the airways offered to put in on credit shell, which is good, since reschedule was no use for us.
Overall, the mount erruption was unexpected and pretty much messed up our plan. But hey, there would be another chance to visit Jogja and enjoy all its beauty, but when else would we had the chance to experience vulcanic ashes tourism like this :)
