Yogyakarta

Yogyakarta is known as Indonesia's 'cultural capital'. It's home to many palaces and UNESCO World Heritage sites and has lots going on; however, if you've seen our YouTube video, you'll know we weren't the biggest fans. 

We tried to love Yogyakarta, we REALLY did. Maybe that's where we went wrong. We spent far to much time here (about 10 days), way longer than necessary, and everything we did (or tried to do) was ruined by our far to inflated expectations. See, everybody we had met on our travels through Indonesia up until this point, both locals and travellers alike, had told us that Yogyakarta was an amazing city! A cultural hub! A must-see! You won't regret it! You absolutely NEED to go! 

Let's start with the Sultan's palace. Again, watch the YouTube video, and you'll see it was less of the 'grand palace' we'd been imagining, and more a sprawling complex of semi-royal-looking buildings. 

"Oh well, even if the buildings aren't so great, at least we'll learn a bit about Yogyakarta's history! Right?" Wrong. 

There was no placards. No information about the history. No information about any of the buildings. The only information we did get was about the Sultan's china plate collection, and even that was misspelled and mostly in Indonesian. All in all, it wasn't what we were expecting. 

Moving on from the Sultan's palace, there are still UNESCO's Borobodur and Prambanan temples you can visit. Except we took one look at the extortionate price and said thanks, but no thanks. At around $50 NZD per person for the entrance to the ground floor of just one of these temples (you have to pay more if you actually want to go to the top), we decided to save the money for Angkor Wat and the Taj Mahal, which both cost a fraction of this price. Maybe they're worth the money, maybe they're not, we'll never know, but we are happy with our decision to miss these ones out. 

Palaces and temples aside, Yogyakarta's vibrant Malioboro street was our favourite place in Yogyakarta. The street is filled with lights and music and chess battles and smiling people and street vendors and lots of interesting things to see and look at. Be sure to check out the wax art stores and try some of the famous Yogyakarta biscuits. Just don't take the horse and carts, the horses aren't in the best condition. Poor horses.