Day 3 : Central Java

we arrived in Solo in the wee hours of the morning. thank god the bus driver dropped us right in front of the Grand Setiakawan Hotel . it is pretty creepy if we were at the terminal at that time of the day ( we saw it during the day.. boy are we lucky we didnt go there! hehe).

a bit of background check.. Solo the short name for Surakarta, is a major city in Central Java, Indonesia. Together with Yogyakarta, these two cities are heirs of the Mataram kingdom that was split in 1755.

we headed out to pasar klewer .. to see how does the most hyped up batik solo all about. pasar klewer turned out to be everything batik. and its nice batik, mind you. the kind my grandma always tell me to get for her, but i just never found em. well, i found em in solo. its so soft its unbelievable. i duno why i bought so little. maybe cos i wanted to cabot from the custom who asked too much (that of course will be covered it the last part of this chains of entries).

we went to kraton (which is istana / castle in indonesian), just behind the pasar klewer. just like what i saw on the net.. their kraton is very much different from ours. its like a block of single storey bungalow.. with huge compounds.. and no slippers in the compounds for you are not allowed to bring out any of those black sands. it is believed those sands are to jinx out your jinx. hmm..

we took a horse cart back to our hotel.. a good way to actually see the town, especially when u're running short of time. we have to rush back to the hotel, to take another bus to jogja. its their rainy season & we dont want to reach the prambanan, wet (which, we did).

the bus ride to jogja was brief.. and we were entertained by their seniman jalanan.. or seniman bus i would call em. most of them sang letto's sebelum cahaya.. which we love! 1 guy sang it so well.. we gave him hersheys! *LOL*

the most upsetting thing was when we got to prambanan.. not only it was gonna close in 30minit..and starting to rain.. we managed to get our tix as a local.. which means.. paying on Rp8,000. tourists had to pay Rp80,000!! tapi sampai2 kat gate tu.. they took 1 look at me & asked.. "tamunya dari mana mbak?".. referring to the japanese looking tim & nini.. *LOL* kantoiiiii.... they asked for out KTP (kartu tunjuk pengenalan.. or sumthin).. and as we fibbed our way out saying its in our backpack..bla bla bla.. well.. we didnt get through em. damn! i thought they would have just let us in.. i mean.. its like 30 mins to closing & its raining, just let us through for god's sake!

dengan kehampaan.. kiteorg pun blah.. and got a bus to restoran ayam goreng nyonya suharti..we havent had a thing running in our bellies since morning! it was reallllyyyyyy good... especially the gado-gado. but m pretty sure its becos we were starving. hahaha!

but i can say i already liked yogyakarta. minus the fact that upon our arrival in our Sri Wibowo hotel, we watched kuch kuch hota hei in indonesian *LOL* .

spendings (for 3):

Transportation

taksi to pasar klewer : Rp16,000
Kraton entrance : Rp12,000
Horsie cart ride : Rp20,000
Bus to Jogja : Rp24,000
Bus to Rest. Ny. Suharti : Rp12,000
Taksi to hotel in Malioboro : Rp23,000

Food

Rstoran Ayam Goreng Nyonya Suharti : Rp137,000

Hotel

Sri Wibowo (off Jl Malioboro ) : Rp209,000