The door-to-door cost of travelling from Solo to < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /?>
Yogyakarta x kilometers away amounts to a grand total of 28,000 rupiah (£1.70) for the two of us! Improbable as it might seem, that included a taxi cab to the station in Solo and two’ bisnis’ class train tickets. There are no footbridges over the tracks in the station, simply a dip in the platforms to allow passengers to walk across the tracks. Trains are boarded from low platforms either side of the line and, if the carriage only has a foothold rather than a step, getting on an off can be an ungainly and awkward affair. The train station is not overly busy but there are no seats available by the time we have hauled our luggage on to the train, so rather than stand for what is scheduled as a 45-minute journey we park ourselves on our luggage in the wide central aisle. The journey is delayed for about half-an-hour at the next station and finally arrives at Yogjakarta (pronounced Jogjakarta) three-quarters of an hour late. The losmen, Setia Kaweng, which we booked this morning before leaving Solo is only about 50 meters from the station and an easy walk even with our bulky luggage. It turns out to be a good choice. This old-style building is bursting with character. Situated down a small alleyway well away from the noise of the main road, the rooms are small but clean and well maintained. Arcane murals and surrealist paintings by a local artist known as ‘Bedhot’ adorn the rooms and communal areas. A perfectly restored Lambretta stands on the beautiful tiled floor in the corridor outside our room and there is another in the internet room alongside a couple of veteran motorbikes that wouldn’t look out of place in ‘The Great Escape’.
This is the heart of the tourist quarter around Sosrowijayan, an area of delightful gangs (alleys), cheap backpacker hotels and attractive and well patronized eating places.
We are only a short stroll from Jalan Marliboro the main shopping street, its pavements crammed with stalls selling cheap clothing, handbags, shoes, jewelry and souvenirs as well as warungs offering street food. We shuffle the length of the crowded street, across the alun alun as far as the Sultan’s Palace, which is closed, and back. People are eager to stop and engage us in friendly and inquisitive conversation which always leads to an attempt to persuade us to visit a batik arts centre where they get commission and we would get ripped off. They even follow us along the street to make sure we find our way. After a while we get wise to these solicitous approaches and find that the touts soon lose interest when we mention that we’ve already been to the batik centre.
The streets are full of becaks, the bicycle rickshaws that throng Java’s towns and, even at tourist rates, are incredibly good value at around 10,000-15,000 rupiah (60-90p) for a typical journey, negotiable of course. The rate being determined by a combination of factors; distance, number of people and whether the journey is up or downhill. There seems to be an over-supply in the city centre, and many empty becaks, their sleeping drivers reclining awkwardly on their small seats, are to be seen lined up along the streets and around tourist sites. Horse-drawn andong are also a common sight clip-clopping around Yogya although in nothing like the numbers of becak.
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