Saturday, 10 Feb 2024
In the morning, we had breakfast at the hotel. The breakfast buffet was good with a wide variety of food.
Our plan for today:
- Tour of Mount Merapi
- Lunch at Timbul Roso near Mount Merapi
- Tour of Borobudur Temple
- Dinner at Yu Djum serving Jogja’s gudeg
From the hotel we drove straight to Mount Merapi. The drive took about 1 hour for us to reach the Merapi tour starting point.
Our first stop at the Mount Merapi area was a jeep tour service. There were a number of companies offering this service. Pak Puji brought us to Jeep Wisata TLCM.
The tour of Mount Merapi includes visiting the following places
- Museum of Mbah Maridjan
- Bunker Kaliadem
- Museum Mini Sisa Hartaku
We were unable to get a clear view of Mount Merapi due to thick clouds. I guess it’s just luck. Visitors who came earlier in the morning were able to have a good view, judging by photos from the tour guide.
For lunch, we went to Timbul Roso near Mount Merapi. They serve tasty traditional Indonesian food with a scene of the forest. Given that it is at the foot of Mount Merapi, the weather was cool which was really pleasant.
From Timbul Roso, we headed to Candi Borobudur. The ride was about 1 hour. Borobudur is another temple that I have been wanting to visit for a long time.
Completed in 9th century, Borobudur is a Buddhist temple complex built by the Sailendra dynasty (a rival to Sanjaya dynasty that built Prambanan). The scale and relative proximity of the 2 great temples were testament to the rivalry they had back in the 9th century.
By the time we completed the tour at Borobudur, we were quite tired. Pak Puji took us for dinner at Yu Djum, a restaurant serving a famous Jogja dish, the gudeg.
I love trying out the local cuisines in Indonesia as it gives me a glimpse of what Malay / Jawa cuisines would look like without Indian & Chinese culinary influence, like in Malaysia.
After dinner, Pak Puji took us for a drive around the city before heading back to the hotel. We were able to see parts of the evening activities such as food stalls and young people hanging out.
Check out the video below summarizing day 1 and day 2 of our trip in Jogja.
Imran Jaafar 