All its friends call it Jogja. Yogyakarta is, in all ways the complete opposite to Jakarta, its hard working industrious cousin in the West. This is a city renowned more for its painters and batik artists than its stocks and shares. Here you are much more likely to find yourself surrounded by age old monuments to long dead civilisations than the high rise madness of the capital. Bicycle trishaws still rule the roads in Jogja, thank god we'd left the traffic madness and pollution far behind. We intended to hole up here for a couple of days, check out the old town (what was the Hindu empires capital city) and maybe look for a nice painting for the toilet, then hop on a day tour to two what are billed as two of the best ruins in Asia. The Lonely Planet Travelers Bible compares the Buddhist temple of Borobudur to Angkor Watt, so clearly efforts had to be made not to miss it.

Most of the people that live in Indonesia live on the island of Java. From the vantage point of my train seat gliding serenely through mile upon endless green mile of paddy fields stretching as far as the distant horizon I found this very hard to believe. The largest settlement I saw had a population bolstered exclusively by bored looking cows, the chickens outnumbered the people by a good three to one. For seven chilled out hours we sat in our air conditioned bubble, being served hot dinner (and hot towels!) by a dressed up steward and staring out of the window at the occasional volcano rising gracefully from the otherwise flat landscape, until finally we arrived at Jogjakarta. Finding accommodation wasn't hard, for once the first place we looked at was so clearly the best thing available we didn't have to bother with anywhere else. The owner was also an artist (so it seems is just about everyone in Jogja, if you cant draw you sculpt, if you can't sculpt you do Batik, if you can't do any of these you drive a trishaw, but with artistic flair) and all the rooms were decorated with stunning dali-esque paint jobs featuring melting naked ladies and big hands, apples and gecko’s, all very tasteful.

As with any good hostel, especially those with a common TV and DVD area (which this one did have) we met loads of other traveler types to go on tours and spend the evenings playing cards and watching films with. Anthony from Ireland, Tom and Gemma from England and Viktor and Malu from Sweden. To be honest we've been trying to shake them ever since but I am writing this on New years eve and preparing to meet up with Tom, Gemma, Viktor and Malu for a few drinks later on so we haven't been very successful.

Ready for a night on the town?

The town certainly lived up to its arty reputation with batik 'exhibitions' housed in every spare room, paintings lining the pavement with their hopeful looking artists standing by to chat up anyone who shows an interest (Amanda bought several originals, my favourite is the one of a brown butterfly). On our second day of a planned two (we decided to stay a bit longer because we quite liked the place) our new group trekked to the centre of the old town, a lavish palace and court yarded area called the Kraten where in an open pagoda there was a weekly dance recital.

Dancing Queens

Made up to within an inch of her life

I sat next to a lovely old Japanese lady who filled me in on the finer points of traditional dancing throughout the performance, much to the annoyance of the Americans sitting in front. She was so interesting I didn't even notice their subtle huffs and puffs till Amanda told me later. We also took in a ruined palace nearby which to be honest was less than inspiring, better was local bird market where everyone seems to walk about with two or three chickens hanging by their feet.

You should see the eggs they sell!

To catch the tour bus that goes to Borobudur and Prambanan we had to be out of bed and ready by five in the morning, not something I expected to be getting used to when I bought my first pair of traveling shoes. The clouds overhead (when it finally got light enough to see them were an ominous shade of black and there were wispy, half hearted showers hitting the windscreen as we arrived at the Borobudor car park. The dramatic weather served as the perfect backdrop against which to appreciate the ruin however, I just wish it didn't have to be so wet.

Borobudor Buddha

Borobudur is the worlds largest Buddhist temple, though it's not ENORMOUS it is fairly impressive when you factor in the fact that Buddhists are pretty placid laid back dudes who sit about all day eating a low fat vegetarian diet contemplating their navels (as opposed to age defying building projects). It is unique in the world in that the monument is a microcosm of the whole Buddhist ideology and a facilitation of the human journey to enlightenment. It consists nine platforms representing the levels of enlightenment, each decorated with carved stone relief’s depicting scenes from the life of Buddha and lessons of the faith. You start at the bottom with scenes of greed, hate and evil and continue, learning as you go, possible from one life to the next, till you stand on the top platform, having achieved nirvana. Along the way are 504 Buddha statues (presumably to keep you company) getting more impressive and even protected by their own stupas as you climb further.

Pausing for a photo before Enlightenment

Unfortunately my personal spiritual journey was interrupted before I could attain perfect knowledge by the deluge of rain we'd all been expecting. I had to give up all zen aspirations for this life and leg it for the entrance where breakfast was being laid on in a little pavement tarp-covered cafe. Sometimes being a posh tour participant pays off after all.

The second part of the morning was spent in another historic site called Prambanan, this time the largest Hindu temple complex in Indonesia. It was built about 1200 years ago by a long dead king of a long forgotten empire, I know you don't really care so I won't go into the details here. After skirting past the touts and snow globe sellers we had a very brief time without rain to wander about the temples and found they were actually really good. Sporting the pointy roof design (technical term) that Hindu town planners seem to prefer the first temple was in amazing condition. This probably had a lot to do with the fact that most of it was roped off from the riff raff and so hadn't been destroyed by hoards of tramping boots like the ones I was wearing.

The towers we weren't allowed anywhere near

Around the main temple are more little ones, each a bit more dilapidated than the last. According to Amanda the more ruined a ruin is the better (so presumably a disordered pile of bricks is the apex of ancient building sightseeing) so we went to the very far side of the complex to get a look at some seriously knackered mounds of debris only vaguely resembling a building, which actually turned out well because it gave us a chance to catch a glimpse of the herd of deer that lives in the area.

This was when the heavens opened and what felt like a cosmic bucket load of water fell from the sky. Real rain like they only know how to do in Asia. We ran like headless chickens to the shelter of a little pagoda, which we shared with two nice ladies and their flock of 30 or so sheep. Luckily for us the parks tourist 'train' rolled by after ten minutes and offered to give us a lift back to the entrance. Amanda paid an entrepreneurial spirit a couple of pence to hire his umbrella for the dash from the entrance to the van and we sat with the rest of our group, damp and forced to listen to Bon Jovi on the radio till it was time to go home.

And so after all the fun was over and done with there wasn't a great deal to keep us in Jogja, like a team of intrepid explorers Tom, Gemma, Malu, Viktor, Amanda and I left together the following day heading to Mount Bromo, a big, smoky volcano and supposedly the best view Indonesia has to offer. After waiting in a town halfway there till 9:30pm for a bus that was supposed to turn up at 4pm we finally rolled to a stop and booked into the Lava hotel. Apparently it had a great view of the cone, its stunning scenery and astounding vistas. We'd have to take the books word for that, it was way too dark to see anything. Having organised a jeep to take us about the next day (it's good having a group to share costs of things like jeeps, on our own we would have had to walk the three hours to the viewpoint, then back, then up the volcano itself, it would have killed us) we all rolled into bed, excited at the prospect of a sulfurous day ahead