Oh, it has been months since my last post. I should have posted my third day journey months ago, but things came up and I was so lazy to write anything. Anyway, here is my story.
Our third day schedule was to visit the Sultan's Palace and Taman Sari Water Palace. We took a becak ride to the Sultan's Palace first. It was quite early but the Palace was already full with visitors. Just like my previous visit to other tourist's destination, again we had an English tour guide to explain everything about the Palace and the history about the royal family of the Sultan. Since we had already visited Ullen Sentalu Museum a day before, we were then familiar with everything that was being explained by the tour guide. Our tour guide is a nice lady. She informed us that every 10:00 AM there is always a performance in the hall of the palace. This time there was a performance of Gamelan.
Gamelan performance in Sultan's Palace
I remember that years back when I was in school, I did a Study Tour and visit the same palace. But at that time, it seemed that the Palace was big and there were so many things to see. It took one whole day for us to see everything and this time it only took half an hour. Maybe the itinerary for foreign tourist and students are different.
After we finished our visit at the Sultan's Palace, we walked to Taman Sari Water Palace. As we got out of the palace, there were many becak drivers offering their service to take us anywhere. But since we had known that Taman Sari is close by, we preferred walking to get there.
Seeing the place, I could see that the Water Palace was a very nice relaxing place. There are 3 big pools that once were used by the royal family of the Sultan to bathe. There is also a room that was used as a place for the family to have spa.
Taman Sari Water Palace
For this visit in the water palace, we didn't have any tour guide because they also didn't provide one. But there were many "unofficial" tour guides available all around the place in case you need one. You just needed to pay around IDR 10.000 and they would take you to all places and give some explanation about them. Since we didn't feel the need for one, so we decided to guide ourselves all around this place.
My friend Wolfi and I, we were the unconventional tourists at that time. After we finished our visit in the water palace, instead of taking a becak ride, we decided to walk and went through the alleys to get out of the area. I guess you know what would happen to people who don't use map or GPS when they walk around in an unfamiliar area. Yes, they get lost. That also happened to us. But the beauty of getting lost is to know some interesting places that most tourists don't get to see.
Javanese houses in Yogyakarta
It was really a tiring day because on this day we walked a lot and that reminded me of my tiring walk in Prague. Lucky that this time I was wearing a pair of proper shoes. So, after we found our way back, we walked to Malioboro. It was really an exhausting journey because it was in the middle of the day and the weather was hot. We made a stop to have lunch in a small shopping center and followed with a quick coffee session.
Old church building
After recharging our energy, we finally made it to Malioboro. There were too many shops in this area, I decided to walk in to Mirota to have a look. The reason why I went to this shop was because there was no need to bargain. I knew that there was no use to bargain if you were walking with a foreigner because they would still give you a higher price than you could get. Being inside of this shop was really relieving. Especially after walking in a super hot day. We didn't stay long here because we also had a plan to go swimming and we tried to get back to the hotel as soon as we could. We learned that during our stay in Yogyakarta, in the day the weather might get really hot but later in the afternoon, around 15:00 to 16:00, the weather got cooler and it turned to rain. So, we wanted to enjoy the pool before it rained.
As predicted, it really rained after we were swimming for half an hour. So, we decided to take a rest for a while before we went to have dinner. Actually, if it had not rain, we also had a plan to join a Yoga Class. This hotel where we stayed had free yoga classes twice a week, every Monday and Thursday. But since it was raining quite heavily that afternoon, I decided to just stay in our comforting room instead.
It was our last night in Yogyakarta, so we decided to dress up a bit for dinner. Wolfi wore the batik shirt that he just bought in Mirota and I was wearing a batik skirt. We had dinner in an Italian restaurant. I had pasta and he had pizza. According him, I made a better choice of food than he did.
Batik rocks!!
Our last dinner in Yogyakarta
It had been wonderful three days in Yogyakarta. Great times, great company and great places made this a wonderful holiday. I am looking forward to having my next holiday!
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