Tourist hotspot to destination unknown | Yogyakarta & Surabaya

There are two main hubs for tourists staying in Yogyakarta, Malioboro Road and Prawirotaman Road. The former is busy, vibrant, close to the tourist attractions and from all accounts unbearably loud and overwhelming. The latter is chilled with plenty of restaurant and bar options but slightly far away from everything you can do in the city - no prizes for guessing which one we went for.

Once we settled into our hotel, we immediately hiked the 4km to Malioboro road, firstly to make sure we’d made the right choice and secondly to go to the mall; Ben wanted to get his shop on. Once we’d finished dodging traffic it was time to dodge the scammers instead. I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said we were bothered around every 30 seconds, all with people wanting something. The professional scammers had a different method, they’d wait until we would stop and they’d start a conversation, how novel.

It started as most conversations do “What’s your name?...Where are you from?...Oh, I know there! I visited England once, my sister lives in Manchester.” At this point we'd feel slightly suspicious, but ending the conversation here would be rude.

The conversation would take a sudden strange turn “Do you know the cockney for water?...It’s wota, haha, yes, apples and pears” the first time this happened it was bizarre, the second time, in a different conversation, I started to wonder who writes the script and how this got added in.

Then, finally, we’d get to the crux of the matter. “There’s a special Batik art show on today... yes... just over there, down that alley, you’d better hurry, todays the last day!” At this point we’d walk off, making our excuses. As we never made it to the art exhibition I can’t exactly say how it works, but can imagine it would ideally (for the scammers) end with us buying fake batik art at inflated prices.

Malioboro Road was our introduction to the “Batik Mafia”, and they’d often pop up during our time in the city. The one place they never seemed to be was around Prawirotaman road, and for this reason alone I feel we made the right choice.

To say Yogyakarta is busy would be underselling it. There is a petrol-fume fog that hangs over most roads, the low droning of scooter engines is broken only by the tooting of horns. Walking along one of these roads for too long was a sure fire way to get a headache, but we found a better way. Most of the neighbourhoods we found in the city had small roads and sharp turns, not large enough for cars to get by and inconvenient for scooter trying to get anywhere in a hurry. These roads were an oasis from the noise, and although it took longer to get to our destinations it was a far nicer way to go. It was by these lanes we traveled to get to the only tourist site we wanted to see in the city, the water castle.

Built in the 18th century the Taman Sari (Beautiful garden) was once a large sprawling complex that made up the Sultan of Yogyakarta’s Palace Gardens. It was to be short-lived however and by the early 19th century the gardens were neglected due to the complex water hydraulics being difficult to maintain. In 1867 an earthquake helped to hasten the abandonment of the palace complex with several building collapsing. It was shortly after this that squatters moved into the site and now the only buildings left intact of the Taman Sari are the bathing houses, the city of Yogyakarta has swallowed the rest.

As much as we enjoyed seeing the “Water Castle” it wasn’t as old or ornate as we were

expecting, it must’ve been the word Sultan that put lavish images into my head. As we didn’t research prior to visiting, we didn’t realise that the site lay abandoned for so long - I think this would have tempered our expectations somewhat. As we got lost in the maze of small houses that surround the site, we never made it to the underground mosque nearby or to the escape tunnels that used to lead to the Palace itself. For how ridiculously cheap the entry ticket was, it's worth popping by if you're in the area.

If I was going to recommend anywhere in Yogyakarta it would have to be Tempo Gelato, an ice cream parlour that was dangerously close to where we were staying. It first opened in 2015, with one shop on Prawirotaman Road but has since grown, now boasting three stores across the city. Not only was it delicious, there was 65 flavours to choose from and the best part was only 45,000 Rupiah (approx. £2.50) for two large scoops. We definitely visited more than once.

All in all, I’m not sure why Yogyakarta is such a draw for tourists. Maybe there’s more to do if you look hard enough, or maybe it’s just a good jumping off spot for the other things to do in that area of Java. After all, most of the hotels we saw had information boards trying to sell us trips to other places. One place that you won’t find on these boards is Surabaya, and that’s where we headed next, jumping on a business class train and leaving the tourist trail behind…

Before we move on - Train review. Was there a big difference between executive class and business? Short answer Yes. Although business seemed comfier at first with its bench style seating as the train slowly juddered on it became apparent that executive is far kinder on the behind.

We went to Surabaya for two main reasons, it was a convenient(ish) place to get a flight to Lombok and it has a submarine we were allowed to explore. I don’t know about you, but I at least, could not let this opportunity pass me by.

Monumen Kapal Selam (the Surabaya Submarine monument) is strangely enough, the largest submarine monument in all of Asia. It was given to the Indonesian Navy in 1952 by the Soviet Union, and ten years later it was used in the Battle of the Aru sea, in which the Indonesians fought against the Dutch. Although the Dutch won, the submarine was dragged ashore, cut in half and then reassembled as a monument, to remind people of the bravery of those who fought.

I wouldn’t say we learned much while at the monument, there wasn’t an information board in sight, and although there was a film it was all in Indonesian and mainly about the war so that wasn’t helpful. Never the less I would highly advise finding a submarine to go and play in, it’s so much fun. The dials to twiddle, the low round hatches to crawl through, the torpedo tubes to resist climbing into, it was a good 20 minutes of joy and for 90p what more could we have asked for.

So what to do next after such a unique experience? A semi-abandoned theme park of course! In all honesty, we didn't exactly know that's where we was going, we thought we were going to here - the Sanggar Agung temple and that we'd have to walk through the park to get to it. When we pulled up at the entrance we were slightly surprised to be met with a badly ageing sign and (mostly) unmanned ticket toll booths. We paid our entry fee, turned down a lift on a child size Donald Duck “train” and somewhat confusedly walked into the park.

If you were to look up Kenjeran Park online and google translate the articles, you would read about the parks regeneration and about how it is once again a popular spot for tourists and locals alike… that is not the KenPark we found. We found degrading signs and rusted turnstiles. We saw a Disney like castle, its spire poking over the trees, partly facade-less the interior metal showing through. The staff slowly sweeping the ever falling leaves, staring off into the middle distance. Despite the sun shining, it was perhaps one of the eeriest places I'd been to and I couldn't quite put my finger on why.

Maybe it was paying to enter a place that seemed to be both falling apart and being built, or maybe it was arriving at this weird uncanny valley place when we thought we were going to a temple. We did find the temple, it did of course come with two Indonesian lads in bear costumes outside it, rushing to put on the bear heads as we walked up. Try as we might, they were determined to keep the heads on so we thought we'd get out of sight before they got too hot.

The temple itself was, considering its location, surprisingly nice. We wandered around for a few moments before heading to the main attraction, the "heaven gate" with its dragon protectors. I have tried to look into why this temple and gate was built here, but all I've learned is that it was built in 1999 and replaced a temple that sat 500 meters to the south. What I do know for certain is that It's a poplar photo spot and I wanted a photo there too. I think Ken Park is always going to be a mystery for me, I'd love to come back in a few years and see what's changed, as I have no doubt it'll be open.

So what else did we get up to in Surabaya? We went for a walk around china town, a mix of rundown roads and colourful houses; we tried to visit a cigarette factory museum that was inexplicably closed due to covid and we ate two gigantic pizzas at Pizza hut. Despite Surabaya not being a tourist destination (or maybe because it wasn't) it was by far the friendliest city we visited on Java. Kids would wave from their windows, passing vehicles would shout out a hello, we felt truly welcomed. Sadly we only had one full day in Surabaya before it was time to catch a flight to our next destination, Lombok.

Trip date: Oct 2022 Next location : Lombok Former Destination: Borobudur (check out that blog here if you haven't already read it!)