In order to be sure we didn't miss ANOTHER Air Asia flight (at 6.30am), we decided to spend our last night in Malaysia in KL airport. Specifically, 6 seats in one of the depature lounges. Amazingly there is actually a website dedicated to this passtime..
It turned out not to be that bad. Air-con, cable TV (with no off switch), nice bathrooms. Better than a few hostals we have stayed in so far.
The coffee here in Java is rubbish... It's also really hard to get anything resembling one. The usual seems to be out of a sachet of a freeze dried coffee and milk mix, usually served in a small polystrene cup. Amazing really when you consider how much real coffee Java actually grows. I guess they just export it all. I haven't seen a coffee machine here yet..
Once we got our bearings, the city we are in, Solo is pretty nice. Someone recomended we go and see some traditional dance/singing combo thing called 'Wayang Orang' on our first night. Turned out to be a bit of a laugh. It was a kind of indonesian pantomine. We still had no idea what was going on, though;
(The Smurfs meet KISS)
This morning we climbed Merapi, the most active volcano in Indonesia, and the one that caused a bit of mayhem recently
We climbed from a village to the north of the volcano called Selo, starting out at 1am. After 2 hours sitting freezing our arses off, while our guide fell asleep under a nice warm blanket he had brought with him, we sat up, freezing our arses off. We caught the sunrise though;
(Sunrise over.. er.. land)
(Pink skies over the nearby Mount Marbaboo)
In total if took about 4 hours to reach the summit. Coming down into the heat was a killer though. The walk seemed to last for ages.
(Kerry, at the summit)
After the descent we spent some time exploring a couple of temple complexes called Borobudur and Prambanan.
Although both fantastic sites in their own rights, the experience was spoilt for me by the endless string of sellers following us around and trying to flog us various tat. At both sites we were decended upon by people wielding t-shirts, hats, postcards, statues ('Hey mister, you need a statue'), model planes (and handgliders), minature guitars and other obscure things. At Prambanan one of the towers had been damaged by the recent earthquake here, so we could only view it from afar. We also saw various other piles of rock, but we were so tired from no sleep the night before nothing was really registering. On the drive back to Solo we went through an area that had been badly hit by the earthquake. Whole buildings demolished, walls and ceilings down etc. Everyone was still smiling though, while they got on with the re-building of their homes. Indonesians seem to be amazingly resilient people.
(The stupas on Borobudur)
(Prambanan, sunset)
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