Indonesia
Despite its size and population, 4th most populous country, we knew very little about Indonesia. I guess that we are not alone in this and that many may even struggle to locate Indonesia on the map.
This extract from Wikipedia sums up some of the statistics:
Indonesia,[a] officially the Republic of Indonesia (Indonesian: Republik Indonesia), is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guinea. Indonesia is the world's largest archipelagic state and the 14th-largest country by area, at 1,904,569 square kilometres (735,358 square miles). With around 279 million people, Indonesia is the world's fourth-most populous country and the most populous Muslim-majority country. Java, the world's most populous island, is home to more than half of the country's population.
Indonesia is a presidential republic with an elected legislature. It has 38 provinces, of which nine have special status. The country's capital, Jakarta, is the world's second-most populous urban area. Indonesia shares land borders with Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and the eastern part of Malaysia, as well as maritime borders with Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia, Palau, and India. Despite its large population and densely populated regions, Indonesia has vast areas of wilderness that support one of the world's highest levels of biodiversity.
From our very short travels my summary would be “friendly welcoming people, crowded cities with inherent air pollution, heat, verdant jungle, volcanoes, continual threat of earthquake/ tsunami”.
Although predominantly Muslim, there is religious freedom and we visited Hindu and Buddhist temples. Christianity came with colonisation, the Portuguese and the Dutch, there is now a rapidly growing Chinese Christian Calvinist church presence; our German friends went to the church In Jakarta. They texted that it was similar to a concert hall, with about 5000 people attending.
The large population density means that there is not much personal space: families often live in very crowded conditions, the markets, transport (unless you book business, way beyond the budget of most Indonesians) and public spaces are heaving with people. Yet we saw no frayed tempers or irritability. The calmness of people, despite heat and crowding, is remarkable.
We only spent 1 night in Jakarta, and much of that seemed to be in a traffic queue! Jakarta is sinking and is so overcrowded that journeys into or across the city take hours. The Indonesian government has decided to create a new capital city in Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo. It will be called Nusantara and is due to be inaugurated in August 2024. This project was conceived in 2019, work began in 2022. Just wondering what our government has achieved since 2019?? This new city is also purposed as part of the “ levelling up” agenda, and improve equality between Java and the other islands.
As we left Jakarta for Yogyakarta (in our comfortable, air conditioned, business class seats) we were delighted to see some greenery amongst the concrete and glass, but I was glad to leave the high-rise buildings, and overcrowded shanties of this earthquake zone city. 
Yogyakarta
Booking trains in Java was quite straightforward. We booked on line and were emailed a bar code that we scanned at the station. This then issues a boarding pass/ ticket, which allows you onto the platform and to board the train.
The train journey to Yogyakarta was 6.5 hours and cost £16 each in executive class. It was comfortable, airconditioned and spacious. A buffet trolley sold hot and cold food.
It took us through the mountains and past hundreds of paddy fields. We glimpsed workers in the fields (no mechanisation to be seen), and children splashing in the irrigation channels and making kites from plastic throwaways. There was much land that was just left to nature. At each level crossing a crowd of scooters loaded with people, shopping, straw bales etc waiting to cross.
Yogyakarta has plenty of history, we saw a tiny part. Thomas Stamford Raffles was governor General in Java in the 19c, he also had a keen interest in archaeology and organised the unearthing, surveying and cataloguing of temples including Borobudur (Buddhist) and Prambanan (Hindu) temples.
We hired a driver /guide for the day and visited both these Temples.
It was a Saturday and, particularly at Prambanan, the Indonesian tourists and school parties were out in full. We were quite the attraction, actually it became quite difficult to look around the ruins. Everyone even the adults wanted to practise their English and have a photo with the “ long noses”! 
A group of teachers were on a training day, they were particularly interested to chat with us. By the way, Val did not instigate all these interactions, in fact it made sightseeing quite disjointed! 
We realised how little we know of the stories and beliefs of these 2 religions. At Borobudur the guide had particularly good English and it was good to learn more about the Buddhist beliefs and rituals. It also made us consider how it is for someone who has never heard the Christian/Judaic stories to hear them for the first time and to try to understand their meaning. All the temples had intricate carvings telling the stories of their faith.
These temples shared many characteristics with Angkor Wat (though they are older). Including the need to approach gods on your knees.
Links to our 2019 Cambodia and the Mekong Delta trip.
We then visited the Merapi volcano by jeep.
It was a bit of a tourist gimmick and although we were lead to believe we could get close there is actually a 5km exclusion zone ( with hind sight that’s a good thing as today the Marapi volcano on Sumatra has erupted with loss of life).
The lava flow is quarried for construction materials and lorries loaded with volcanic rock pile into the city each evening. The tour also took us to a bunker where you can seek safety in the event of an eruption. It seems most people die in these bunkers, I wouldn’t fancy my chances in a concrete and metal shelter with molten lava flowing past! There’s a “ museum” or collection of artefacts salvaged from the last catastrophic eruption of Merapi in 2010 . It’s a little strange looking at the remnants of people’s homes and livelihoods, a tourist attraction from a disaster. 
This bottle crate illustrates the heat: it was outside a house close to, but not in the lava flow, the heat melted the crate and left the bottles.
Our journey back to Yogykarta took us through more farming land. Very small scale farming, each field less than an acre, of tobacco, cassava, chilli, rice, tropical fruits, palm fruits.
Yogyakarta is the only Indonesian city still ruled by a monarchy, and is considered a cultural centre in Java. Dance , batik, puppetry, music, silversmithing all form part of its attraction. We visited the palace on the Sunday which is the day of the traditional dances accompanied by the Gamelan ( tradition music ensemble), many Indonesian tourists enjoying these performances. 
Again, we realised how few of these traditional stories we understood. It made us appreciate how difficult it must be for new to UK families to understand our “fairy tales” and traditional stories.
In the evening we ate at House of Rameton, it’s a family diner (Damons or TJ Friday equivalent). Our previous day’s driver had recommended this. Extended families enjoying an evening out to celebrate, sitting at low tables with very low chairs! We along with a few other Europeans were given seats at high tables, they know about our inflexibility! We had a really good meal, sides, desert and drinks and the total bill was £7. As we found in most of our travels, eat where the locals eat!
We had intended to walk within the city, but the heat, the traffic and erratic pavements (can pavements be erratic?!) curbed our enthusiasm. We had downloaded the Grab app ( Asian Uber) and this was the easiest way to get around the city, but it doesn’t help the pollution problem. Most people use scooters, even for family travel. See the view from our hotel window!
Yogyakarta was also Our last launderette visit ...this was a little different as the owner had gone to church. The neighbouring shop told us to leave the clothes, pop them over the cardboard door, and she would WhatsApp us later (all translated by a passer by who spoke some English). We wondered if we would ever see our clothes again, but the clean and folded laundry was returned to the hotel reception just as promised! We would miss our laundry visits! 
Next stop Surabaya
This featured blog entry was written by Valfowles from the blog Granny on the rails ( Part 3).
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