Solo and Malang

The train journey from yogyakarta to Surakarta/Solo is only an hour but somehow we get on the wrong train so we have to stand – no great hardship and the guard doesn’t mind.

We spend the afternoon walking the town, mainly in search of food – vegetarian food is not easy to find here especially since we’re avoiding salads so gado gado is off the menu. The vegetarian fried rice and noodles we order is full of chicken…

That leaves us a bit sad until we find this delightful street of garden centres. One of the owners shows into the back where he grows his stock next to the railway.

We manage to get our train tickets printed though – we’ve bought them all online but have to print them out at the departure station. And Shaun finds a train, which cheers him up.

We get a taxi out to a waterfall, which is beautiful, foreign and fun – interesting how waterfalls are appreciated the world over

We walk a couple of miles up some steps and a very steep concrete road past some very posh houses to find an unimpressive temple.

There aren’t any cars up there so we walk a mile or so downhill to the nearest village and just as we join the main road a little blue bus going to Solo turns round the corner.

We do manage to find something to eat at a beautiful restaurant right opposite where a jazz concert is setting up for the evening.

Solo to Malang is a few hours train journey through uneventful countryside and we pick up the last train ticket of our epic journey on arrival

The hotel that Shaun’s booked is a gem (especially at £17 per night) – the staff claim it was built in 2005 and then correct themselves that actually it was 1987. I’m sure they are wrong but I can’t find any information about its history.

It serves vegetarian Indonesian food so we get to eat as well!

We spend the next day visiting mount bromo, a boiling volcano in the caldera above Malang. Several thousand people go to see the sunrise there each morning at 5am but we go in the afternoon and have the only jeep on the plateau. The lad who drives it is a fan of English football and drove Steven Gerrard when he visited. His parents are farmers locally, which is why he is allowed to drive a jeep in the national park – a privilege reserved for the people who live and farm here.

The rain that cascaded down as we drove up the mountain cleared in the afternoon revealing nearly vertical slopes where the local people grow potatoes, chillies, camphor and apples. It’s stunningly beautiful.

We have our first beer for a week (alcohol isn’t banned but it’s not easy to find, even in an easy going city like Malang.

We spend the morning before our last train journey wandering round one of the Kampongs that has worked with some art students to paint itself in bright colours in an effort to regenerate and enhance community spirit.

The start of the train journey from mytholmroyd was full of delays and difficulties and we ended on the same note. I had bought tickets to a station fifty miles short of our actual destination. I got the final section online but we never printed the ticket. And there were no taxis at that station so we ended up walking half a mile along a deserted road at midnight with our rucksacks – fortunately an honest taxi found us so we made it safely to hotel blambangan in banguwaungi (try saying that after you’ve had a pint).