The road from Pangandaran to Yogyakarta went through beautiful countryside with rice fields and hay stacks and lots of people cycling around. Yogyakarta (or 'Yogya' as it's known) is renowned as the cultural capital of Java - I wasn't particularly enamoured by it but it was a good base for visiting the impressive temples at Prambanan and Borobudur.

In Yogyakarta city, men in batik shirts and traditional Islamic hats, and women with long headscarves, zipped around on motorbikes to the continuous soundtrack of prayers from the mosques and a cockerel crowing.

We went for a tour around town on becaks. Our becak driver was commenting on the many speed bumps in town, saying "many police sleep", which made me laugh - he said that "before many police sleep, people drove too fast and there were lots of accidents".

We visited the palace of the Sultan of Yogyakarta (there are several Sultans in different regions of Java). There was a museum which was an almost obsessive tribute to the Sultan with every detail of his life catalogued and exhibited - I learned that the Sultan likes ice cream and nasi goreng (fried rice); I saw the royal oven gloves and kitchen utensils as well as the Sultan's socks and belts! The collection also included some interesting gifts he had received from other countries.

We later visited the Water Palace - a complex of pretty buildings around pools of green water.

We walked around the horrific Bird Market where all sorts of animals were crammed into tiny cages; there were baby cats, dogs, monkeys, etc. taken away from their mothers. The animals did not seem to be well looked after and it was quite unpleasant.

We saw a few local handicrafts - visiting a batik art studio with many paintings, a batik factory for producing clothing and other fabric products in batik prints, a leather puppet (wayang) studio and a silver factory.

In the evening we went to the street stalls on Maliboro Street for dinner - we sat on the floor in one stall and had the popular fried chicken. There were musicians walking up and down - a few stopped and serenaded us to earn some tips. One guy in particular was adorable - he had a guitar and big book of songs written in English - he asked us to choose what we wanted him to sing so I picked Patsy Cline's 'Crazy', his rendition of it was hilarious.

We spent a day at nearby Borobudur - the largest Buddhist temple in the world. It is situated on top of a hill with a great view of the surrounding countryside. The temple has many levels, built on top of one another in stone like a pyramid - the different levels represent Heaven, Earth and Hell. There are hundreds of statues of Buddha and every wall has beautiful detailed carvings that have survived in surprisingly good condition since their construction in the 9th century. The carvings tell all sorts of stories - about celebrations, punishments, wars, journeys - often including animals; the quantity and quality of them was amazing. I really enjoyed exploring Borobudur.

One evening I went to a performance of the Ramayana Ballet at Prambanan (famous Hindu temples). It is not ballet in the traditional sense but rather a storytelling show based around traditional Javanese music and dancing. We got to go backstage just before the show started to see all the performers getting ready, which was special. The ballet told the classical story of Rama and Sita - the same one I had learned at the wooden puppet workshop in Panganadaran. We were given a written synopsis of each scene so that we could keep up with the story. It was a quite a spectacle - at one stage they are all dancing with flaming torches and then they set half the stage on fire! It was good fun.