After our pleasant flight from Bali, we landed at Yogyakarta airport and quickly made our way to the baggage claim where we grabbed our bags and made for the exit. On the way, we stopped at a counter and bought a set-price voucher for a taxi to the hotel we had booked online. This meant we could avoid the hassle of taxi touts and their constant attempts to rip us off. With our voucher, we made our way to the taxi rank and hopped into the designated car.

Our driver took us from the airport into the low-rise urban sprawl of Yogyakarta, and we drove along busy rush hour roads between streets lined with retail outlets among a forest of advertising signs as well as older looking houses with orange tiles on the roof. We passed a stadium whose walls were all covered in really impressive, colourful graffiti, then soon reached Malioboro Street, the main thorouhgfare in the town centre. This whole street was lined with shops and packed with locals and tourists alike, swarming in and out of the various retailers. We crawled down this street a short distance before turning onto Jalan Dagen, the street our hotel was on. This whole street was lined with hotels, mostly in a smart, modern style emulating hotels back home.

At the end of the road, our driver pulled in to the All Seasons hotel, the one we had booked previously online. We took our bags into the spotless, colourful lobby and checked in, before going up to our room which was also large, clean, colourful and new. After a busy day travelling, we were happy just to relax and couldn't be bothered to head out, even for food. We ordered some reasonably priced room service food which we ate in the room. It was alright, if a bit cold by the time it was served. After eating we watched some movies on the room's TV, called home on Skype, then got off to sleep.

In the morning we got up in time to go for breakfast at the hotel's large dining area on the ground floor. We had a large tasty feed from the buffet selection on offer, then set off to take care of some odd jobs.

The first order of business was to drop off some laundry as the hotel, being a Western style hotel, was charging Western prices in the order of £1 or 2 per item. Instead, we headed towards the train station where we needed to get tickets, and found a little local shop where we could get our laundry done for 18p per kilo. We dropped off a massive bag of clothes and then went to the ticket office of the train station just along the road.

In the ticket office we figured out, with the help of a friendly local, that we had to take a numbered ticket and, while we waited for our number to be called, fill in a form with our journey details before taking it up to the counter to buy the tickets. We realised that our number was over a hundred down the queue from the current one, and with only one number at the most being called every minute, we were going to have a long wait. We filled in the little form with our details, then decided to go for a wander around nearby Malioboro Street before returning to get our tickets later.

We set off from the station and looked in a souvenir shops on Malioboro Street, where we got talking to the friendly store owner. He asked us if we had seen the batik exhibition in town and when we said we hadn't, he led us out of his shop, down the street and directed us away down an alleyway to a little house containing a display of batik paintings. we followed the guy as he seemed trustworthy, but when we arrived at the 'gallery' we realised it was just another ploy to get us to part with our money buying batik, the painted fabric sold absolutely everywhere in the city. Although the batik pieces in the little shop were really nice, we didn't have any intention of buying, so just had a look at the colourful patterns in their frames before leaving the shop.

As a bit of time had passed and we had ended up further down Malioboro Street, near the hotel, I suggested Lucy return to the room while I picked up the train tickets. I left her at the hotel and nipped to the station, where I only had a short wait until our number was finally called, some 90 minutes after first taking our ticket. With the tickets in hand I returned to the hotel, then we both headed out to explore some more of the town.

We walked out to Malioboro Street again, grabbed some food at McDonalds, then looked for some transport. We had a choice between a little bicycle taxi or a horse-drawn cart, and opted for the bicyle taxi. Our driver took us the full length of Malioboro Street, past the numerous shops and markets along the busy pavements, until we passed through some gates in tall white walls into the kraton, the compound containing the local Sultan's palace.

We walked through the streets of little houses, homes for the Sultan's staff, until we reached the gates of the palace. We discovered we had timed our visit badly, as the palace was closed each afternoon. After confirming we couldn't get beyond the tall gates in the inner white wall surrounding the palace, we followed a helpful local guy who took us right around the palace to where his house was. He showed us a workshop where some craftsmen were creating intricate leather puppets, used in traditional puppet shows where the flat puppets are lit from behind on a screen. Of course, they tried to sell us some of the puppets but we moved on, following another walled street through the kraton to the water palace.

The water palace was part of the sultan's compound, containing the harem for his concubines and baths for his family and the concubines. We paid an entrance fee and explored this complex, with faded cream buildings housing saunas and changing rooms, outdoor baths, and shadowy passageways leading between courtyards. It was an interesting place, though yet another local latched onto us and insisted on showing us around, his tour predictably ending up at his house where he tried to sell us batik paintings.

After the water palace we took another bicycle taxi back out of the kraton and up Malioboro Street to the central market. We alighted here and pushed our way through busy street stalls selling food into the big market building. Around an atrium, spread over 3 or so floors, were numerous clothes stalls and beyond them, a massive warren of closed up shopfronts and occasional stalls selling the same tourist tat, expanding in an ever-dingier sprawl back from the street. We walked through the market, highly unimpressed, ignoring the myriad batik sellers, until a 'guide' came across us and, despite our protests and efforts to wander around on our own, somehow led us miles through the market to what turned out to be his own stall, selling exactly the same tat every other one was. Once we managed to get rid of this parasite, we made our way back through the market and emerged into fresh air on Malioboro Street again.

We spent a while then walking up Malioboro Street, past the innumerable batik shops and stalls lining the pavement. We looked in a few souvenir shops and picked up a few bits and bobs, along the way ignoring tens of requests to come and see the batik 'exhibition' we'd been led to that morning.

Eventually we had exhausted the shops of Malioboro Street, so returned to the hotel in time to change and take the elevator up to the rooftop where there was a bar and a swimming pool. We cooled off in the pool as the sun set over the distant jagged volcanoes of Java, casting an orange glow over the tiled rooftops spread around us.

Once the sun had set we took a seat at a table on the rooftop and ordered some food from the hotel's menu. This proved harder than we had thought, since almost everything we wanted to order was finished or not available. Eventually we managed to order a few dishes, and waited at least half an hour for the food to turn up. When it did, it was nearly stone cold and had to be returned to make it edible. Eventually we got some warm food and ate it with little joy. We couldn't help feeling that although the hotel looked like the type of hotel we'd find back home, the service would just never match up. The service in Indonesia was great everywhere else, particularly at the little local family restaurants, but when they tried to do it like us, they failed.

After dinner we got in touch with a local driver who we had found online, and arranged for him to pick us up the next day for a visit to some of the famous ancient temples around Yogyakarta. With that booked, we relaxed in our room watching movies until it was time for bed.

The next morning we had another tasty breakfast in the hotel (At least they managed to get that right) before meeting our driver Ukhi in the hotel lobby. We hopped in his car and set off out of the city. We passed through the retail sprawl of the city centre before emerging into beautiful countryside of flat rice paddies and the distant hazy peaks of volcanoes. We drove through this stunning countryside for about 40km, passing towns partly buried in ash from a volcanic eruption the pevious year, and rivers flowing between banks of dark grey volcanic matter before arriving at our first stop, Borobudur.

We left Ukhi at the car park of this massive temple and walked along a path through prettily landscaped grounds, a bit reminiscent of a country house back in the UK, until we reached the massive stone mountain of this 9th century Buddhist temple. We spent the next 2 hours climbing over the temple, arranged over 9 levels with the lower 6 square levels decorated with hundreds of metres of deep, detailed reliefs carved straight into the volcanic blocks making up the temple. We looped around these levels, admiring the weathered carvings and the construction of the temple, under the serene gaze of hundreds of Buddha statues in little alcoves and with the stunning volcanoes in the distance as a backdrop. Eventually we made it to the upper levels, which were circular and arranged around a huge stone bell-like stupa, with 70-odd smaller bell-shaped stupas of stone lattice with statues of Buddha inside them.

We were blown away by the design of the temple, its age and kept trying to imagine the amount of work that would have had to go into constructing it. Our enjoyment of the temple was marred only by the constant attention from local tourists who kept trying to sneakily take pictures of us or, less annoyingly, asked to have their photo with us. Worse than any of the locals though was one European woman who was storming around the place with her camera, shoving it in peoples' faces and lying all over the temple in stupid poses trying to take what to her I'm sure were very artistic photos, but which made her come across as a complete idiot.

After exploring the temple, we climbed down one of the steep stone staircases and followed the exit signs which directed us along a path which, rather than following the direct path we'd used to access the temple, took us on a long winding path through a maze of souvenir stalls where we were harried by the locals in attempts to sell us more tat.

Once back at the car, Ukhi drove us away from Borobudur, past a smaller temple with a gigantic, tendril-dripping ficus tree in its grounds, to a little roadside restaurant. We were the only people at this place, and took a seat in a little gazebo built out in the middle of a small rice paddy. We had a ridiculously tasty and cheap feast here of fried chicken, fried rice, fried noodles and chicken satay as well as some fruit juice, before hopping back in Ukhi's car.

We drove back through the rice paddies then took a route avoiding the city to go to our next stop, Prambanan, another ancient temple, this time a Hindu one. The drive took us winding through beautiful rice terraces and paddies, but after walking around for so long at Borobudur I was quite tired so fell asleep for most of the journey. Sometime in the mid afternoon we arrived at Prambanan. After buying our tickets we entered the big fenced, flat compound of the temple, actually housing a few different temples, in the middle of a small town. We walked through more well maintained grounds, first to Prambanan itself, where we walked around a huge stone courtyard containing 6 tall temples covered in carvings and each dedicated to different Hindu gods.

As we walked towards and around the temples, we proved a source of great interest for the locals, particularly some school parties who were visiting the site. These kids took great delight in snapping pictures of us on their mobile phones and screaming in excitement at our height and/or whiteness.

Eventually we escaped our fan club when we left Prambanan to check out some of the other temples in the compound. We walked between piles of tumbled stone blocks, the remnants of some 200 plus small temples which would have once stood around the main temple area. We crossed a wide grassy field past a playpark and some smaller temples, until we reached Sewu, another large and equally as impressive group of temples. Another forest of tumbled blocks surrounded this group of tower-like temples, the remnants of 240 small temples around the main large ones. We explored the ancient ruins for a while before wandering back towards the exit. Once again, we couldn't go out the easy way through the front door. This, we found to be locked, and instead of just opening it to let us slip out into the car park, the guards directed us hundreds of metres back through the complex to an exit, which then involved us doubling back and walking the hundreds of metres through more souvenir stalls until we finally met Ukhi at his car.

From Prambanan we headed back into Yogya, once again navigating the bustling rush hour streets. We got dropped off on Malioboro Street near our hotel, where we grabbed a few last minute souvenirs in a shop we'd visited the day before. From there we walked down a street towards our hotel, and stopped at a restaurant our driver had recommended. Unlike the place we'd had lunch, the food here wasn't up to much and we left a bit disappointed after a far too 'westernised' meal to go back to the hotel.

We spent the rest of the evening packing up our things for the start of our epic journey home the next day, then got off to bed.