Sheila writes:

We've survived the biggest traffic jam in Java - a 6 hour bus trip around the Jakarta ring road - with literally hours of stationary traffic! After our brief stopover in Bandung (strangely highlighted for us by a welcome visit to a modern cinema complex to see the Quantum of Solace!) we had a brilliant train trip from Bandung across West Java to Jogjakarta (known locally as Yogya), with spectacular views of distant volcanoes and much closer views of rice paddy fields, steeply terraced slopes, all sorts of crops (cassava, sweet corn, chillies, beans, peanuts, al intensively planted in every flat patch of land.

Visited a massive active volcano today near Yogya - Mt Merapi - which last erupted in 2006, spewing out masses of ash, boulders etc. The scale of deposits and subsequent erosion is quite literally awesome! We vistied a small village obliterated by the last eruption (covered in ash, stone and boulder debris) but sadly couldn't see the entire massive cone of the volcano because its the rainly seeason and there was low cloud and rain on the way!

We also had to visit Borobudur, an amazin Buddhist temple just outside Yogya, so that we could compare it with Angkor Wat which we visited in Cambodia a few weeks ago. The geometry of the temple is interesting - square at the base and circular at the top, with hundereds of statues of Buddha. We were accosted at every turn by students of English wanting to practice their language skills on us, ahead of their creative English conversation exam later in the day! I'm sure they thought we were really mad - asking all sorts of questions and sendng them into fits of laughter with out attempts at Indonesian!

Off to Mt Bromo (West Java) and Bali for the end of the week