Our train journey this morning took us from Surabaya to Yogyakarta, a 4.5-hour journey, where we had decided to stay for 3 nights at the Phoenix Hotel. The hotel was beautiful, built in 1918 and like a colonial mansion in the heart of the city, again we were benefitting from out of season rates. Once we had settled in, we decided that we would actually extend our stay to a week and in between seeing the "must sees", spend some time relaxing and planning for the weeks ahead - visas to get, flights to book and with Kim and Louis meeting us in Sri-Lanka, a holiday to plan! We were also going through a little bit of a flat period and had lost our mojo so needed to chill. However, it proved to be a really lovely stop and we saw some quite amazing sights.

Yogyakarta is another busy city. Hardly surprising as the population of Java is 145 million and the most populous island in the world, with over 10 million living in Jakarta. On our first morning we walked down the famous main street known as Malioboro street which was very touristy. Horse and carts waiting for customers, lots of shops, street side restaurants called lesehan and Becaks, or tuk tuks as we know it. We came across a tourist information office which proved to be a great find and we managed to sort out our next 2 days …….

First adventure out was to Prambanan Temple for sunset. Although the sunset wasn't so good, the temple was quite beautiful. Built in the 10th century a lot of damage has been done due to earthquakes, most recently in 2010, and there has been extensive restoration. We spent a few hours exploring and posing for photographs with local tourists - we are in the minority in Java. After sunset we went to watch to Ramayana Ballet, usually held outside with the temple as its backdrop. However, it is rainy season so was indoors. This was a spectacular performance following the story of Prince Rama, played out with 200 musicians and dancers.

Two days later we were up at 3.30am for our journey to see the sunrise at Borobudur temple, an hour's drive away. Borobudur is the world's largest Buddhist temple built in the 9th century. It ranks with Bagan in Myanmar (which is still on our itinerary) and Angkor Wat in Cambodia as one of the great archeological sites of Southeast Asia. As it got lighter, we saw this beautiful temple in all its glory surrounded by amazing misty countryside and volcanoes in the far distance - quite a special place.

After walking around the temple umpteen times, we walked back to our starting point as we had booked a cycling tour at 8.00am. We were whisked off in to the farmlands and seemed to be a million miles from anywhere. The scenery was great, lots of rice terraces, chilli plantations, mango trees and no end of farmland growing a huge variety of crops - who knew there was purple and green aubergine. Our highlight was being introduced to a village where their main industry was pottery with pottery wheels turned by hand. Even better there seemed to be a whole school of 7- year olds visiting at the same time and we seemed to be the highlight! The children took our hand and placed it on their face - we learned that this was a sign of respect.

After sitting down to Jasmine tea and homemade cassava crisps and biscuits (delicious by the way), Heather was asked if she would like to try her hand at throwing some clay on to the wheel, which of course she did. Her "teacher" in her limited English likened the scenario to the one in the film Ghost. A really enjoyable hour with the children and trying out some pottery we waved goodbye after numerous photos, and carried on our cycling through the countryside and local markets, before meeting our transport to take us back to the city.

Our final outing was to the Palace which is still used by the Sultan and his Family and every Sunday they have Javanese dancing which was really so great to watch - fabulous costumes and amazingly delicate dance movements.

Our week was over too quickly and it was time to move on …………………………