Borobudur

The Buddhist Monument at Borobudur

As you may be able to guess if you've followed earlier trips, today could be summarised as "Jan looked at a load of old temples".

I was woken at 6.45 a.m. by an Alarm Call because my travelling alarm was in the suitcase which Emirates had kindly mislaid. I didn't spend long at the 'Sarawati' but the hotel was very well-appointed. Click for my hotel pictures. The hotel served a very decent breakfast, my guide arrived as I was checking-out and we set off for the short drive to Borobudur.

It's supposed to be the largest Buddhist site in South East Asia and technically it's not a 'temple' because you can't go inside - it's a 'stupa'. But quite a stupendous stupa, as I hope my Borobudur photographs show. It was a fascinating visit and uncrowded when we arrived, but starting to get busy when we left.

A tour of a typical Indonesian village wasn't what I expected and I found it fascinating. See pictures.

For good measure, we managed to take in a couple of small temples in the Borobudor area - first Pawon (Pawon pictures) then Mendut (Mendut pictures) before stopping at a silverwork factory. This was next to a restaurant where I had the set lunch (included in the tour price) all alone but for seven waiters and waitresses in an open-sided area arranged for about 200 diners! After checking out the handicraft shop and furniture warehouse, we carried on to my hotel for two nights, Joglo Plawang. I was "well impressed". Perhaps my Joglo Plawang pictures give an idea why, although they don't show the friendly and welcoming staff.

Connecting Flight at Jakarta

My flight from Dubai was almost three hours late into Jakarta, so I was despondent about my chances of getting to Yogyakarta that evening. I hurried off the aircraft and up the airbridge, looking for an Emirates ground representative. A man and woman from Emirates were waiting, the man displaying a board with the names of the connecting passengers, including mine. He surprised me by saying "The Yogyakarta flight is delayed", implying I might get to my destination that night after all. Since I was intending to purchase my visa on arrival, he told me to do so and he would meet me afterwards, as he hadn't yet 'collected' all his passengers. I followed the marked route to where a short queue led to two payment kiosks. 25 dollars US procured me a receipt which I then presented at the visa kiosk adjacent, where a girl stuck a self-adhesive visa in my passport and validated it. This part of the process was painless and accompanied by a lot of smiling which relaxed me a little.

I then entered the immigration hall where a few hundred people were waiting in a series of noisy queues. I joined the nearest line, wondering how long the process would take. Shortly, the Emirates representative appeared, crossed through all the queues and directed me through an immigration by-pass lane to wait with the other passengers he'd collected whilst he had all our passports validated on the special "Aircrew and V.I.P. lane". Then, he set off at a pace I had difficulty matching as he threaded his way through the various passenger halls. Eventually, we arrived at the Garuda check-in counters and I was issued with a boarding pass with 20 minutes in hand before the boarding time. Since my checked-in baggage had, to my surprise, been checked through to Yogyakarta at London I kept asking if my luggage would arrive with me. At first, I was given reassurances then suddenly he took my luggage receipt and sent his colleague to locate the bag. However, a series of radio messages brought the news that my bag could not be located. He cheerfully reassured me that the bag would at Yogyakarta airport by 7.00 a.m. the following day. Since the bag was currently lost and we could not even be certain it had made the first transfer at Dubai, I didn't share his confidence but there was no more I could do so I thanked the Emirates man and made my way to gate F4 for the Garuda flight.

At the gate, I was a bit worried by the young man from Garuda saying I wanted gate F3 and I pointed out that my boarding pass stated 'F4' but I made my way across to F3 where a sign said 'Yogyakarta' (without a flight number) and a lot of passengers were waiting. The girl there assured me I was in the right place. After ten minutes or so, I became a bit concerned - none of the waiting passengers had moved but a lot of people were appearing from one passage and going down what I presumed was the access to our aircraft. I asked another girl who said "No - you want gate F4". I gritted my teeth and went back to gate F4 where a different person confirmed I was in the right place and should board straight away. When I entered the aircraft, fortunately the hint of sarcasm in my voice as I asked if the flight was really going to Yogyakarta was lost on the cabin staff who were unfailingly courteous. The business cabin had 12 seats but only two were occupied on this flight. Long after the 8.00 p.m. announced departure time, Economy passengers were boarding and it was about 20:20 when the door was closed.

The push-back was quite exciting. We were propelled tail-first by a tug coupled to the nose-wheel in the usual way. But we were propelled over 300 yards on a curving taxiway at a higher speed than I remember experiencing before. I was quite relieved when the tug disconnected and we continued our taxiing nose first using our own power! Soon we came to a stand, then moved on a bit, then stopped. About ten aircraft arrived, half on what was to be our runway (25R), the other half on the parallel runway (25L). It was around 20:45 when we finally took off and the Captain announced that the journey should take 50 minutes. A simple but delicious snack meal, a Coca Cola and a cup of tea more-or-less restored my good humour. I normally carry some necessities in my hand baggage to cater for missing luggage but the lack of firm knowledge was a bit unsettling. In addition, with the Garuda flight being over 3 hours late into Yogyakarta, I could not be sure that I would be met.

In the event, guide, driver and car were waiting. I was told that this sort of delay is fairly common. We agreed that we would follow up on the luggage and my guide directed me to the office of the appropriate man. He took details and then located a printed message he'd received stating that the bag had not tranferred at Dubai (as I feared) but would be at Yogyakarta airport for ten o'clock the following day. My guide made arrangements for the bag to be collected and taken to my hotel for the second night - Joglo Plawang. After making these arrangements it was about 10:30 p.m. when we left a by-now deserted airport for the one-hour drive to my hotel for one night - the 'Saraswati' near Borobudur. I had no trouble getting to sleep when I finally got to bed!

Flying to Jakarta

The 777-300ER to Dubai was one of the most modern in the Emirates fleet. Lie-flat seat with all sorts of adjustments and back massage. Most confusing was the latest implementation of the ‘ICE’ entertainment system. They print it as “ice” using lower case and two font heights in the illiterate way of today’s marketing. The letters stand for information, communications and entertainment.

There’s a fairly large Panasonic flat screen touch-sensitive display, either fixed to the bulkhead in front (if you’re at the front of the cabin section, as I was) or fixed to the ‘shield’ around the seat in front. You can control the system by touching the screen prompts or there’s the customary ‘handset on an extending cord’ with audio and video controls on one side, telephone on the other side and a slot for a credit card (to pay for telephone calls). But what I’d not seen before was an extra passenger communication terminal fitted to the right of the seat. This is a fairly chunky touch-screen ‘book’ computer which is normally plugged into a docking station built into the seat. For take-off and landing, this locks itself in position but in normal flight pressing another button built into the seat releases the lock and allows the ‘book’ to be removed for ease of use, particularly when used as a games console. It took me a while to figure out how to drive the thing as the controls seemed a bit erratic but I was quite pleased when I managed to get the latest George Clooney film ‘Up in the Air’ running. It’s ‘video on demand', of course, so I was able to pause the film for a visit to the washroom. When I returned, the film started up again in the right place but without sound. Nothing I tried worked so I asked a cabin attendant for help. She failed, as did two of her colleagues, despite rebooting my seat position. It took about five minutes to finish the reboot and the video worked but still without sound. The startup messages were quite interesting – looks as if it might be a ‘Linux’ based system and certainly an nvidea graphics card. The senior attendant tried to synchronise the playback with the empty seat next to me and plug the headphones into that seat. Eventually, we decided I should move to the empty aisle seat and I watched the first half hour of the film until suddenly, with a ‘click’ in the headphones, the sound went off. The senior attendant regarded this as a challenge and did a reboot on that seat, after which I was able to complete my viewing without further problems.

We arrived at a Dubai covered in a heavy fog. There are two parallel runways designated 12/30. This means arriving from the north-west, you steer 120 degrees. In the other direction, the reciprocal heading is 300 degrees. ‘L’ and ‘R’ are appended indicating ‘left’ and ‘right’ (as you approach). We landed on 12R, which is 30L in the other direction. We arrived at a new and largely-deserted terminal I’d not been into before. I found my departure gate for my next leg and, with only a little backtracking, found the huge business lounge. I spent only a few minutes here, then it was time to board the flight to Jakarta.

The aircraft was a 777-300 with the earlier generation of entertainment system with individual screens which ‘pop up’from the arm of the seat. The system still has hundreds of channels and is ‘on demand’. It also has the slight advantage that it seems more reliable. 0nly after we’d completed boarding and closed up were we told that because of the weather airport capacity had been reduced and we would be departing 90 minutes late. So they served breakfast on the ground. In fact, it was almost three hours behind schedule when we got away, by which time my carefully-crafted itinerary requiring a third flight from Jakarta to Yogyakarta was shot. The purser told me there were eight connecting passengers on the flight who would be in trouble but he didn’t know how the station staff at Jakarta would handle the problem. So I tried to divert myself on the flight watching new release ‘2012’ (fine if you like CGI and banal dialogue), WALL-E (excellent but reminding me even more than I expected of ‘Short Circuit’) and 'Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

We came in over the sea at Jakarta, just as it was getting dark. Somewhere between 50 and 100 ships, mainly of coastal vessel size, were moored just offshore, presumably waiting their turn. But I was more concerned with whether I'd ever meet up with my guide in Yogyakarta and where I'd get a bed for the night. It became a bit of an adventure but it turned out alright in the end.