by Bambang Udoyono

Created on: April 24, 2009   Last Updated: April 25, 2009

Travel Destinations : Jogjakarta, Indonesia

Maybe some of you have visited Jogjakarta or Yogyakarta and maybe some of you have not. Yogyakarta or Jogjakarta is a very nice city in the island of Java, Indonesia. Are there any places of interest there ? These are some of them.

First, of course is the city itself. The city of Yogyakarta is the capital of the province by the same name. It was built in 1755 by Sultan Hamengku Buwono I, the brother of the King of Solo or Surakarta. Up to now Yogyakarta remain a kingdom or sultanate under the reign of Sultan Hamengku Buwono X. Today it is a special province and a part of the Republic of Indonesia. The King is the governor of Yogyakarta. Everyday tourists from many countries visit the palace of Yogyakarta which opens from 8.00 am 13.00 pm. There you can see unique Javanese culture with its traditional dress, music, and shadow theater. After that you can visit batik home industry. Batik is the Javanese art of dress making. They have thousands of designs from traditional to modern ones. Today it is developed not only for dress but also for table cloth, painting, interior decorator etc. There are a lot of boutique selling batik in the city. You can also visit shadow theater called wayang in Javanese language. You can see the process of making leather puppet which is beautifully decorated. They also provide short performances of shadow theater accompanied by traditional music called gamelan. The city is clean and safe. It is a busy city but not over populated. Public transportations is good. Taxi drivers understand English and some of them speak little English. Many people speak English in Yogyakarta. Some of them, especially those who work in tourism business, even speak French, Spanish, Russian, Italian, German, Dutch, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.

Outside the city there are ancient temples that you can visit. Borobudur Temple is about one hour drive from the city. Prambanan is another temple to the east of the city. It takes about three hours to visit it. You can see Javanese traditional dance in Prambanan temple at night. They perform Javanese epic of Ramayana in an open theater where you can see the silhouette of the temple. When there is full moon the view is splendid. Around Prambanan there are many smaller temples for Hindu and Buddhist people.

As for food, you should try Javanese fried chicken since it is one of the most well known fried chicken in Indonesia. It is different from any western fried chicken. They have traditional dressing made from spices and coconut. For those who do not like chili need not to worry because they serve it separately.

If you like beach, you can visit Parangtritis
beach. It is about twenty miles from the city. The wave is big and dangerous so it is not recommended to swim or surf there. There are few foreign tourist visit the beach. Most visitors are Indonesians.

If you like spirituality or mystic then Yogyakarta is a good place for you. There you can meet many people practicing Javanese spirituality. Some of them claim to have ability to help people solve many problems of stress, depression, or health.

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