The Travel Tales of Julia Sheldon

August 9: Yogyakarta So our bed was fantastic and we were thoroughly enjoying it, until our roommates left before 8 and caused the alarms on the door locks, of which there were 2, to be repeatedly very angry. We waited until they finally left, slept for about another hour, got breakfast at the hostel and then Andy was grumpy so went back to sleep while I went to wander the mall. I grabbed money from the ATM, scoured the English bookstore, picked up a few groceries, and booked a few days of activities for us. Andy emerged just as lunch was ready. I LOVE having a hostel with a decent kitchen. We made pasta with sundried tomato pesto, and bell peppers.  We decided to wander about the town, and made our way towards the palace. What a let down. It was closed, but also looked quite run down. Seems that in Yogyakarta, and likely in other parts of Indonesia, hawking is a practice i.e. training birds to come back when you let them fly away. Surprising, and strange. Th...

August 1: Jakarta Since we arrived at the hostel at 2am, we slept until about 11. We grabbed brunch at Cheesecake Factory, which did not look anything like in The Big Bang Theory, and then walked to the closest mall so I could get my haircut. Niken showed up! She was the Indonesian leader from last summer's Step Up in Ottawa, where I was staff. She took us to the Jakarta Cathedral, beside the largest mosque in Southeast Asia, and it just happened to be the Asian Youth Conference so it was full of Christian teens from all over Asia. Neat! This is especially interesting because Indonesia is a Muslim country. We went to Jakartakota, the old Dutch downtown, for dinner and wandered through a market along the bus transitway for a bit. The Dutch left Indonesia in the 1950s, so there is a LOT of influence here. August 2: Jakarta I had an awful migraine so spent the entire day in bed. Pod beds are great for avoiding a lot of noise and having relative darkness even...