Java

After a two day trip that took us through Germany and Thailand we landed in Jakarta, which is on the island of Java in the country of Indonesia. Indonesia is made up of some 20,000 islands and is well known for the wildlife in Sumatra and Borneo, rice paddies, temples, Bali, and the bombings in both Jakarta and Bali that targeted tourist locations. We went because it had a good mix of culture, beaches, and wildlife (and it wasn't the rainy season).

We spent two nights in the crazy, overcrowded, hot, dirty, and fascinating city of Jakarta. We saw a few things but mostly learned how many people you can pack into a very small space (NYC is nothing!) and how it might be easier to take a taxi across the street than to try to cross on your own.

Our next stop was Yogyakarta. To get there we took a train across Java. The train took 8 hours and we spent most of the time watching the mountains, volcanoes, rice paddies, and daily life go by outside our window. Yogyakarta is a good size city, if we hadn't been to Jakarta we would have thought it was a big city but in comparison it was calmer and smaller. The main reason we went to the city was see two temples. Within 45 minutes of the city is the world's largest Buddhist temple and South East Asia's largest Hindu temple. Both were beautiful and amazing feats of human engineering.

After three nights we were now off for our next adventure in Bali. Here are some pictures from our week on Java.

Java