Yogyakarta

Another motorcycle day.

This time, we headed for Kota Gede, the silversmith town. It was a quaint little village to the southeast of Jogya and we found “Tom’s Silver”.

Tom’s was quite a large factory filled with young men and women doing hand-worked silver pieces. A few minor purchases and we were off to Tom’s wife’s place- Yoni Tom’s Puppets. From the SE corner of town, we headed to the NE corner and stopped by an old 60’s Sukarno style hotel that was built next to an old Javanese palace (Ambarrukmo Palace). We’d heard of the local KFC competitor in the chicken market—supposedly far superior to the Colonel. Well, the coating was great- but the chicken was still Indonesian “road” chicken”…. very little meat and what’s there was very stringy.

Our next stop was the Kraton, the old palace of the sultans of Yogya. It was basically a small walled city within a city, with over 25,000 people living in the greater kraton compound. The innermost buildings, where the sultan still lives, were built between 1755 and 1756. Our guide was cool--- we joked with him about the lack of wine, cheese and knives in Indonesia. After the Kraton tour, we continued on with him to the bird market and to the Water Castle (Taman Sari).

The Water Castle was reported to be the pleasure palace of the sultan and his harem. We finished the day with a minor shopping excursion down “antique alley” and found a great little place for cold white wine and cheese, the Dutch Café…. plus a charming waitress.