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| Sun rise, Mt Merapi |
Does a holiday include waking up at 3am every day?
Well it does when you're in Yogyakarta. By a quirk, dawn starts at 5 in the morning and night falls by 5 in the evening. To catch the sunrises, we set off at 4 o'clock every morning. The outdoor sites are most beautiful at sunrise, but more importantly, in Southeast Asia, the weather warms up rapidly after sunrise. Yogyakarta after 8am becomes oppressively, intolerably hot. When all is said and done, your day has to start early for the sights to be enjoyable.
We did so at Mount Merapi and were rewarded with some of the best sights that Yogyakarta has to offer. Under the cover of complete darkness, we reached our destination and took a jeep through the woods to the base of the volcano. The early morning air was frigid; and, as the first light of the day lit up the distant horizon, it felt like an adventure.
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| In a moving car, my phone picture looks like a low-res image from a video game. I assured you, it's real life! |
The scent of sulfur wasn’t prominent, but we could definitely smell ash. And what I initially thought to be clouds gathering near its peak was actually smoke rising from the volcano.
Mt Merapi is an active volcano: its last eruption was just a couple of months ago! We toured the bat-filled bunker at the foot of the mountain, the last-line shelter for adventurers for a volcanic eruption. It didn’t always work: the last time it was used, the doors were closed too late and the noxious gas had already seeped into the chambers and eventually killed the hikers inside.
The remnants of the old village from the last eruption is now a museum commemorating the dead, alongside displays of melted glassware and clocks and the skeletons of farm animals.
We visited Prambanan Temple in sunset. Though the last entrance is at 5pm, it appears that people are allowed to stay inside until the sun has set. It's a collection of Hindu temples from the 9th-century. Most of the buildings have fallen due to earthquakes, Mt Merapi eruptions and neglect, but reconstruction efforts have restored some of the structures that we now see.
On another morning, we headed northwest this time, up to Punthuk Setumbu and to the nearby Boroburdur Temple. Punthuk Setumbu’s a scenic outlook for sunrise over the mountain ranges. With our usual early morning start, it involved a 10-15 minutes climb in the dead of night up some really steep steps. But it’s actually much easier to climb up the steps before the sun is out, because it wasn't hot or crowded.
We were done with the sun rise by 6am, and Borobudur Temple only opens at 830am. We had some time to explore what is colloquially known as “that chicken church” (it was meant to resemble a dove). It’s not actually a church either, but at that point, you just gotta go with the flow. The building’s a bit campy, but if you climb all the way up to the crown of the dove, the view is pretty solid.
Finally, we arrived at Borobudur Temple. With its bell-shaped monuments, this Buddhist temple is perhaps the most recognisable image of Yogyakarta. It’s the only attraction that you cannot just walk in to. It's by appointment only, and you first need to buy tickets with fixed time slots online before coming.
We swopped our Toyota for an ATV in a nearby village, and drove through the unpaved roads. There were open skies, small plots of rice padi fields, and a winding path through trees. And then, the ocean.
This beach is a secluded area that was previously only known to the village fishermen for lobster-catching, though eventually it had been developed by the local lobster restaurant as a tourist site. There is a man-powered gondola to bring visitors across the waters to the large rock, which is quite an experience.
Because we were already in the area, we headed off to Seribu Batu Songgo Langit. There’s a rather steep climb to the windmill overlooking the fields. And then a quick stroll through Becici Peak.
Yogyakarta is a university town. If there's one thing university students know, it's their coffee. Coffee culture here is perhaps the most developed that I’ve seen, and we learnt after the fact that Yogyakarta is a pioneer of coffee slow bars. I would come back for their coffee roasteries.
We were also invited to a coffee tasting that another barista was doing over by the countertop. He brewed coffee with three different techniques. The first, their standard recipe. The second: the grounds were bloomed with water at 50-60C then completed at 92C. The third was brewed like the first, but the coffee dripped out over a frozen steel ball (a la "extract chilling", a concept popularised by Australian Barista Champion Hugh Kelly to cool down and capture the aromatic volatile compounds that would otherwise evaporate away.) The third method imparted the most sweetness in the brew, though for the uninitiated like myself, I would have trouble telling the difference had I not been tasting them side by side.
We love it here. I bought over four kilos of beans for my own home espresso set-up, while my friend got seven kilos. After we cleared up some of the questions they had (No, we're not in the import/export business. My friend's family are huge coffee drinkers, and me? Well I guess I'm just a hoarder), the barista passed us samples of other beans to sample at home, and recommended us to check out Space Coffee Roaster in the area. And so we did.
There’s an emphasis on filter coffee here, and what we thought to be a merchandise table turned out to be a sampling table. When I went to the counter to purchase a cup of coffee, the barista asked me if I’ve tried their beans before. When I replied no, he directed me to the sampling table to try their beans first, so I know that I’ll be buying a drink that I enjoy. I think the world paused for a second while I picked my jaw off the ground.
We headed over to the sampling table, where a second barista was ready to explain their beans and flavour notes. One in particular was sweet, with prominent notes of apples, while another tasted floral. It blurred the lines between coffee and tea. Would it surprise anyone to learn that we also left this roastery clutching bags of beans? I couldn’t resist the apple-flavoured beans, while my friend located a line of coffee that comprises of the elusive Typica beans.
It's a controversial product: so controversial, that harvesting the coffee beans from the civet cats' faeces for roasting and brewing is the least objectionable part of it. Civet cats graze on coffee beans as part of their diet, and passes the beans out in their stools. The partial fermentation through the digestive tracts, alongside the other components of their natural diet, allegedly improves the tasting notes of the coffee beans. As the demand for kopi luwak becomes larger, making it one of the most expensive beans on the market, the once-wild civet cats are caught, kept in small cages and force-fed coffee beans to increase production. It's not hyperbole, the farm that we were brought to displayed two civet cats in their tiny cages as proof of authenticity of their products.
Was the cup of coffee nice? Yes, the sip that I had was smooth. But there are so, so many good cups of coffee being produced without animal cruelty. It's not an industry that we would recommend supporting.
On a much more tasteful note, we had the most comfortable and wondrous stay at Hotel Tentrem. We didn’t stay in their presidential suite like Obama did, but their services and the facilities were faultless. The gym bathrooms have a huge heated jacuzzi and a chilled jacuzzi.
Because we’re usually out of the hotel by 4 every morning, we missed out on the hotel breakfast. But the front counter had - wait for it - packed hot breakfasts for us to bring along as we left the hotel in the mornings. They're simply incredible.
We also had a wonderful version of Rawon in our hotel lounge. It's a hearty bowl of beef stew flavoured with the buah keluak nut. The nut carries a flavour profile that can be a little polarising, but I thoroughly enjoyed it while in Malacca. Wherever you find a bowl, I would also recommend trying.
We found a few outstanding restaurant gems. We had a terrific lunch at Warung Bu Ageng, a no-frill restaurant. The portions were small, and that meant that we could sample many dishes. The meal was overall inexpensive. Their version of Pecel, vegetables with peanut sauce, was the best that I’ve had. They were crisp and addictive. Lele Njingkrung (fried whole smoked catfish) looked a little intimidating, but it was flavourful and the bones were edible. The head was particularly crunchy. The marinated stews - Lidah Masak Semur (beef tongue stew) and Bacem Kambing (Marinated lamb stew) - were wonderfully seasoned and quite tender, as was the Eyem Penggeng (roast chicken).
When you're done with the meal here, head on down the street to the House of Chocolate Monggo & Gelato for their incredibly rich iced chocolate.
It's another no-frill restaurant, and you know their main clientele are locals when our driver had to do our ordering for us, because they couldn’t make heads or tails of our English or our rudimentary Bahasa. I walked around the restaurant for a bit, enamoured by the rustic charm of the restaurant, and the kitchen staff waved me in for a closer look as they were preparing food. They specialises in goat dishes, and for those who are wary of goat, our food was perfectly cured and seasoned, and were not gamey in the least.
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| Tongsheng (left) and a sharing portion of Tengkleng (right) |
Tongsheng is a small dish of goat stew, and their version was intensely rich and flavourful. Served plainly onto a small shallow white plate, it didn’t look like much, but trust me, it was one of the best stew that I’ve tasted. A stew doesn’t get any more spectacular than this.
Sate Klatak was small hunks of tender goat meat skewered on a metal stick and grilled over charcoal, which we eat by dipping the meat into a light gravy - it’s a little like lontong curry, tasting slightly sweet, and minimally spicy. The singed meat, paired with the sauce, was another highlight of the meal. The dishes were spectacular from first bite to the last. We didn’t talk much during the dinner, because we learnt in our childhood not to talk with our mouths full. And with food that good, I was trying to keep my mouth full at all times.
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| Taman Sari |
So how did I feel about our Yogyakarta trip? Would I really recommend waking up at 3am? That's a big ask. On our last day, our flight was at 9am and waking up at 6am felt like a luxury. But I also have no words for how hot the day gets around these parts. I can't explain why 8am in Yogyakarta feels like noontime elsewhere. The sun was already ungodly hot by the time Borobodur Temple opened up at 830am. We explored the grounds until just over 10am, and we were done for the day. I couldn’t imagine coming by any later; it simply weren't be enjoyable. And as we were walking around Prambanan Temple, my friends remarked that we were just looking around for the “Keluar” sign. The heat made touring the area challenging, and respite only came in the early morning or in dusk. Waking up early is the lesser of two evils.
It took us a while to find a winning formula, to split up the day in the morning and to reconvene after in the evening. We avoided the worst of the midday sun by visiting the local attractions in town: the coffee roasters scattered across towns, Keraton Ngayogyakarta Hadiningrat (the Royal Palace), the Taman Sari and the Vredeburg Museum. The palace itself was plainly built, while the Taman Sari, a bathing complex and royal gardens built to entertain visitors, was more elaborately designed. The attractions can be seen within half a day; though it may be better to space them out across your trip to while some time away until the sun sets, and maybe fit in a different coffee roaster in your schedule every day.
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| Vredeburg Museum |
In a plus point for Yogyakarta over Bali, it is quieter, with a lot less crowd at each attraction. The absence of a crowd of people jostling for photography is pleasant. Traffic is also smooth with little congestion and you can get to where you want to go in decent time. We enjoyed our time here, with a careful mix of indoors and outdoors attraction.
