Greetings from Yogya!

Hello, World!
I'm sitting in a shabby internet cafe in Yogyakarta as I write this post. The past few days have been kinda nice, except for the fact that I spent most of them in bed. Apparently (as the lady dokter told me yesterday), I have a hypersenstive digestive system, and had too much acid in it. So, the morning before we departed, it started... I'd been on Paracetamol since. The flight was short, but I spent most of it holding my belly. When we got to Jakarta, we looked for a guesthouse first, and when we found one, I lied down and didn't get up again until the next day, when it was a bit better. After breakfast (I had tea), we went to the train station, and took a train - Eksekutif Klas - to Bandung, which was supposed to be nicer and less smelly than Jakarta. Oh yeah... Jakarta is probably the most ugly city I've ever seen, even if I haven't seen much of it. Thousands of cars and motorbikes, and they seem to have never heard of catalysts. So exhaust fumes all over the place... no wonder the life expectancy there is so short.
Speaking of traffic, people here drive wildly different. "Lack of risk awareness" is how the German foreign affairs office calls it on their website. Consequently, the car drive from Bandung to Pangandaran after we got off the train was an adventure by itself. The seven of us plus our driver "Lili" all crammed into a Jeep with 2 seats in front, a bench in the back (4 people) and two with most of the backpacks in the trunk... Then a seven hour drive. Fun times.
Pangandaran was pretty nice though. The guesthouse was pretty comfortable, but the tap water was still "Air tidak minum" - undrinkable water. The bottled water they have here seems to all be the same brand: Aqua, by Danone...
Anyways, I pretty much went to bed again right away, and stayed there for about 24h... I seem to have missed a nice day of surfing and trekking and national park sightseeing. But at least in the evening I was well enough to get out again... well, not really, but I was just terribly bored. So I joined the others on the beach, and we played a bit of music on Danny's brother's guitar, and were later joined by a few other Locals. That was fun! Oh yeah, and Danny (Surfer guy from Pangandaran) tried to convince Katja, who is tall and blonde, to marry him. Much to his dismay, she didn't seem to like the idea too much.
After two nights there, we took the Becak to the bus station, the bus to the train station (2h), and the train to Yogya. The bus was even worse than our trip in the car, but at least it was a bit more spacious, and weird music was playing. I liked it though. It was kind of interesting to guess which kind of obstacle we'd almost crash into next: cars on the same lane, cars on the opposite lane, one of the million bicycles or motorbikes, a becak, or whatnot. Thankfully, it all went well... The train ride afterwards was terribly boring in comparison.
Now, Yogya is a really nice place. A lot more touristic, that's for sure, but a lot less polluted than Jakarta, and all in all nicer. Lots of guest houses too, so we got to check out a few and take our pick. We ended up in one that's not the best, but quite affordable. 3-4EUR per night including unlimited supplies of tea and coffee is kinda nice. First thing I did afterwards was go to the doctor. Someone recommended a small international clinic, and I thought that's where the taxi would bring us, but instead, we landed at the "Jogja International Hospital". It looked more luxurious than any hospital I had ever seen, even in europe... I already saw all my cash float away and credit card hit its limit, but afterwards it turned out that including the medicine, I only had to pay what amounts to about 25EUR.
Yeah, I'm better now.
Today, we're probably gonna go and see Borobudur, apparently some of the oldest temple complexes in the country. I'll see if I can make another update from Bali later this week, otherwise you'll get it all when I'm back. No photos yet, I'm sorry... can't upload them from here.
Laters! *wave*

Off I go...

Long time no blog. I guess a sort of everyday routine has caught up with me here as well, as much as I dislike that fact. Time to break it! Tomorrow, we're going on a trip to Indonesia. First off, we'll fly to Jakarta, stay there for a day or two, and then make our way by bus and train towards Bali, from where we'll be taking a plane back to Singapore on the 2nd of October.

I'll try to provide you all with tons of cool pictures when I get back, so stay tuned! :)