Hotel Merbabu, Yogyakarta

Having breakfast (omelete sandwich + coffee) at the roof terrace of Hotel Merbabu. Will leave Jogja in 1h on a shuttle bus to the Cemoro Lawang (10h journey). From there we visit the Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park (desert + many volcanoes, some inside other volcanoes). Looking forward to the cooler highland temperatures.

So what have we been doing in Jogja:

• Visited the Sultan's Palace (includes a gamelan+puppet show). Didn't learn much as all the descriptions in Indonesian (and Javanese?). Sultan likes to wear elvish ears, why?
  
• Visited a puppet factory. Similar flat shadow puppets as we saw in the Wayang Museum in Jakarta, but now saw closely how they are produced.
  
• Visited several batik studios. It's hard to avoid these as all the locals insist that one buys a batik. Learned a bit about the batik-technique.
  
• Visited the Maliboro Mall and played Dance Dance Revolution (I've always wanted to play this game)
  
• Visited the Pakualaman Palace. Pakualaman is a smaller kind of sultan (also wears elvish ears). Need to research its function more on Wikipedia, the adjacent museum had all the descriptions in local languages.
  
• Visited the Biology Museum (many stuffed local animals, incl. Malaysian Flying Lemur + skeleton of a dugong)
  
• Visited the Bird Market (in addition to birds, many caged gekos, bats, rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, cats, dogs, crickets, snakes, worms). The bats are the most impressive, in Australia and PNG they always flew too high to be easily observed.
  
• Saw the open air ballet of the Ramayana story at the Prambanan temples. Beautiful costumes and excellent arrow shooting skills of the central actors. Fortunately didn't rain.