Turns out Yogyakarta is pronounced "Jogjakarta", or "Jogja" for short. So instead of sounding like a frozen yogurt truck, it sounds like Filipinos going for a run.

Jogja is on Java, a big island where most Indonesians live. It's the "cultural capital", famous for its art and food. Unfortunately, they don't have all that much to do that I was interested in, save a few famous temples. But for the first half day we had there, we went to the Water Palace. Sort of like the one in Ubud, except this was more like an Aladdin's palace than a pretty pond. Lots of corridors connecting pools with underground tunnels, I'm sure it looked amazing in its heyday. Now it's mostly in disrepair, which sort of adds to its charm, but I wish it was taken care of better.

Aside from a trip to a local market, the rest of the day we just spent making arrangements for our trip. The main attraction for this excursion was a tour of Borobudur Temple, the largest Buddhist temple in the world, and sort of the "Eiffel Tower" of Indonesia. Besides, you know how I'm a sucker for worlds blankiest blank. It was sort of like Angkor Wat, but more like a damn big pyramid, because it was a damn big pyramid. It's very symmetrical, as pyramids are, because of something about everything being divisible by 8, since that's a special number. The entire thing is made with interlocking stones, and no mortar, which makes it pretty darn impressive considering how tall it is. It's also incredibly old, like thousands of years old. It was lost to time until sort of recently, so that made it kind of interesting. The excavation was undertaken by Sir Raffles, who I know from all the stuff he did for Singapore. Also the Rafflesia flower was named after him, which makes sense but I never put the two together before.

After lunch, we went to the other big site, Prambanan. Despite being Hindu, this was more like Angkor Wat, complete with crumbled pieces that are now piles of decorated bricks. While not flooded with tourists, it being a lot smaller made it difficult to get photos without people in them. We went to a few of the "satellite temples" and got better results, but still, hard not to compare things to Angkor Wat, even if they followed a different religion. Each was $20, which gave us a sticker shock at first - Indonesians money is so large, it cost a million rupiah. And yeah, they're probably worth $20. But given how Jogja doesn't have much else to do, when you think about a hotel and flight... go to Angkor Wat instead. Unless you're like me, and get excited about the idea of seeing "The most ___ in the world." Still, the photos are pretty, and they'll give you a sense of this place better than I could. Frankly it was hot and crazy sunny that day, it's something I can appreciate much more now than when I was sweaty and miserable. Despite that, on the way out, they had a place where you could shoot a bow for 20,000 rupiah ($1.30). Not able to pass it up, I gave it a go. I'm actually pretty happy with how well I did, by the end of it I was getting pretty accurate. I'm not ready for the Hunger Games or anything, but I think I could take down a zombie or two.

Should the need arise, ya know.

Tomorrow morning, we're finally going to the capital, Jakarta. I've heard it's not nice, but people said the same about Manilla - and I got to hit a golf ball into a volcano there. So we'll see.