We decide to take the road at the southern coast of Java because we hope that it will be less crowded. We are treated with some beautiful nature and enjoy our ride among the many rice fields.

Ricefields on Bali

In the evening we arrive in Pangandaran, a small town at the beach. You have to pay an entry fee to enter the town but since it is evening we can come in for free. We follow a man on a scooter for a cheap hotel. Before we go to sleep, we take a look at the beach and enjoy a beautiful starry sky. As far as we can see in the dark, the beach does look nice.
In the morning we drive to Borobudur and again we enjoy the beautiful views and the tranquillity on the road. Only once we are completely blocked because there’s a procession down the street.

Enjoying the View

In the evening we arrive at Borobudur and quickly see some hotels across the street of the Hindu temple which the village is famous for. We see a hotel where some European tourists are eating and decide to take a look. The room is cheap and relatively clean. For the first time since we’re in Indonesia we eat something else than fried rice, a delicious curry with coconut. In the hotel we are told we have to pay 16 euro / pp entrance fee to visit the temple (2 euro for an Indonesian). We think this is way too much: to visit Angkor Wat (Cambodia) we paid 16 euro/pp for a whole day at the archaeological site. The hotel offers a 10% discount but we still find the entrance fee too excessive. In the morning we take a look from the rooftop of the hotel and we can see a small part of the temple. During our ride we see various temples.

Temples on Java

When it gets dark, we look for a hotel, but don’t find something along the side of the road. We ask around for a cheap hotel and they send us to Grand Hotel, it looks so chic but we decide to ask the prices. Unexpectedly, they have a room within our budget ... but when we see the room we understand why. How can such a fancy-looking hotel have rooms like this?! We hope to have a good breakfast as there are rooms that are really expensive.
We didn’t eat all day long and look for something to eat. We end up in a cosy restaurant: it's the first nice restaurant in Indonesia that is suitable for our budget. We eat a chicken steak and fries, jummy. In the morning, the breakfast is a big disappointment: a pot of coffee and tea, a few slices of bread and a toaster. In the empty jars there had been butter or jam.
We drive further towards Bali, where we want to be as soon as possible after all the disappointments, in the hope that it gets better there. By evening we reach the pier and we could take the ferry to Bali decided to look for a nice room in Bali the next day. We look for a hotel close to the pier so tomorrow we can leave for Bali immediately. The first hotel that we enter is terrible: the moment we open the door and turn on the lights, we see a giant cockroach on the bed. No way we sleep here. They show us another room but this room stinks and there are no covers around the cushions which are really grey of all the people who have slept on them. We decide to look a little further, and 100m further away we find a clean and very cheap hotel. We immediately go to sleep because Bali is waiting for us!

Java, Indonesia

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