We already reached the last day of our small trip to Jogja and, although we did not receive a new credit card yet, prepared our baggage to fly back to Bali. Still tired from the day before, where we have been walking through the sun for almost one hour to find a new taxi, we were able to finish quickly enough to save some time to catch up with the plans we had for yesterdays afternoon.

It was about 11 am when we left the Greenhost Boutique Hotel (planned check-out time was noon), took a becak with driver (very similar to the well known Rikschas but the driver is sitting at the back instead of in the front) to bring us to the center of Yogyakarta. After driving for about 10 minutes we reached the palace (which was closed on that day) and the entrance to the water castle Taman Sari. Built in the 18th century as a resting and meditation area for the Sultan, now only a small part of the castle is still intact.

This part of the water castle with its two large basins was reserved for the concubines to prepare themselves before the Sultan chose one of them.

The castle was further connected through several gates to other parts of the palace. While some of these were enclosed in impressive buildings, decorated with beautiful bas-reliefs, like the entrance to the water castle for the Sultan himself (top image), others were very narrow and connected the castle to the small housings of the resident population (bottom image)

Although the water castle is a large tourist attraction nowadays, there are still many, mostly very poor, people living along these narrow alleys which are used by hundreds of tourist every single day.

Although we were running out of time (just to remember, in total we had less than 1 hour for both ways plus our sightseeing in the palace area), we hurried to visit the place which we actually wanted to see: Sumur Gumuling.

So we tried to find our way through the narrow labyrinth to the underground mosque located right in the center of the old village. The top images shows Nino in one of the hallways which guide you around the center and most famous part of this antique mosque: a platform, connected to various stairs going in all directions which its podium exposed to direct sunlight from the top. Unfortunately, due to the lack of time and especially due to the large number of tourist, all squeezing each other on the small stairs or even climbing around, we were not able to get a great image from that. But it was already cool that we saw this massive underground building.

So we went back to the hotel where our taxi driver for the airport transfer was already waiting and we checked out as quickly as possible. Here it is important to mention that we were in the new part of the Jogja airport (since we booked with Air Asia) and it is a huge difference from the arrival terminal we have seen some days ago. Everything was very clean and welcoming. And it might also be important to mention, that, although the flights are mostly delayed by about one hour, as soon as the plane arrives it is ready to board about 15 minutes later and starts soon after. So there is not really time to sit back or go to the toilet when you see that the plane just landed. Our last domestic flight in Indonesia (flight number 5) was accompanied by live music from one of the flight attendants who had his last day.

Due to the time delay of one hour and the long drive from the Bali airport at Denpasar to Ubud we arrived in Ubud after the sunset. That’s why here is only a small image of the hotel (Alas Petulu Cottages) we have for the next days