Yogjakarta

We arrived in Yogjakarta and walked from the train station to find a hotel room.  After being led around by a guy to all the hotels he would get commission from, we told him we would find it on our own and found Merpati hotel.  It was a pretty good hotel near the city centre and it had free wi-fi.  We spent the night walking around and the next morning we rented a motorbike and went to the Immigration office to see if we could get our visa’s extended.  It turned out we could but we needed to have a flight out booked before that could be done.  We said we were taking a boat out and not a plane, so they allowed us to write a letter stating we would be leaving on a boat on a specific date, and then we needed to purchase an official stamp downstairs and attach it to our letters.  Then we gave them our passports along with our letters and were told it would take 3 business days to process.  And since it was Friday, we would have to wait 5 days.  Since we had the motorbike we drove around and found a shopping mall.  We went in and browsed around for a few hours and hand lunch.  We noticed they had a cinema and they were playing Harry Potter 7 part 2 so I made Andrew promise he would take me to the movie in the evening.   We then drove around the town but since it was Ramadan a lot of places and tourist attractions were closed.  After we had dinner Andrew took me to the movies, and we paid $2 each, which is the cheapest movie I had been to since the Rainbow Cinemas in Mississauga in the ‘90’s.  Although the quality of the movie was good, the sound was inconsistent but I guess we couldn’t expect too much for $2.  These prices, however, confirm how overpriced Canadian theaters are.

The next day we were planning on visiting a couple of temples which were out of town, but when we got there they weren’t that impressive and we thought a overpriced.  I guess once you see Angkor Wat in Cambodia, it’s hard for other temples to keep your interest.  We started driving around some back roads and came across a cattle market.  We parked our motorbike and we were able to walk amongst the cows and the farmers.  There was also a smaller goat market next to it.  The locals thought it was really funny to have tourists at their market and kept asking us if we wanted to buy a cow.  We spent the rest of the day exploring the city and made arrangements to go to Borobudur the next day.

Borobudur is a small town about an hour from Yogjakarta that is supposed to have a beautiful temple there.  That is the main tourist attraction and really the only source of income for the town.  We arrived there and checked into Lotus 2, where instead of a room we had a small apartment to ourselves, with a stunning view of the rice paddies.  I was feeling really tired but I just thought it was due to lack of sleep.  We had some lunch, came back to our hotel room, watched a movie and then napped.  We walked a little around town, but I was still tired and was starting to develop a cough so we stopped in a store to buy some cough medicine.  By 6am the next morning I had a fever of 38 degrees Celsius.  We were supposed to go see the temple in the morning, but because of my fever there was no way I was going.  I just wanted to sleep.  I made Andrew go by himself, since I though at least one of us should see the temple, and when he came back he said it was a good idea that I didn’t go because there wasn’t that much to see.  Again, once you’ve been to Angkor Wat, it’s hard to be amazed by smaller temples.  My fever went down after taking some Panadol but it started creeping back up when it started wearing off.  I definitely didn’t want to stay in Borobudur while sick, because I didn’t know what was wrong with me, and I wanted to be close to a doctor just in case.  So we found a bus and went back to Yogja to our hotel. 

As soon as we were back, I went straight to sleep.  I was self medicating, and while the drugs were working the fever was down, but as soon as they started wearing off, the fever would spike back up.  In the evening it went the highest yet.  The next morning I wasn’t feeling better at all so I asked Andrew to find me a doctor.  He went to our reception, and they called a doctor who said he can do a home visit for $50US.  We thought that was way overpriced and said no.  So Andrew went to the hospital, but thought it wasn’t very clean so he found another clinic that was willing to see me right away.

He picked me up and took me to the clinic.  The doctor spoke English fairly well, but after she examined me she told me I have the common cold.  I was a little skeptical since I had no energy and I still had a fever, but she told me should prescribe an antibiotic.  We showed her the tamiflu we had from Canada and another antibiotic and asked if I can just take one of those.  But again she said I just had influenza so I didn’t need them.  I was confused because I thought tamiflu is used to treat the flu (influenza).  Then she changed her mind and said I could take the tamiflu for a few days, and if I wasn’t feeling better I could take the other antibiotic.  I was more confused than before and after we purchased the cough syrup she prescribed, I decided to take the tamiflu and take my chances.  It seemed to work because after I started taking it, the next day I felt better.  But we didn’t leave Yogjakarta until the following day because I was still weak and just wanted to stay in bed.  Luckily after 2 days of taking tamiflu I was feeling a lot better and we were able to take a train to Surabaya, from where we would catch a flight to Makassar, in Sulawesi.  We purchased tickets at the counter at the airport, but had to spend there as the flight was at 6am the next morning and we didn’t want to pay for a hotel room.  Needless to say we didn’t get much sleep but at least we didn’t miss our flight!